Grief (sword)
Gram ( Old Norse : Gramr , literally: Grimm) is the sword of Sigurd (Siegfried), the dragon slayer , in Nordic / Germanic mythology . In Richard Wagner Gram's Notung (in the score and the piano reduction as Nothung written); in the Nibelungenlied , Siegfried's sword has a completely different prehistory and is called Balmung .
The legend reports that Odin , Sigurd's grandfather, placed a sword in the apple tree in the hall of Wölsung with the instruction that only he for whom it was intended could pull it out. Sigmund , son of Wölsung and Sigurd's father, manages to pull the sword out of the apple tree. Much to Sigmund's chagrin, Odin withdraws his favor in the battle against Hunding's sons and personally destroys Sigmund's blade. Before Sigmund arrives in Valhalla , he instructs his wife Hjördis to store the wreckage of the sword for their unborn son Sigurd. With Reginn's help, Sigurd forges a new sword from the rubble and calls it "Grief".
With grief he first avenges his father and then defeats the dragon Fafnir and the devious Reginn. After his death, Högni (Hagen) took the weapon and carried it to Atli's court in the last battle of the Burgundians (Etzel in the Nibelungenlied and historically assigned to Attila ). In some stories Hildebrand gets the sword, in others it disappears from the plot at this point.