Loki’s Capture of Andvari’s Ring

At a Glance

Central figures: Loki, trickster god of the Aesir; Andvari, a dwarf cursed to swim as a fish; Hreidmar, chieftain whose son Otr was killed; and Fafnir, Hreidmar’s son who murders his father for the gold.
Setting: Midgard and the underground realm of the dwarf Andvari, whose waterfall hoard becomes the center of the story. The tale is drawn from Norse myth as preserved in the Eddas and the Volsung cycle.
The turn: Loki tears the ring Andvaranaut from Andvari’s hand rather than leaving it behind, and Andvari lays a curse on every piece of the gold.
The outcome: The ransom frees Odin, Loki, and Hoenir, but the cursed gold passes to Hreidmar, who is murdered by his own son Fafnir that same night.
The legacy: The hoard and its curse set in motion the ruin of Fafnir - who transforms into a dragon to guard it - and the later doom of Sigurd the Dragonslayer, who would eventually claim it.

Loki killed the otter for sport. He threw a stone, the animal went limp at the riverbank, and he picked it up pleased with himself. He did not know - could not have known, though ignorance did not help him - that the otter was Ótr, son of Hreidmar the dwarf-chieftain, who wore the shape of a fish-hunter when it suited him. Loki, Odin, and Hoenir arrived at Hreidmar’s hall carrying the pelt as a kind of trophy. They were seized before the evening was done.

Hreidmar’s sons Fafnir and Regin held the gods in iron chains. The chieftain himself did not shout. He looked at the pelt for a long time. Then he named his price: the otter’s skin filled inside and covered outside with gold, every patch of fur hidden beneath treasure, not one hair showing. Odin agreed. Loki was the one they sent to find the gold.

Andvari’s Pool

He traveled until he found the waterfall - a cold, crashing thing driving into a black pool deep in a cave. Andvari lived in that pool. The dwarf had been cursed into the shape of a pike, swimming circles in the dark, and he had spent centuries accumulating a hoard that sat somewhere in the rock above the water. The hoard included a ring, Andvaranaut, that generated wealth the way a fire generates heat: steadily, without effort, for as long as you held it.

Loki cast a net into the pool. The fish fought hard. Loki pulled harder. He dragged Andvari up onto the stone and held him there while the dwarf resumed his own shape, soaked and furious, blinking in the torchlight.

The Ring

Andvari did not beg for his hoard. He knew better. He asked for one thing only: the ring. Leave him Andvaranaut, he said, and he could rebuild everything else in time.

Loki pulled the ring from the dwarf’s hand and pocketed it.

Andvari’s face did not change much. He had the look of a man who had expected exactly this. He raised his hands and cursed the gold - all of it, every coin, the ring and everything that had ever touched it - declaring that it would bring death to every owner, that no man would hold it without suffering, that blood would be spilled over it until the hoard had destroyed everything it touched.

Loki left him standing in his empty cave and brought the gold back to Hreidmar’s hall.

Filling the Skin

They stuffed the otter pelt from the inside first, packing it with coins until the skin stretched tight. Then they piled more gold on top. Hreidmar walked around the mound slowly, crouching to peer at the seams. He found one whisker still showing. One hair of Ótr’s fur uncovered. He pointed at it and said nothing, which was worse than shouting.

Loki placed Andvaranaut on the pile. The whisker disappeared beneath the ring’s edge. Hreidmar stepped back. The ransom was paid.

The gods were freed. Hreidmar stood in his hall surrounded by more wealth than most kings see in three generations. His sons stood behind him and looked at the gold and said nothing. Loki, walking out into the cold air, was smiling.

Fafnir’s Dagger

That night Fafnir looked at his father sleeping beside the hoard and decided not to wait for an inheritance.

One dagger. Hreidmar did not wake.

Fafnir claimed the gold. Regin argued, pointed out that he had a share coming, that their father was barely cold. Fafnir drove him away. The ring and everything it touched belonged to Fafnir now, and Fafnir had no intention of dividing it. He took the hoard into the wilderness. The curse worked on him slowly at first, then faster. He grew heavy. His skin thickened. His thoughts narrowed to the single point of the treasure beneath him. By the time anyone found him again he was not a man at all - a vast scaled thing lying coiled around the gold in the darkness, breathing slow poison, waiting for anyone foolish enough to come close.

Andvari had said all of this would happen. He had said it as Loki walked away, and Loki had not looked back.

The Chain Forward

Regin survived long enough to find Sigurd, the warrior who would become the Dragonslayer. He shaped Sigurd into a weapon for his own purposes, pointing him at Fafnir’s lair the way you point a blade at a throat. Sigurd killed the dragon. He claimed the hoard and Andvaranaut with it. Then he killed Regin too, though not for the gold’s sake - Regin had his own designs, and Sigurd saw through them. It did not matter. The curse cared nothing for reasons. Sigurd took the ring and carried it forward, and the ruin followed him as it had followed everyone else.

Andvari’s gold moved through the world like an infection, passing from hand to hand, each owner convinced they would be different, each one wrong. Hreidmar died for it before the ransom was cold. Fafnir gave up his shape for it. Sigurd - the greatest warrior of his age, the man who walked through fire and cut a dragon’s heart out - could not hold it any more safely than a dwarf chieftain counting coins in a hall.

And Loki, who started everything by throwing a stone at an otter on a riverbank, walked away untouched. That is often how it goes with Loki. The fire he sets burns the house down long after he has left the room.