In the old Norse telling he began as a dwarf, a king's son, who murdered his own father to keep a cursed hoard of gold for himself alone. He dragged it out to a lonely heath, and his greed did to him what greed does: it reshaped him to match his heart. He swelled into a venom-breathing serpent and coiled around the gold so that no one could take what he could no longer enjoy. The hero Sigurd killed him at last from a pit below, and the dying wyrm warned him that the gold was cursed too.
He is the oldest lesson about hoarding, written in scale and fire: guard a thing jealously enough and you become a monster guarding it.
Coiled here over his burning hoard. Printed heavy on garment dyed cotton, for the ones who would rather spend their fire than sit on it.
