Andvari's ring, in Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, is an example of what greed can do to you and others. Aandvari was a dwarf that had a huge stockpile of gold hidden in his cave. However, this gold came with a curse: It would never quite be enough to satisfy your greed or a payment without the ring. If you were told to cover a mountain with the gold, you would have a ring- shaped spot missing no matter how you shifted the gold. This ring was cursed with killing any human who laid hands on it, meaning that the ring killed a lot of people. And this never would have been so if it wasn't for Loki.
Loki is the Norse god of trickery. He wanted the gold, but Andvari begged him not to take the ring, saying it would kill every human who touched it. Loki's response was basically, "I don't care, I'm not a human". How noble of him. So the ring passed through generations of humans, causing the death of many humans. The ring didn't cause them to immediately die, or cause them to be swallowed in the void. It planted seeds of greed in people's minds, causing murder and hate.
In one case, the ring actually changed the man into a dragon due to his huge amount of greed. So he hid all his gold in a cave and guarded it like Smaug from The Hobbit. This is a reference to dragons being extremely greedy, like he reached the maximum amount of greed a human was capable of. The ring’s curse was that it brought out the worst in whichever human touched it. This means that everyone who was greedy or murderous was actually capable of it in the first place, the ring just sped those emotions up.
I see a lot of similarities between The Hobbit and The Edda because of driving greed caused by gold and the dragons. The rings brought out the worst in people in both stories, but the difference was the redemption arc in The Hobbit, when Thorin overcame the greed and hate from all the cursed gold. The Hobbit was focusing on hope in tough situations, while the story of Andvari's ring in The Edda was leaning more towards what greed and hate can do to you. (Campo)
WORKS CITED
Campo, Michel M. del. "One Ring in The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien." Study.com, edited by Ginna Wilkerson, 12 Nov. 2023, study.com/academy/lesson/the-ring-in-the-hobbit.html#quiz-course-links.
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