 Smaug's ability to speak, the use of riddles, the element of betrayal, his enemy's communication via birds, and his weak spot could all have been inspired by the talking dragon Fafnir of the "Völsunga saga".Shippey identified several points of similarity between Smaug and Fafnir.Tolkien noted, in a joking letter that he was surprised to see published in "The Observer" in 1938, that "the dragon bears as name—a pseudonym—the past tense of the primitive Germanic verb "smúgan", to squeeze through a hole