The archer Orvandel is an enemy of Halfdan.
From this it would appear that Volund was very intimately associated with one of the archers of the mythology, and that both had some reason for being enemies of Halfdan. Can this be corroborated by any other source?
Volund's brothers are called Egill and Slagfidr (Slagfinnr) in Volundarkvida. The Icelandic-Norwegian poems from heathen times contain paraphrases which prove that the mythological Egil was famous as an archer and skee-runner. The bow is "Egil's weapon," the arrows are "Egil's weapon-hail" (Younger Edda, 422), and "the swift herring of Egil's hands" (Har. Gr., p. 18). A ship is called Egil's skees, originally because he could use his skees also on the water. In Volundarkvida he makes hunting expeditions with his brothers on skees. Vilkinasaga also (29, 30) knows Egil as Volund's brother, and speaks of him as a wonderfully skilful archer.
The same Volund, who in Saxo under the name Anund has Toko (the name of an archer) or the archer Avo by his side in the conflict with Halfdan, also has the archer Egil as a brother in other sources.
Of an archer Toko, who is mentioned in Hist., 487-490, Saxo tells the same exploit as Vilkinasaga attributes to Volund's brother Egil. In Saxo it is Toko who performs the celebrated masterpiece which was afterwards attributed to William Tell. In Vilkinasaga it is Egil. The one like the other, amid similar secondary circumstances, shoots an apple from his son's head. Egil's skill as a skee-runner and the serviceableness of his skees on the water have not been forgotten in Saxo's account of Toko. He runs on skees down the mountain, sloping precipitously down to the sea, Kullen in Scania, and is said to have saved himself on board a ship. Saxo's Toko was therefore without doubt identical with Volund's brother Egil, and Saxo's Anund is the same Volund of whom the Volundarkvida testifies that he also had this name in the mythology.
Thus we have demonstrated the fact that Volund and Egil appeared in the saga of the Teutonic patriarch Halfdan as the enemies of the latter, and that the famous archer Egil occupied the position in which we would expect to find the celebrated archer Orvandel, Svipdag's father. Orvandel is therefore either identical with Egil, and then it is easy to understand why the latter is an enemy of Halfdan, who we know had robbed his wife Groa; or he is not identical with Egil, and then we know no motive for the appearance of the latter on the same side as Svipdag, and we, moreover, are confronted by the improbability that Orvandel does nothing to avenge the insult done to him.
Orvandel's identity with Egil is completely confirmed by the following circumstances.
Orvandel has the Elivagar and the coasts of Jotunheim as the scene of his exploits during the time in which he is the friend of the gods and the opponent of the giants. To this time we must refer Horvendillus' victories over Collerus (Kollr) and his sister Sela (cp. the name of a monster Selkolla—Bisk S., i. 605) mentioned by Saxo (Hist., 135-138). His surname inn frækni, the brave, alone is proof that the myth refers to important exploits carried out by him, and that these were performed against the powers of frost in particular—that is to say, in the service of the gods and for the good of Midgard—is plain from the narrative in the Younger Edda (276, 277). This shows, as is also demanded by the epic connection, that the Asa-god Thor and the archer Orvandel were at least for a time confidential friends, and that they had met each other on their expeditions for similar purposes in Jotunheim. When Thor, wounded in his forehead, returns from his combat with the giant Hrungnir to his home, thrúdvángr (thrúdvángar, thrudheimr,) Orvandel's wife Groa was there and tried to help him with healing sorcery, wherein she would also have succeeded if Thor could have made himself hold his tongue for a while concerning a report he brought with him about her husband, and which he expected would please her. And Groa did become so glad that she forgot to continue the magic song and was unable to complete the healing. The report was, as we know, that, on the expedition to Jotunheim from which he had now come home, Thor had met Orvandel, carried him in his basket across the Elivagar, and thrown a toe which the intrepid adventurer had frozen up to heaven and made a star thereof. Thor added that before long Orvandel would come "home;" that is to say, doubtless, "home to Thor," to fetch his wife Groa. It follows that, when he had carried Orvandel across the Elivagar, Thor had parted with him somewhere on the way, in all probability in Orvandel's own home, and that while Orvandel wandered about in Jotunheim, Groa, the dis of growth, had a safe place of refuge in the Asa-God's own citadel. A close relation between Thor and Orvandel also appears from the fact that Thor afterwards marries Orvandel's second wife Sif, and adopts his son Ull, Svipdag's half-brother (see No. 102), in Asgard.
Consequently Orvandel's abode was situated south of the Elivagar (Thor carried him nordan or Jötunheimum—Younger Edda, 276), in the direction Thor had to travel when going to and from the land of the giants, and presumably quite near or on the strand of that mythic water-course over which Thor on this occasion carried him. When Thor goes from Asgard to visit the giants he rides the most of the way in his chariot drawn by the two goats Tanngnjóstr and Tanngrisnir. In the poem Haustlaung there is a particularly vivid description of his journey in his thunder chariot through space when he proceeded to the meeting agreed upon with the giant Hrungner, on the return from which he met and helped Orvandel across Elivagar (Younger Edda, 276). But across this water and through Jotunheim itself Thor never travels in his car. He wades across the Elivagar, he travels on foot in the wildernesses of the giants, and encounters his foe face to face, breast to breast, instead of striking from above with lightning. In this all accounts of Thor's journeys to Jotunheim agree. Hence south of the Elivagar and somewhere near them there must have been a place where Thor left his chariot and his goats in safety before he proceeded farther on his journey. And as we already know that the archer Orvandel, Thor's friend, and like him hostile to the giants, dwelt on the road traveled by the Asa-god, and south of the Elivagar, it lies nearest at hand to assume that Orvandel's castle was the stopping place on his journey, and the place where he left his goats and car.