As we see from the context, Geirrod's halls were filled with the men who had fled from the battle near the river, and within the mountain there arose another conflict, which is described in the last three strophes of the poem. Geirrod's hall shook with the din of battle. Thor swung his bloody hammer. "The staff of safety," "the help-tree of the way," the staff on which Thor supported himself in crossing the river, fell into Egil's hands (kom at tvívidar Tývi brautar lids tollr), who did not here have room to use his bow, but who, with this "convenient tree jerked (or broken) from the forest," gave death-blows to "the calves of Alfheim." The arrows from his quiver could not be used in this crowded place against the men of the mountain-chief.
The fact that the giants in Thorsdrapa use the sling is of interest to the question concerning the position of the various weapons of mythology. Geirrod is called vegtaugar thrjótr, "the industrious applier of the sling" (str. 17), and álmtaugar Ægir, "the Ægir of the sling made of elm-bast."
In the last strophe Egil is said to be helblótinn and hneitir, undirfjálfs bliku, expressions to which I shall recur further on.
Like the relation between Volund and his swan-maids in Volundarkvida, the relation between Rogner-Thjasse and Idun in Forspjallsljod is not that of the robber to his unwilling victim, but one of mutual harmony. This is confirmed by a poem which I shall analyse when the investigation reaches a point that demands it, and according to which Idun was from her childhood tied by bonds of love and by oath to the highly-gifted but unhappy son of Ivalde, to the great artist who, by his irreconcilable thirst for revenge, became the Lucifer of Teutonic mythology, while Loke is its Mefisto. I presume that the means of rejuvenation, the divine remedy against age (ellilyf ása—Haustlaung), which Idun alone in Asgard knows and possesses, was a product of Thjasse-Volund's art. The middle age also remembered Volund (Wieland) as a physician, and this trait seems to be from the oldest time, for in Rigveda, too, the counterparts of the Ivalde sons, that is, the Ribhus, at the request of the gods, invent means of rejuvenation. It may be presumed that the mythology described his exterior personality in a clear manner. From his mother he must have inherited his giant strength, which, according to the Grotte-song, surpassed Hrungner's and that of the father of the latter (Hard var Hrungnir ok hans fadir, thó var Thjazi theim auflgari—str. 9). With his strength beauty was doubtless united. Otherwise, Volundarkvida's author would scarcely have said that his swan-maid laid her arms around Anund's (Volund's) "white" neck. That his eyes were conceived as glittering may be concluded from the fact that they distinguish him on the starry canopy as a star-hero, and that in Volundarkvida Nidhad's queen speaks of the threatening glow in the gaze of the fettered artist (amon ero augu ormi theim enom frána—str. 17).
Ivalde's sons—Thjasse-Volund, Aurnir-Egil, and Ide-Slagfin—are, as we have seen, bastards of an elf and a giantess (Greip, Gambara). Ivalde's daughters, on the other hand (see No. 113), have as mother a sun-dis, daughter of the ruler of the atmosphere, Nokver. In other sources the statement in Forspjallsljod (6) is confirmed, that Ivalde had two groups of children, and that she who "among the races of elves was called Idun" belonged to one of them. Thus, while Idun and her sisters are half-sisters to Ivalde's sons, these are in turn half-brothers to pure giants, sons of Greip, and these giants are, according to the Grotte-song (str. 9), the fathers of Fenja and Menja. The relationship of the Ivalde sons to the gods on the one hand and to the giants on the other may be illustrated by the following scheme:
115.
REVIEW OF THE PROOFS OF VOLUND'S IDENTITY WITH THJASSE.
The circumstances which first drew my attention to the necessity of investigating whether Thjasse and Volund were not different names of the same mythic personality, which the mythology particularly called Thjasse, and which the heroic saga springing from the mythology in Christian times particularly called Volund, were the following: (1) In the study of Saxo I found in no less than three passages that Njord, under different historical masks, marries a daughter of Volund, while in the mythology he marries a daughter of Thjasse. (2) In investigating the statements anent Volund's father in Volundarkvida's text and prose appendix I found that these led to the result that Volund was a son of Sumbl, the Finn king—that is to say, of Olvalde, Thjasse's father. (3) My researches in regard to the myth about the mead produced the result that Svigder-Olvalde perished by the treachery of a dwarf outside of a mountain, where one of the smith-races of the mythology, Suttung's sons, had their abode. In Vilkinasaga's account of the death of Volund's father I discovered the main outlines of the same mythic episode.
The correspondence of so different sources in so unexpected a matter was altogether too remarkable to permit it to be overlooked in my mythological researches. The fact that the name-variation itself, Alvalde (for Olvalde), as Thjasse's father is called in Harbardsljod, was in meaning and form a complete synonym of Ivalde I had already observed, but without attaching any importance thereto.