Clad in an armour smithied by Volund (_Vuelandia fabrica_), Valtarius appears as the great spear-champion, who despises all other weapons of attack--
Vualtarius erat vir maximus undique telis Suspectamque habuit cuncto sibi tempori pugnam (v. 366-7).
With the spear he meets a sword-champion--
Hic gladio fidens hic acer et arduus hasta (v. 822);
and he has developed the use of the spear into an art, all of whose secrets were originally known by him alone, then also by Hagano, who learned them from the former (v. 336, 367). Vilkinasaga speaks of Valthari as an excellent spear-champion. Sure of success, he wagers his head in a competitive contest with this weapon.
It has already been shown above (see No. 89) that _Svigdir_-Ivalde in the mythic saga concerning the race-heroes was the first ruler of the Swedes, just as his sons, Volund and Egil, became those of the Longobardians and Slagfin that of the Burgundians, and, as shall be shown below, also that of the Saxons. Even in the Ynglingasaga, compiled in the twelfth century, he remains, by the name _Svegdir_ among the first kings of the Yngling race, and in reality as the first hero; for his forerunners, _Fjölnir_, _Freyr_, and _Odinn_, are prehuman gods (in regard to _Fjölnir_, see Völuspa). That _Svidir_ was made the race-hero of the Swedes is explained by the fact that Ivalde, before his sons, before he had yet become the foe of the gods and a "perjured _hapt_," was the guardian of the northern Teutonic world against the powers of frost, and that the Sviones were the northernmost race of the Teutonic domain. The elf-citadel on the southern coast of the Elivagar was _Geirvadill_-Ivalde's _setr_ before it became that of his sons (see Nos. 109, 113-115, 117, 118). The continental Teutons, like their kinsmen on the Scandian peninsula, knew that north of the Swedes and in the uttermost north lived a non-Teutonic people who ran on skees and practised hunting--the Finns. And as the realm that was subject to the race-hero of the Swedes in the mythology extended to the Elivagar, where his _setr_ was situated, even the Finns must have been subject to his sceptre. This explains his surname, _Finnakonungr_, _Finnr_, _Vidfinnr_, Fin Folcvalding, and also the fact that his descendants form a group of skee-runners. To the location of the _setr_ near the Elivagar, at the point where Thor was wont to wade across this body of water (see Nos. 109, 114), we have a reference in the Ivalde epithets, _Vadill Vadi_. They indicate his occupation as the keeper of the ford. Vilkinasaga makes him a wader of the same kind as Thor, and makes him bear his son, Volund, across a sound while the latter was still a lad. Reasons which I may yet have an opportunity to present indicate that Ivalde's mother was the mightiest amazon of Teutonic mythology, whose memory survives in Saxo's account of Queen Rusila, Rusla (_Hist._, 178, 365, 394-396), and in the German heroic-saga's Rütze. This queen of the elves, dwelling south of the Elivagar, is also remembered by Tactitus' informer. In _Germania_ (45) we read: _Svionibus Sitonum gentes continuantur. Cetera similes uno different quod femina dominatur.... Hic Suebiæ fines_--"The Sviones are bounded by the Sitones. While they are like each other in other things they differ in the one respect, that a woman rules over the Sitones. Here the confines of Suebia end." The name Sitones does not occur elsewhere, and it would be vain to seek it in the domain of reality. Beyond the domain of the Sviones extended at that time that of the mythic geography. The Sitones, who were governed by a queen, belonged to the Teutonic mythology, like the Hellusians and Oxionians, mentioned elsewhere in _Germania_. It is not impossible that the name _Sitones_, of which the stem is sit, is connected with the Norse mythological name of the chief citadel in their country--_setr_ (_Geirvadill's setr_, _Ide's setr_; cp. _setr-verjendr_ as a designation in Ynglingasaga [17] of the descendants of _Svigdir_-Ivalde). The word _setr_ is derived from _setja_, a causative form of _sitja_, the Gothic _sitan_.