Here, too, the myth about Thjasse and of the fimbul-winter forms the kernel out of which the paraphrases adapted to Hakon Jarl have grown. Hakon is clothed with the mask of the cold-hard storm-watcher who comes from the North and can let loose the winter-winds. Emperor Otto and the chiefs who led the southern troops under him are compared with Njord and his kinsmen, who, in the mythology, fought with Volund and the powers of frost, and the battle between the warriors of the South and the North is compared with a "murder-frost," in which Hakon coming from the North meets the Christian continental Teutons at Dannevirke.
Thus the mythical kernel of the strophe is as follows: The elf of the Morkwood of Hlodyn, the cold-hard storm-watcher, tested his power with frost-weather when he fought with Njord and his kinsmen.
The Hlodyn of the Morkwood--that is to say, the goddess of the Jotunheim woods--is in this connection Thjasse's daughter Skade, who, in Haleygjatal, is called _Járnvidja_ of _Járnvidr_, the Ironwood, which is identical with the Morkwood (Darkwood). Thjasse himself, whose father is called "a perjurous _hapt_" in Thorsdrapa, is here called an elf. Alone, this passage would not be sufficient to decide the question as to which class of mythical beings Thjasse and his father belonged, the less so as _álfr_, applied in a paraphrase, might allude to any sort of being according to the characterisation added. But "perjurous _hapt_" cannot possibly be a paraphrase for a giant. Every divinity that has violated its oath is "a perjurous _hapt_," and the mythology speaks of such perjuries. If a god has committed perjury, this is no reason why he should be called a giant. If a giant has committed perjury, this is no reason why he should be called a _hapt_, for it is nothing specially characteristic of the giant nature that it commits perjury or violates its oath. In fact, it seems to me that there should be the gravest doubts about Thjasse's being a giant in the strictest and completest sense of the word, from the circumstances that he is a star-hero; that distinguished persons considered it an honour to be descended from him; that Hakon Jarl's skalds never tired of clothing him with the appearance of his supposed progenitor, and of comparing the historical achievements of the one with the mythical exploits of the other; and that he, Thjasse, not only robbed Idun, which indeed a genuine giant might do, but that he also lived with her many long years, and, so far as we can see, begat with her the daughter Skade. It should be remembered, from the foregoing pages, what pains the mythology takes to get the other asynje, Freyja, who had fallen into the hands of giants, back pure and undefiled to Asgard, and it is therefore difficult to believe that Idun should be humiliated and made to live for many years in intimacy with a real giant. It follows from this that when Thjasse, in the above-cited mythological kernel of the strophe of Vellekla, is called an _álfr_, and when his father in Thorsdrapa is called a _hapt_, a being of higher or lower divine rank, then _álfr_ is a further definition of the idea _hapt_, and informs us to which class of _numina_ Thjasse belonged--namely, the lower class of gods called elves. Thus, on his father's side, Thjasse is an elf. So is Volund. In Volundarkvida he is called a prince of elves. Furthermore, it should be observed that, in the strophe-kernel presented above, Thjasse is represented as one who has fought with Njord and his allies. In Saxo it is Anund-Volund and his brother the archer who fight with Njord-Fridlevus and his companions; and as Njord in Saxo marries Anund-Volund's daughter, while in the mythology he marries Thjasse's daughter, then this is another recurrence of the fact which continually comes to the surface in this investigation, namely, that whatever is told of Volund is also told of Thjasse.