Though in a form greatly changed, the Vilkinasaga has also preserved the memory of the manner in which Volund's father closed his career. With some smiths ("dwarfs") who lived in a remote mountain, Vade had made an agreement, according to which, in return for a certain compensation, his son Volund should learn their wonderful art as smiths. When, toward the close of the time agreed upon, Vade appeared outside of the mountain, he was, before entering, killed by an avalanche in accordance with the treacherous arrangement of these smiths.
In the mythology Thjasse's father is the great drink-champion who, among his many names and epithets, as we have seen, also has some that refer to his position in the mythology in regard to fermented beverage; _Svigdir_ (the great drinker) _Ölvaldi_, _Ölmódr_, _Sumbl Finnakonungr_. In regard to _Svigdir's_ death, it has already been shown (see No. 89) that, on his complete disappearance from the mythology, he is outside of a mountain in which Suttung and Suttung's sons, descendants of Surt-Durinn, with Mimer the most ancient smith (see No. 89), have their halls; that on his arrival a treacherous dwarf, the doorkeeper of Suttung's sons, goes to meet him, and that he is "betrayed" by the dwarf, never enters the rocky halls, and consequently must have died outside.
Vilkinasaga's very late statements (probably taken from German traditions), in regard to the death of Volund's father, thus correspond in the main features with what is related in the Norse records as to how Thjasse's father disappeared from the scene of mythology.
In regard to the birth and rank of Thjasse's father among the mythic powers, the following statements in poems from the heathen time are to be observed. When Haustlaung tells how Thjasse falls into the vaferflames kindled around Asgard, it makes use of the words _Greipar bidils son svidnar_, "the son of Greip's wooer is scorched." Thus Thjasse's mother is the giantess Greip, who, according to a stanza cited in the Younger Edda, i. 288, is a daughter of the giant _Geirrödr_ and a sister of Gjalp. One of these sisters, and, so far as we can see, Greip, is, in Thorsdrapa, called _meinsvarans hapts arma farmr_, "the embrace of the arms of the perjurous _hapt_." _Höpt_, sing _hapt_, is like _bönd_, meaning the same, an appellation of lower and higher powers, _numina_ of various ranks. If by the perjurous mistress of the _hapt_ Greip, and not the sister Gjalp, is meant, then Thjasse's father is a being who belonged to the number of the _numina_ of the mythology, and who, with a giantess whose _bidill_ he had been, begat the son Thjasse, and probably also the latter's brothers _Idi_ and _Gángr_ (_Aurnir_). What rank this perjurous _hapt_ held among the powers is indicated in Vellekla, strophe 9, which, like the foregoing strophe 8, and the succeeding strophes 10, 11, treats of Hakon Jarl's conflicts at Dannevirke, whither he was summoned, in the capacity of a vassal under the Danish king, Harald Blue-tooth, to defend the heathen North against Emperor Otto II.'s effort to convert Denmark to Christianity by arms. The strophe, which here, too, in its paraphrases presents parallels between Hakon Jarl and his mythic progenitor Thjasse, says that the Danish king (_fémildr konungr_) desired that the Morkwood's Hlodyn's (Mork-wood's earth's, that is to say, the woody Norway's) elf, he who came from the North (_myrkmarkar Hlodynjar alfs, thess er kom nordan_), was to be tested in "murder-frost," that is to say, in war (_vid mord-frost freista_), when he (Denmark's king) angrily bade the cold-hard storm-watcher (_stirdan vedrhirdi_, Hakon Jarl) of the Hordaland dwellers (of the Norsemen) defend Dannevirke (_Virki varda_) against the southland Njords of the shield-din (_fyr serkja-hlym-val-Njördum_, "the princes of the southland warriors").