But by the side of _ofrunni_ we have another reading which must be considered. Codex Wormianus has _ofrúni_ instead of _ofrunni_, and, as Wisén has pointed out, this runni must, for the sake of the metre, be read _rúni_. According to this reading Thjasse must at some time have been Thor's _ofrúni_, that is, Thor's confidential friend. This reading also finds its support in the mythology, as shall be demonstrated further on. I may here be allowed to repeat what I have remarked before, that of two readings only the one can be the original, while both may be justified by the mythology.
(20) In the mythology are found characters that form a group by themselves, and whose characteristic peculiarity is that they practise skee-running in connection with the use of the bow and arrow. This group consists of the brothers Volund, Egil, Slagfin, Egil's son Ull, and Thjasse's daughter Skade. In the introduction to Volundarkvida it is said of the three brothers that they ran on skees in the Wolfdales and hunted. We have already referred to Egil's wonderful skees, that could be used on the water as well as on the snow. Of Ull we read in Gylfaginning (Younger Edda, i. 102): "He is so excellent an archer and skee-runner that no one is his equal;" and Saxo tells about his Ollerus that he could enchant a bone (the ice-shoe formed of a bone, the pendant of the skee), so that it became changed into a ship. Ull's skees accordingly have the same qualities as those of his father Egil, namely, that they can also be used on the sea. Ull's skees seem furthermore to have had another very remarkable character, namely, that when their possessor did not need them for locomotion on land or on sea, they could be transformed into a shield and be used in war. In this way we explain that the skalds could employ _skip Ullar_, _Ullar far_, _knörr Örva áss_, as paraphrases for shields, and that, according to one statement in the Edda Lovasina, _Ullr átti skip that, er Skjöldr hét_. So far as his accomplishments are concerned, Ull is in fact the counterpart of his father Egil, and the same may be said of Skade. While Ull is called "the god of the skees," Skade is called "the goddess of the skees," "the dis of the skees," and "the dis of the sea-bone," _sævar beins dis_, a paraphrase which manifestly has the same origin as Saxo's account of the bone enchanted by Ull. Thus Thjasse's daughter has an attribute belonging to the circle of Volund's kinsmen.