Barnstokkr

Barnstokkr is introduced in chapter 2 of Völsunga saga where King Völsung is described as having "had an excellent palace built in this fashion: a huge tree stood with its trunk in the hall and its branches, with fair blossoms, stretched out through the roof.

Davidson cites records of wedding ceremonies and games in rural districts in Sweden involving trees or "stocks" as late as the 17th century, and cites a custom in Norway "surviving into recent times" for "the bridegroom to plunge his sword into the roof beam, to test the 'luck' of the marriage by the depth of the scar he made".

[4] Davidson points out a potential connection between the descriptor apaldr (Old Norse "apple tree") and the birth of King Völsung, which is described earlier in the Völsunga saga as having occurred after Völsung's father Rerir sits atop a burial mound and prays for a son, after which the goddess Frigg has an apple sent to Rerir.

In connection with this, Davidson theorizes that at the bridal feast, it should have been Siggeir, the bridegroom, who drew the sword from the tree, "and that its possession would symbolize the 'luck' which would come to him with his bride, and the successful continuation of his own line in the sons to be born of the marriage".

The sword having been refused to him, Davidson theorizes that this may well have been intended as a deadly insult, and that this lends a tragic air to the scene in the hall.

[8] In Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen opera cycle, the tree appears as Barnstock, when the hero Siegmund, with a great tug, pulls from it a sword that he names Nothung.

[9] Barnstokkr has been theorized as English author and philologist J. R. R. Tolkien's immediate source for a scene in his 1954 work The Lord of the Rings depicting the fictional character of Frodo Baggins and his acceptance of the weapon Sting after it has been thrust "deep into a wooden beam".