Volund

Volund is the ancestral war hammer carried by Hrothgar, the forty-second dwarf king, and its presence concentrates several kinds of authority at once. It is a weapon, a dynastic heirloom, and a visible link to the eight-thousand-year history of dwarf rule beneath Farthen Dûr. When Hrothgar wields it against the Urgals, the artifact’s historical meaning becomes immediate physical force: the old king’s past and present authority strike together.

Appearance and Ancestry

Volund is associated with Hrothgar’s imposing appearance in the throne hall. He sits upon a black-marble throne wearing a gold helm lined with rubies and diamonds, dressed in mail, with his long white beard tucked beneath his belt; across his lap rests the mighty hammer bearing the symbol of Orik’s clan. The weapon is therefore displayed as part of a carefully composed image of kingship. Its weight and workmanship complement Hrothgar’s grim, weathered presence, while the clan emblem identifies it with a particular line within the larger history of the dwarves.

Hrothgar explains that Volund was forged by his ancestor Korgan. The hammer thus reaches backward beyond the current king and beyond the immediate political crisis confronting Farthen Dûr. Hrothgar points to the statues of his predecessors—forty-one rulers before him—and declares that, when he dies, his own likeness will join them. Volund belongs to this same chain of succession. It is not merely something Hrothgar owns; it is an inherited sign that the living king stands within a continuous royal tradition.

Royal Authority and Historical Memory

The hammer’s importance is inseparable from Hrothgar’s account of dwarf civilization. He presents the dwarves as the oldest rulers beneath Farthen Dûr, describing them as the bones of the land and emphasizing that their dominion began at the dawn of their race. Volund gives that claim a tangible form. Unlike an abstract genealogy or a speech preserved in a book, the weapon can be held, examined, and carried into danger. Its material survival makes history present in the room.

That function contrasts with the uncertain and contested forms of historical knowledge elsewhere in the narrative. Brom’s account of the Dragon Riders survives as oral performance, while the rare history The Domia abr Wyrda preserves written testimony that the Empire attempted to suppress by condemning its author, Heslant the Monk, and burning the book’s copies. The dwarven library likewise preserves the writings, songs, and stories of generations. Volund belongs to the same culture of remembrance, but it is a more concentrated object: a single heirloom that carries ancestry through its continued use. It turns the past into an instrument rather than leaving it safely behind glass or within pages.

The hammer also participates in the political legitimacy of the dwarf kingdom. Hrothgar has had to overcome opposition within the clans, whose members demanded that he deny sanctuary to Eragon and expel him from Farthen Dûr. His authority is therefore under pressure even before the Urgals arrive. In that context, Volund signifies the older order that Hrothgar claims to defend. The weapon cannot settle the dispute by itself, but it gives the king’s position a visible connection to predecessors, clan identity, and the long endurance of dwarf sovereignty.

Inspection by Eragon

During Eragon’s audience with Hrothgar, the king examines Eragon’s political purpose and the objects associated with his dangerous inheritance. Hrothgar studies Zar’roc, the enemy sword carried by Eragon, but Volund remains in the king’s own hands as the counter-image to it. Zar’roc is an ill-fated blade connected to the Forsworn and to the troubled legacy of the Dragon Riders; Volund is an ancestral weapon whose meaning is rooted in dwarf continuity. The scene places the two weapons within the same field of judgment: one bears the stain of a broken tradition, while the other represents a tradition that has survived.

Hrothgar’s scrutiny of Zar’roc also clarifies Volund’s role. The dwarf king does not treat weapons as neutral tools. He reads history through them, recognizing the sword’s elven manufacture, its ominous reputation, and its connection to Eragon’s companion, Murtagh, the son of a Forsworn. Volund is similarly legible as a historical object, but its associations are protective rather than suspect. Its presence assures Hrothgar’s claim to inherited authority even as he warns that the political order around him is changing rapidly.

Volund in the Battle of Farthen Dûr

Volund reaches its fullest significance when the Urgals attack Farthen Dûr. Ajihad announces that the enemy will arrive within hours and that the Varden must hold the fortress-city: defeat would threaten the dwarves, destroy the Varden, and eventually endanger Surda and the elves. The hammer therefore enters battle at a moment when the survival of an entire alliance is at stake, not simply the honor of one monarch.

When Eragon is ordered to assist the besieged dwarves, Saphira flies low over Hrothgar. The king stands at the front of a small group of his people in golden armor, Volund in his grasp, while the white of his beard catches the lantern light. The image joins age, kingship, and imminent violence. Hrothgar is ancient by both human and dwarf standards, yet the hammer makes his age seem like accumulated force rather than helpless decline.

In combat, Volund proves that its symbolic authority is matched by practical power. The Kull hesitate before Saphira’s ferocity, allowing the dwarves to advance, while Hrothgar and his guards confront the Urgals directly. No Urgal, including the larger Kull, can withstand the king in this passage. Each blow of Volund sounds like a death knell for another enemy, converting the hammer’s dynastic memory into a repeated battlefield consequence.

Hrothgar’s most striking feat comes after a spear kills one of his warriors. He seizes the same spear and hurls it with astonishing strength completely through its owner from a distance of twenty yards. Although that act does not itself use Volund, it intensifies the weapon’s meaning by showing that the hammer is not compensating for weakness. Hrothgar remains a formidable combatant with or without it. Volund becomes the recognizable rhythm and emblem of that strength, while the king’s other feat confirms the physical power behind the emblem.

Eragon watches Hrothgar with awe and takes greater risks in an effort to match him. The hammer consequently affects not only the enemies before it but also the conduct of the younger Dragon Rider. Hrothgar’s example, marked most clearly by Volund’s repeated strikes, gives Eragon a model of courage in a battle whose scale frightens him. The ancestral weapon helps transmit martial authority from the old king to the newly revived Rider tradition.

Significance

Volund unites the personal, dynastic, and national dimensions of Hrothgar’s kingship. It was forged by Korgan, preserved through forty-two generations of rulers, displayed beside the statues of dead kings, and used against the force threatening Farthen Dûr. Its trajectory is therefore not a separate subplot but a movement from inherited memory to active defense. The hammer begins as a sign of what the dwarves have been and becomes proof of what they can still do.

The artifact also offers a contrast to the Dragon Riders’ lost golden age. Brom’s tale describes Riders whose powers once kept peace across a flourishing land, but that order collapsed through internal betrayal. Hrothgar remembers the Riders and their last leader, Vrael, yet he presents the dwarves as an older and more durable people. Volund embodies that alternative continuity. It does not restore the past as an idealized legend; it carries the past into a present where survival requires direct action, contested authority, and willingness to fight.

In this sense, Volund is both a relic and an active political instrument. Its age gives Hrothgar legitimacy, its clan symbol locates him within dwarf society, and its blows make the history it represents materially consequential. The hammer’s deepest significance lies in that refusal to separate memory from responsibility: the dead kings remain present not because their statues are admired, but because the living ruler takes up their weapon and defends the land they ruled.