Ægishjálmur: the word and the drawing
Two different things share this name, and almost nobody tells them apart. The word ægishjálmr is old and stands in named places. In Fáfnismál, stanzas 16, 17 and 19, the dragon Fáfnir says he wore it to frighten everyone away from his hoard. In the prose of Reginsmál all living things fear it, and in the Völsunga saga Sigurd takes it from the dragon’s treasure. In those texts it is a thing that is worn, a helm out of a hoard, not a drawing. The eight-spoked painted sign belongs to the later Icelandic tradition of magical staves, kept in grimoires from the seventeenth century onward. Whether the drawing continues the old word is argued, and this site names it as argued.
Where this comes from
attested use ægishjálmr named in Fáfnismál, stanzas 16, 17 and 19
The word is attested where the lead says: Fáfnismál, the Reginsmál prose and the Völsunga saga, always as a thing worn over a hoard. For the drawing no single manuscript and year can honestly be named, and this page names none. The painted staves survive in Icelandic grimoires from the seventeenth century onward. The tradition is named by its century, not by an invented shelfmark.
What the poems say
The four witnesses never mention the helm: it lives in the poems of the Edda, beside the story of the runes’ winning. What the poems here do describe is gathered rune by rune.
Vegvísir: the sign from the Huld manuscript Galdr: the chant the old poems name