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father with her young son Harald to Gardarike [1],
the king of which, Radbard, becomes her second
husband, and Ivar collects a great army from
Sweden as well as Denmark, in order to take his
revenge. King Ivar was then very old. On his
arrival eastward in the Carelian gulf [2], where the
dominions of king Radbard commenced, and the
landing was to take place, Ivar had a dream, for
the interpretation of which he applied to his
foster-father Hordr, who having come, climbed a
precipitous rock, and refused to go on board to the
king, obliging the latter to hold a parley with him
from the ship. Hordr said that his great age had
rendered him unfit to interpret dreams, but it
appealed to him that the Danish and Swedish
kingdoms would soon fall asunder, and that Ivar,
insatiable in conquest, would die, without being able
to transmit his power as an inheritance to his
posterity. The king further asked of his ancestors
among the Asæ, and received for answer that he
was abhorred both by his own forefathers and the
demi-gods, who compared him to the snake of
Mid-gard. Ivar in wrath called out that Hordr himself
was the worst goblin of all, and challenged him to
go in quest of the great serpent. Both the old men
threw themselves headlong into the sea, one against
the other, and vanished. As this enterprize came
to nothing by the king’s death, Harald, son of Aud,
was supplied by his step-father with men and ships,
repaired to Zealand, and was there received as
king. In Scania, which had formerly belonged to
his mother’s kin, he found support; and thence
marching to Suithiod, he subdued all Swedeland,
and Jutland besides, which is said to have been
possessed by his grandfather Ivar. Harald was at
this time fifteen years old: by the charm called
Seid he had been made invulnerable against all
sorts of weapons. Because he was a great warrior,
men called him Hildetand (from hildur, war, and
tand, tooth).
Aud, the mother of Harald, had, in her latter wedlock,
a son named Randver, married to a Norwegian
princess, and father of Sigurd Ring. In his old
age, Harald Hildetand is said to have appointed
the son of his step-brother king in Upsala, and
to have given him all Suithiod and West Gothland,
reserving to himself Denmark and East
Gothland. In respect to the war between these
kings, the Icelandic fragment on the fight of
Bravalla [3] agrees generally with Saxo. The latter
specifies as the source of his information a song
still remembered in his day, and ascribed to the
old warrior and bard Starkother, who is himself
said to have taken a share in the combat; his
narrative itself also bespeaks a poetic origin. Odin
appears in the form of Brune, a councillor possessing
the confidence of both Harald and Sigurd,
who instigates the kinsmen to war. Harald lent
all the readier ear to his incitements, that his great
age made his life a burden both to himself and to
his subjects. Better for him, he deemed, to die in
battle than on a sick bed, that he might arrive in
Valhalla with an ample retinue. He sent therefore
messengers to king Sigurd Ring that they
should meet one another and fight. Great
preparations were made; Sigurd assembled an army
from all Suithiod and West Gothland, and many
Norwegians gathered beneath his banner, so that
when the fleet of the Swedes and Norsemen passed
through Stock Sound, where Stockholm now lies,
the number of the ships was two thousand five
hundred. King Sigurd himself marched southwards
by the Kolmörker forest, which divides
Suithiod from East Gothland, and when he had
come out of the wood to the bay of Bra, he found
his fleet waiting his arrival, and pitched his camp
between the forest and the sea. King Harald’s
power was from Denmark and East Gothland;
many troops from Saxony and the countries east
of the Baltic also joined him, and his army was so
large that their barks covered all the Sound
between Zealand and Scania as with a bridge. The
hosts encountered on the shores of the Bra wick.
The most eminent champions on both sides are
enumerated, and among them shieldmaids and
Scalds. The names, arranged alliteratively by
Saxo, as they were in the ballad he followed, are
nearly the same in his account as in that of the
Icelanders, and the agreement extends also to
various minor features. King Harald, old and
blind, is borne in a chariot into the battle; he
inquires how Sigurd had planted his battle-array,
and being told in the wedge-like formation [4], cries
out, ‘I had thought that there were only Odin and
myself who understood that.’ At length, when
victory appears to have declared for the foe, he causes
his horses to be urged to their utmost speed, seizes
two swords, and cuts desperately among their
ranks, till the stroke of a mace hurls him dead
from his car. Odin himself, in the form of Brune,
was the slayer [5] of Harald. The empty chariot
tells Sigurd that the old king has fallen; he therefore
orders his men to cease from the fight, and
searches for the body of his relative, which is
found under a heap of slain. Then he causes a
funeral pile to be raised, and commands the Danes
to lay upon it the prow of king Harald’s ship.
Next, he devotes to his ghost a horse with splendid
trappings, prays to the gods, and utters the wish
that Harald Hildetand might ride to Valhalla first
among all the troops of the fallen, and prepare for
friend and foe a welcome in the hall of Odin.
When the corpse is laid on the pyre, and the
flames are kindled, and the chiefs of the war walk
round lamenting, king Sigurd calls upon every man
to bring gold and arms, and all his most costly
ornaments, to feed the fire which was consuming so
great and honoured a king; and so all the chieftains
did. But Sigurd Ring was king after Harald
Hildetand, over Suithiod as well as Denmark, and
his son Ragnar grew up in his court the tallest
and goodliest among men.
Ragnar Lodbroc is the most renowned hero of
the Norman expeditions; but before we pass to
the exploits attributed to him or his sons, it will
be proper to glance at the less known expedition
of our forefathers to a different quarter.
The oldest military enterprises of the Swedes
were directed to the east. Ingwar, a king of the
Yngling line, as well as Ivar Widfamne, Harald
Hildetand, and Ragnar Lodbroc, are said to have
warred and made conquests in Easterway (Osterveg),
or the east realm (Osterrike), as the countries
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