Thore, a champion of notable capacity, and proclaimed war
against Erik. But when the forces were led out on the other side, and
he saw that Erik was superior in numbers, he hid a part of his army, and
instructed it to lie in ambush among the bushes by the wayside, in order
to destroy the enemy by an ambuscade as he marched through the narrow
part of the path. Erik foresaw this, having reconnoitred his means of
advancing, and thought he must withdraw for fear, if he advanced along
the track he had intended, of being hard-pressed by the tricks of the
enemy among the steep windings of the hills. They therefore joined
battle, force against force, in a deep valley, inclosed all round by
lofty mountain ridges. Here Halfdan, when he saw the line of his
men wavering, climbed with Thore up a crag covered with stones and,
uprooting boulders, rolled them down upon the enemy below; and the
weight of these as they fell crushed the line that was drawn up in the
lower position. Thus he regained with stones the victory which he
had lost with arms. For this deed of prowess he received the name of
Biargramm ("rock strong"), a word which seems to have been compounded
from the name of his fierceness and of the mountains. He soon gained so
much esteem for this among the Swedes that he was thought to be the son
of the great Thor, and the people bestowed divine honours upon him, and
judged him worthy of public libation.

But the souls of the conquered find it hard to rest, and the insolence
of the beaten ever struggles towards the forbidden thing. So it came to
pass that Erik, in his desire to repair the losses incurred in flight,
attacked the districts subject to Halfdan. Even Denmark he did not
exempt from this harsh treatment; for he thought it a most worthy deed
to assail the country of the man who had caused him to be driven from
his own. And so, being more anxious to inflict injury than to repel it,
he set Sweden free from the arms of the enemy. When Halfdan heard that
his brother Harald had been beaten by Erik in three battles, and slain
in the fourth, he was afraid of losing his empire; he had to quit the
land of the Swedes and go back to his own country. Thus Erik regained
the kingdom of Sweden all the more quickly, that he quitted it so
lightly. Had fortune wished to favour him in keeping his kingdom as much
as she had in regaining it, she would in nowise have given him into
the hand of Halfdan. This capture was made in the following