checked by the rigour of chains, or propitiated by slaughter
of men. With such a frenzy did their own sanguinary temper, or else the
fury of demons, inspire them.

When Halfdan had heard of these things while busy roving, he said it
was right that his soldiers, who had hitherto spent their rage upon
foreigners, should now smite with the steel the flesh of their own
countrymen, and that they who had been used to labour to extend their
realm should now avenge its wrongful seizure. On Halfdan approaching,
Siwald sent him ambassadors and requested him, if he was as great in act
as in renown, to meet himself and his sons in single combat, and save
the general peril by his own. When the other answered, that a combat
could not lawfully be fought by more than two men, Siwald said, that
it was no wonder that a childless bachelor should refuse the proffered
conflict, since his nature was void of heat, and had struck a
disgraceful frost into his soul and body. Children, he added, were not
different from the man who begot them, since they drew from him their
common principle of birth. Thus he and his sons were to be accounted
as one person, for nature seemed in a manner to have bestowed on them
a single body. Halfdan, stung with this shameful affront, accepted
the challenge; meaning to wipe out with noble deeds of valour such an
insulting taunt upon his celibacy. And while he chanced to be walking
through a shady woodland, he plucked up by the roots all oak that stuck
in his path, and, by simply stripping it of its branches, made it look
like a stout club. Having this trusty weapon, he composed a short song
as follows:

"Behold! The rough burden which I bear with straining crest, shall unto
crests bring wounds and destruction. Never shall any weapon of leafy
wood crush the Goths with direr augury. It shall shatter the towering
strength of the knotty neck, and shall bruise the hollow temples with
the mass of timber. The club which shall quell the wild madness of
the land shall be no less fatal to the Swedes. Breaking bones, and
brandished about the mangled limbs of warriors, the stock I have
wrenched off shall crush the backs of the wicked, crush the hearths of
our kindred, shed the blood of our countrymen, and be a destructive pest
upon our land."

When he had said this, he attacked Siwald and his seven sons, and
destroyed them, their force and bravery being useless against the
enormous mass of his club.

At this time one Hard