gainst attacking
so many ships with so few; but he replied that it would be shameful
if anyone should report to Alfhild that his desire to advance could be
checked by a few ships in the path; for he said that their record of
honours ought not to be tarnished by such a trifle.

The Danes wondered whence their enemies got such grace of bodily beauty
and such supple limbs. So, when they began the sea-fight, the young
man Alf leapt on Alfhild's prow, and advanced towards the stern,
slaughtering all that withstood him. His comrade Borgar struck off
Alfhild's helmet, and, seeing the smoothness of her chin, saw that he
must fight with kisses and not with arms; that the cruel spears must be
put away, and the enemy handled with gentler dealings. So Alf rejoiced
that the woman whom he had sought over land and sea in the face of so
many dangers was now beyond all expectation in his power; whereupon he
took hold of her eagerly, and made her change her man's apparel for
a woman's; and afterwards begot on her a daughter, Gurid. Also Borgar
wedded the attendant of Alfhild, Groa, and had by her a son, Harald, to
whom the following age gave the surname Hyldeland.

And that no one may wonder that this sex laboured at warfare, I will
make a brief digression, in order to give a short account of the estate
and character of such women. There were once women among the Danes who
dressed themselves to look like men, and devoted almost every instant
of their lives to the pursuit of war, that they might not suffer their
valour to be unstrung or dulled by the infection of luxury. For they
abhorred all dainty living, and used to harden their minds and
bodies with toil and endurance. They put away all the softness and
lightmindedness of women, and inured their womanish spirit to masculine
ruthlessness. They sought, moreover, so zealously to be skilled in
warfare, that they might have been thought to have unsexed themselves.
Those especially, who had either force of character or tall and comely
persons, used to enter on this kind of life. These women, therefore
(just as if they had forgotten their natural estate, and preferred
sternness to soft words), offered war rather than kisses, and would
rather taste blood than busses, and went about the business of arms more
than that of amours. They devoted those hands to the lance which they
should rather have applied to the loom. They assailed men with their
spears whom they could have melted with their lo