our; for defended
only by a shirt under his shoulders, he fronted the spears with unarmed
breast.

When Olaf offered Harald the prize of victory, he rejected the gift,
thus leaving it a question whether he had shown a greater example of
bravery or self-control. Then he attacked a champion of the Frisian
nation, named Ubbe, who was ravaging the borders of Jutland and
destroying numbers of the common people; and when Harald could not
subdue him to his arms, he charged his soldiers to grip him with their
hands, throw him on the ground, and to bind him while thus overpowered.
Thus he only overcame the man and mastered him by a shameful kind of
attack, though a little before he thought he would inflict a heavy
defeat on him. But Harald gave him his sister in marriage, and thus
gained him for his soldier.

Harald made tributaries of the nations that lay along the Rhine, levying
troops from the bravest of that race. With these forces he conquered
Sclavonia in war, and caused its generals, Duk and Dal, because of their
bravery, to be captured, and not killed. These men he took to serve with
him, and, after overcoming Aquitania, soon went to Britain, where he
overthrew the King of the Humbrians, and enrolled the smartest of the
warriors he had conquered, the chief of whom was esteemed to be Orm,
surnamed the Briton. The fame of these deeds brought champions from
divers parts of the world, whom he formed into a band of mercenaries.
Strengthened by their numbers, he kept down insurrections in all
kingdoms by the terror of his name, so that he took out of their rulers
all courage to fight with one another. Moreover, no man durst assume any
sovereignty on the sea without his consent; for of old the state of the
Danes had the joint lordship of land and sea.

Meantime Ingild died in Sweden, leaving only a very little son, Ring,
whom he had by the sister of Harald. Harald gave the boy guardians, and
put him over his father's kingdom. Thus, when he had overcome princes
and provinces, he passed fifty years in peace. To save the minds of his
soldiers from being melted into sloth by this inaction, he decreed that
they should assiduously learn from the champions the way of parrying
and dealing blows. Some of these were skilled in a remarkable manner of
fighting, and used to smite the eyebrow on the enemy's forehead with an
infallible stroke; but if any man, on receiving the blow, blinked for
fear, twitching his eyebrow, he was at once ex