第131章

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 expelled the court and dismissed the service.

At this time Ole, the son of Siward and of Harald's sister, came to Denmark from the land of Norway in the desire to see his uncle.Since it is known that he had the first place among the followers of Harald, and that after the Swedish war he came to the throne of Denmark, it bears somewhat on the subject to relate the traditions of his deeds.Ole, then, when he had passed his tenth to his fifteenth year with his father, showed incredible proofs of his brilliant gifts both of mind and body.Moreover, he was so savage of countenance that his eyes were like the arms of other men against the enemy, and he terrified the bravest with his stern and flashing glance.He heard the tidings that Gunn, ruler of Tellemark, with his son Grim, was haunting as a robber the forest of Etha-scog, which was thick with underbrush and full of gloomy glens.The offence moved his anger; then he asked his father for a horse, a dog, and such armour as could be got, and cursed his youth, which was suffering the right season for valour to slip sluggishly away.He got what he asked, and explored the aforesaid wood very narrowly.He saw the footsteps of a man printed deep on the snow; for the rime was blemished by the steps, and betrayed the robber's progress.Thus guided, he went over a hill, and came on a very great river.This effaced the human tracks he had seen before, and he determined that he must cross.But the mere mass of water, whose waves ran down in a headlong torrent, seemed to forbid all crossing; for it was full of hidden reefs, and the whole length of its channel was turbid with a kind of whirl of foam.Yet all fear of danger was banished from Ole's mind by his impatience to make haste.So valour conquered fear, and rashness scorned peril; thinking nothing hard to do if it were only to his mind, he crossed the hissing eddies on horseback.When he had passed these, he came upon defiles surrounded on all sides with swamps, the interior of which was barred from easy approach by the pinnacle of a bank in front.He took his horse over this, and saw an enclosure with a number of stalls.Out of this he turned many horses, and was minded to put in his own, when a certain Tok, a servant of Gunn, angry that a stranger should wax so insolent, attacked him fiercely; but Ole foiled his assailant by simply opposing his shield.Thinking it a shame to slay the fellow with the sword, he seized him, shattered him limb by limb, and flung him across into the house whence he had issued in his haste.This insult quickly aroused Gunn and Grim: they ran out by different side-doors, and charged Ole both at once, despising his age and strength.He wounded them fatally; and, when their bodily powers were quite spent, Grim, who could scarce muster a final gasp, and whose force was almost utterly gone, with his last pants composed this song:

"Though we be weak in frame, and the loss of blood has drained our strength; since the life-breath, now drawn out by my wound, scarce quivers softly in my pierced breast:

"I counsel that we should make the battle of our last hour glorious with dauntless deeds, that none may say that a combat has anywhere been bravelier waged or harder fought;"And that our wild strife while we bore arms may, when our weary flesh has found rest in the tomb, win us the wage of immortal fame.