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 Hardbeen, who came from Helsingland, gloried in kidnapping and ravishing princesses, and used to kill any man who hindered him in his lusts.  He preferred high matches to those that were lowly; and the more illustrious the victims he could violate, the more noble he thought himself.  No man escaped unpunished who durst measure himself with Hardbeen in valour.  He was so huge, that his stature reached the measure of nine ells.  He had twelve champions dwelling with him, whose business it was to rise up and to restrain his fury with the aid of bonds, whenever the rage came on him that foreboded of battle.  These men asked Halfdan to attack Hardbeen and his