After this, Ebbe, a rover of common birth, was so confident of his valour, that he was moved to aspire to a splendid marriage.  He was a suitor for Sigrid, the daughter of Yngwin, King of the Goths, and moreover demanded half the Gothic kingdom for her dowry.  Halfdan was consulted whether the match should be entertained, and advised that a feigned consent should be given, promising that he would baulk the marriage.  He also gave instructions that a seat should be allotted to himself among the places of the guests at table.  Yngwin approved the advice; and Halfdan, utterly defacing the dignity of his royal presence with an unsightly and alien disguise, and coming by night on the wedding feast, alarmed those who met him; for they marvelled at the coming of a man of such superhuman stature.

When Halfdan entered the palace, he looked round on all and asked, who was he that had taken the place next to the king?  Upon Ebbe replying that the future son-in-law of the king was next to his side, Halfdan asked him, in the most passionate language, what madness, or what demons, had brought him to such wantonness, as to make bold to unite his contemptible and filthy race with a splendid and illustrious line, or to dare to lay his peasant finger upon the royal family:  and, not content even with such a claim, to aspire, as it seemed, to a share even in the kingdom of another.  Then he bade Ebbe fight him, saying that he must get the victory before he got his wish.  The other answered that the night was the time to fight with monsters, but the day the time with men; but Halfdan, to prevent him shirking the battle by pleading the hour, declared that the moon was shining with the brightness of daylight.  Thus he forced Ebbe to fight, and felled him, turning the banquet into a spectacle, and the wedding into a funeral.

Some years passed, and Halfdan went back to his own country, and being childless he bequeathed the royal wealth by will to Yngwin, and appointed him king.  Yngwin was afterwards overthrown in war by a rival named Ragnald, and he left a son Siwald.

Siwald’s daughter, Sigrid, was of such excellent modesty, that though a great concourse of suitors wooed her for her beauty, it seemed as if she could not be brought to look at one of them.  Confident in this power of self-restraint, she asked her father for a husband who by the sweetness of his blandishments should be able to get a look back from her.  For in old time among us the self-restraint of the maidens was a great subduer of wanton looks, lest the soundness of the soul should be infected by the licence of the eyes; and women desired to avouch the purity of their hearts by the modesty of their faces.  Then one Ottar, the son of Ebb, kindled with confidence in the greatness either of his own achievements, or of his courtesy and eloquent address, stubbornly and ardently desired to woo the maiden.  And though he strove with all the force of his wit to soften her gaze, no device whatever could move her downcast eyes; and, marvelling at her persistence in her indomitable rigour, he departed.