Wounds were looked on as honourable, but they must be in front or honourably got.  A man who was shot through the buttocks, or wounded in the back, was laughed at and disgraced.  We hear of a mother helping her wounded son out of battle.

That much of human interest centered round war is evident by the mass of tradition that surrounds the subject in Saxo, both in its public and private aspects.  Quaint is the analysis of the four kinds of warriors:  (a) The Veterans, or Doughty, who kill foes and spare flyers; (b) the Young men who kill foes and flyers too; (c) the well-to-do, landed, and propertied men of the main levy, who neither fight for fear nor fly for shame; (d) the worthless, last to fight and first to fly; and curious are the remarks about married and unmarried troops, a matter which Chaka pondered over in later days.  Homeric speeches precede the fight.

“Stratagems of War” greatly interested Saxo (probably because Valerius Maximus, one of his most esteemed models, was much occupied with such matters), so that he diligently records the military traditions of the notably skillful expedients of famous commanders of old.

There is the device for taking a town by means of the “pretended death” of the besieging general, a device ascribed to Hastings and many more commanders (see Steenstrup Normannerne); the plan of “firing” a besieged town by fire-bearing birds, ascribed here to Fridlev, in the case of Dublin to Hadding against Duna (where it was foiled by all tame birds being chased out of the place).

There is the “Birnam Wood” stratagem, by which men advanced behind a screen of boughs, which is even used for the concealment of ships, and the curious legend (occurring in Irish tradition also, and recalling Capt.  B. Hall’s “quaker gun” story) by which a commander bluffs off his enemy by binding his dead to stakes in rows, as if they were living men.

Less easy to understand are the “brazen horses” or “machines” driven into the close lines of the enemy to crush and open them, an invention of Gewar.  The use of hooked weapons to pull down the foes’ shields and helmets was also taught to Hother by Gewar.

The use of black tents to conceal encampment; the defence of a pass by hurling rocks from the heights; the bridge of boats across the Elbe; and the employment of spies, and the bold venture, ascribed in our chronicles to Alfred and Anlaf, of visiting in disguise the enemy’s camp, is here attributed to Frode, who even assumed women’s clothes for the purpose.

Frode is throughout the typical general, as he is the typical statesman and law-giver of archaic Denmark.

There are certain heathen usages connected with war, as the hurling of a javelin or shooting of an arrow over the enemy’s ranks as a “sacratio” to Woden of the foe at the beginning of a battle.  This is recorded in the older vernacular authorities also, in exact accordance with the Homeric usage, “Odyssey” xxiv, 516-595.