he attacked Wesete, a very famous champion, in battle, and was slain.  Gurid was at the battle in man’s attire, from love for her son.  She saw the event; the young man fought hotly, but his companions fled; and she took him on her shoulders to a neighbouring wood.  Weariness, more than anything else, kept the enemy from pursuing him; but one of them shot him as he hung, with an arrow, through the hinder parts, and Harald thought that his mother’s care brought him more shame than help.

Harald, being of great beauty and unusual size, and surpassing those of his age in strength and stature, received such favour from Odin (whose oracle was thought to have been the cause of his birth), that steel could not injure his perfect soundness.  The result was, that shafts which wounded others were disabled from doing him any harm.  Nor was the boon unrequited; for he is reported to have promised to Odin all the souls which his sword cast out of their bodies.  He also had his father’s deeds recorded for a memorial by craftsmen on a rock in Bleking, whereof I have made mention.

After this, hearing that Wesete was to hold his wedding in Skaane, he went to the feast disguised as a beggar; and when all were sunken in wine and sleep, he battered the bride-chamber with a beam.  But Wesete, without inflicting a wound, so beat his mouth with a cudgel, that he took out two teeth; but two grinders unexpectedly broke out afterwards and repaired their loss:  an event which earned him the name of Hyldetand, which some declare he obtained on account of a prominent row of teeth.  Here he slew Wesete, and got the sovereignty of Skaane.  Next he attacked and killed Hather in Jutland; and his fall is marked by the lasting name of the town.  After this he overthrew Hunding and Rorik, seized Leire, and reunited the dismembered realm of Denmark into its original shape.  Then he found that Asmund, the King of the Wikars, had been deprived of his throne by his elder sister; and, angered by such presumption on the part of a woman, went to Norway with a single ship, while the war was still undecided, to help him.  The battle began; and, clothed in a purple cloak, with a coif broidered with gold, and with his hair bound up, he went against the enemy trusting not in arms, but in his silent certainty of his luck, insomuch that he seemed dressed more for a feast than a fray.  But his spirit did not match his attire.  For, though unarmed and only adorned with his emblems of royalty, he outstripped the rest who bore arms, and exposed himself, lightly-armed as he was, to the hottest perils of the battle.  For the shafts aimed against him lost all power to hurt, as if their points had been blunted.  When the other side saw him fighting unarmed, they made an attack, and were forced for very shame into assailing him more hotly.  But Harald, whole in body, either put them to the sword, or made them take to flight; and thus he overthrew the sister of Asmund, and restored him his kingdom.  When Asmund offered him the prizes of victory, he said that the reward of glory was enough by itself; and demeaned himself as greatly in refusing the gifts as he had in earning them.  By this he made all men admire his self-restraint as much as his valour; and declared that the victory should give him a harvest not of gold but glory.