After this Ragnar prepared an expedition against the Hellespontines, and summoned an assembly of the Danes, promising that he would give the people most wholesome laws.  He had enacted before that each father of a household should offer for service that one among his sons whom he esteemed least; but now he enacted that each should arm the son who was stoutest of hand or of most approved loyalty.  Thereon, taking all the sons he had by Thora, in addition to Ubbe, he attacked, crushed in sundry campaigns, and subdued the Hellespont with its king Dia.  At last he involved the same king in disaster after disaster, and slew him.  Dia’s sons, Dia and Daxo, who had before married the daughters of the Russian king, begged forces from their father-in-law, and rushed with most ardent courage to the work of avenging their father.  But Ragnar, when he saw their boundless army, distrusted his own forces; and he put brazen horses on wheels that could be drawn easily, took them round on carriages that would turn, and ordered that they should be driven with the utmost force against the thickest ranks of the enemy.  This device served so well to break the line of the foe, that the Danes’ hope of conquest seemed to lie more in the engine than in the soldiers:  for its insupportable weight overwhelmed whatever it struck.  Thus one of the leaders was killed, while one made off in flight, and the whole army of the area of the Hellespont retreated.  The Scythians, also, who were closely related by blood to Daxo on the mother’s side, are said to have been crushed in the same disaster.  Their province was made over to Hwitserk, and the king of the Russians, trusting little in his own strength, hastened to fly out of the reach of the terrible arms of Ragnar.

Now Ragnar had spent almost five years in sea-roving, and had quickly compelled all other nations to submit; but he found the Perms in open defiance of his sovereignty.  He had just conquered them, but their loyalty was weak.  When they heard that he had come they cast spells upon the sky, stirred up the clouds, and drove them into most furious storms.  This for some time prevented the Danes from voyaging, and caused their supply of food to fail.  Then, again, the storm suddenly abated, and now they were scorched by the most fervent and burning heat; nor was this plague any easier to bear than the great and violent cold had been.  Thus the mischievous excess in both directions affected their bodies alternately, and injured them by an immoderate increase first of cold and then of heat.  Moreover, dysentery killed most of them.  So the mass of the Danes, being pent in by the dangerous state of the weather, perished of the bodily plague that arose on every side.  And when Ragnar saw that he was hindered, not so much by a natural as by a factitious tempest, he held on his voyage as best he could, and got to the country of the Kurlanders and Sembs, who paid zealous honour to his might and majesty, as if he were the most revered