Iwar governed England for two years.  Meanwhile the Danes were stubborn in revolt, and made war, and delivered the sovereignty publicly to a certain Siward and to Erik, both of the royal line.  The sons of Ragnar, together with a fleet of 1,700 ships, attacked them at Sleswik, and destroyed them in a conflict which lasted six months.  Barrows remain to tell the tale.  The sound on which the war was conducted has gained equal glory by the death of Siward.  And now the royal stock was almost extinguished, saving only the sons of Ragnar.  Then, when Biorn and Erik had gone home, Iwar and Siward settled in Denmark, that they might curb the rebels with a stronger rein, setting Agnar to govern England.  Agnar was stung because the English rejected him, and, with the help of Siward, chose, rather than foster the insolence of the province that despised him, to dispeople it and leave its fields, which were matted in decay, with none to till them.  He covered the richest land of the island with the most hideous desolation, thinking it better to be lord of a wilderness than of a headstrong country.  After this he wished to avenge Erik, who had been slain in Sweden by the malice of a certain Osten.  But while he was narrowly bent on avenging another, he squandered his own blood on the foe; and while he was eagerly trying to punish the slaughter of his brother, sacrificed his own life to brotherly love.

Thus Siward, by the sovereign vote of the whole Danish assembly, received the empire of his father.  But after the defeats he had inflicted everywhere he was satisfied with the honour he received at home, and liked better to be famous with the gown than with the sword.  He ceased to be a man of camps, and changed from the fiercest of despots into the most punctual guardian of peace.  He found as much honour in ease and leisure as he had used to think lay in many victories.  Fortune so favoured his change of pursuits, that no foe ever attacked him, nor he any foe.  He died, and Erik, who was a very young child, inherited his nature, rather than his realm or his tranquillity.  For Erik, the brother of Harald, despising his exceedingly tender years, invaded the country with rebels, and seized the crown; nor was he ashamed to assail the lawful infant sovereign, and to assume an unrightful power.  In thus bringing himself to despoil a feeble child of the kingdom he showed himself the more unworthy of it.  Thus he stripped the other of his throne, but himself of all his virtues, and cast all manliness out of his heart, when he made war upon a cradle:  for where covetousness and ambition flamed, love of kindred could find no place.  But this brutality was requited by the wrath of a divine vengeance.  For the war between this man and Gudorm, the son of Harald, ended suddenly with such slaughter that they were both slain, with numberless others; and the royal stock of the Danes, now worn out by the most terrible massacres, was reduced to the only son of the above Siward.