THE SCENE: The Battle of Bravellir was virtual Ragnarok for the legendary heroes of the Viking world. Involving forces from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Gautland, Russia, and Germany, the battle was started for the flimsiest of reasons: King Harald Wartooth, facing the prospect of old age, simply wanted to die like a warrior.
THE TEXT: When King Harald Wartooth had become so old that he had lived a hundred and fifty years, he lay in bed and could not walk, and Vikings were coming to raid all over his kingdom. Then it seemed to his friends that the kingdom fared badly when the government began to fall apart, and he seemed to many to be old enough. Certain powerful men made a plan that when the king took a bath, they would lay wood on top of him and cover it with stones, and they would smother him in the bath.
When he found out that they wanted to put him to death, he then ordered that he be taken out of the bath. “I know that I seemed to you all to be too old. And that is true, but I may as well die in the way that has been shaped for me. I don’t want such a death – to die in the bath. I want to die in a much more kingly fashion.” Then his friends came, and they took him away.
A little later, he sent men to Sweden to King Hring, his kinsman, with this message: that he should summon a host from all the kingdom that he defended, and come to meet him at the border and fight with him. He let it be known to him all the circumstances that had happened – how he seemed to the Danes to be too old.
After that, King Hring summoned a host from all the Swedish realms and west Gautland, and he had a great host from Norway. When King Hring came westwards out of the forests to the place called Bravik, his force of ships came to meet him there. King Harald now collected together an army from the entire Danish realm and a great host came out of Russia, and from Kevenland and Germany. When his army was assembled, men could cross to Skane from Landeyr just by walking on the ships.
Then King Harald sent the man named Herleif, and with him the contingent of Germans, to meet King Hring, and had them set up hazel stakes on the battlefield for him and claim the site of the battled, and pronounce the breaking of peace and friendship. And then the two made ready for battle and deployed their forces.
– Sogubrot, 13th Century AD
