THE SCENE: The great hero Starkad, terrified at the idea of dying peacefully in his bed, approaches Hather, a man whose father Starkad had slain, and offered him a proposition: cut my head off and, in compensation, you can pry this pouch of gold from my dead hands.
THE TEXT: Starkad eagerly handed [Hather] the sword, and at once stooped his neck beneath it, counselling him not to do the smiter’s work timidly, or use the sword like a woman; and telling him that if, when he had killed him, he could spring between the head and the trunk before the corpse fell, he would be rendered proof against arms. So Hather smote sharply with the sword and hacked off the head of the old man. When the severed head struck the ground, it is said to have bitten the earth; thus the fury of the dying lips declared the fierceness of the soul. But the smiter, thinking that the promise hid some treachery, warily refrained from leaping. Had he done so rashly, perhaps he would have been crushed by the corpse as it fell, and have paid with his own life for the old man’s murder.
- Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus, 13th Century AD
