According to the Danish and Norse accounts, the leader of the armies of the Northmen on the occasion we have just referred to was the famous Ragnar Lodbrog, one of the earliest and most terrible of the Northern vikings. The story of Ragnar stands just on the borderland between mythology and history, and it is difficult to tell how much of it is true, but in some of its main outlines it accords with the rather scanty information we get at this time from the English annals. An old tradition relates how Ragnar got his title of Lodbrog, or “Hairy-breeks.”

It is said that the King of the Swedes, who was fond of hunting in the woods, brought home some snakes and gave them to his daughter to rear. Of these curious pets she took such good care that they multiplied until the whole countryside was tormented with them. Then the King, repenting his foolish act, proclaimed that whosoever should destroy the vipers should have his daughter as his reward. Many warriors, attracted by the adventure, made an attempt to rid the country of the snakes, but without much success. Ragnar also determined to try to win the princess. He caused a dress to be made of woolly material and stuffed with hair to protect him, and put on thick hairy thigh-pieces that the snakes could not bite. Then he plunged his whole body, clad in this covering, into freezing water, so that it froze on him, and became hard and impenetrable. Thus attired, he approached the door of the palace alone, his sword tied to his side and his spear lashed in his hand. As he went forward an enormous snake glided up in front, and others, equally large, attacked him in the rear. The King and his courtiers, who were looking on, fled to a safe shelter, watching the struggle from afar like affrighted little girls. But Ragnar, trusting to the hardness of his frozen dress, attacked the vipers boldly, and drove them back, killing many of them with his spear.

Then the King came forward and looked closely at the dress which had withstood the venom of the serpents. He saw that it was rough and hairy, and he laughed loudly at the shaggy breeches, which gave Ragnar an uncouth appearance. He called him in jest Lodbrog (Lod-brokr), or “Hairy-breeks,” and the nickname stuck to him all his life. Having laid aside his shaggy raiment and put on his kingly attire, Ragnar received the maiden as the reward of his victory. He had several sons, of whom the youngest, Ivar, was well known in after years in Britain and Ireland, and left a race of rulers there.

Meanwhile the ill-disposed people of his own kingdom, which seems to have included the districts we now know as Zealand or Jutland, one of those small divisions into which the Northern countries were at that time broken up,3 during the absence of Ragnar stirred up the inhabitants to depose him and set up one Harald as king. Ragnar, hearing of this, and having few men at his command, sent envoys to Norway to ask for assistance. They gathered a small host together, of weak and strong, young and old, whomsoever they could get, and had a hard fight with the rebels. It is said that Ivar, though he was hardly seven years of age, fought splendidly, and seemed a man in courage though only a boy in years. Siward, or Sigurd Snake-eye, Ragnar’s eldest son, received a terrible wound, which it is said that Woden, the father of the gods of the North, came himself to cure. The battle would have gone against Ragnar but for the courage of a noble woman named Ladgerda,