Hjorvard had made very stringent rules for his champions and warriors. No man could come under his standard who feared death or uttered words of fright when in danger, or groaned when he received the worst wounds in battle. Nor could these wounds themselves be dressed until the day after they had been received. No man was allowed to have a sword longer than two feet. The swords and saxes of Hjorvard’s men were heavier than those of others, so that when they struck a blow it might be most telling.
It was always the custom of Hjorvard to lie with his ships before promontories so that these might be seen by every one. On none of his vessels were tents put up to protect him or his men from the weather. They never reefed a sail during a storm, and he had never more than one hundred and twenty champions on board of his own ship.
He had the honor of chivalry; he bade his warriors not to break men’s spirit by putting them in fetters, nor to do any harm to any man’s wife, and ordered that every maid should be bought with dowry and with the consent of her father, and that women and their children should not be captured.
Victory always followed him, so that great champions and berserks of the land flocked to his standards when he undertook a warlike expedition. Led by him, they felt sure of victory in advance. No man less than eighteen years old or more than fifty could follow him in warfare. All his warriors had to have strength enough to lift a large stone that stood near his residence. The chiefs who resided in Gotland owed him allegiance, and all were his kinsmen, and all those under him had, by law, to furnish him a certain number of ships and warriors when needed.
During his life he had subdued several chiefs on the southern shores of the Baltic, and those paid him tribute willingly, for he was not grasping, and used his power with moderation; but all had to submit once to the humiliating ceremony of letting him put his foot on their necks in acknowledgment of being his vassals.
Though Hjorvard and Sigrlin had been married a certain number of years, no child had been born to them, so the Hersir of Gotland made up his mind to go to Svithjod, the most powerful realm of the Viking lands, and to Upsalir, the most sacred of all the places of the north, to consult the gods and see if he could learn the decrees of fate.