Here are some interesting excerpts from Saxo Grammaticus’ Gesta Danorum that touch upon Wends, Russians (Rus?), Skrittifinni as well as Kurlanders.
Prologue
The inner bend of the Ocean pierces Denmark and passes on to border the southern quarter of Gotaland in a broad curve; the outer increases in breadth as it streams eastwards along the coastline of northern Norway till it is walled by an unbroken arc of land. It terminates in a sea which our ancestors called Gandvik. Between Gandvik and the waters to the south there is a thin strip of mainland situated between the lapping seas; if this natural barrier had not been created against the almost meeting waves, the tides, surging together in a channel, would have made an island of Sweden and Norway. Within the eastern area of these countries live the Skritfinns. In their passion for hunting, these people habitually transport themselves in an unusual manner, having to trace slippery roundabout routes to reach the desired haunts in remote parts of the mountains. No cliff stands too high for them to surmount by some skilfully twisting run. For first they glide out of the deep valleys by the feet of precipices, circling this way and that, frequently swerving in their course from a direct line until by these tortuous paths they achieve the destined summit. They normally use certain animal skins instead of money to trade with their neighbours.
Book I
Chapter 4
13. After destroying the Swedish king, Sigtrygg, Gram desired to strengthen his possession of this empire won in war; when Svarin, governor of Gotaland, was suspected of aspiring to the throne, he challenged him to armed combat and subdued him; then Svarin’s brothers, seven born in wedlock and nine from a concubine, sought to revenge his death in an unequal contest, but they were annihilated.
Chapter 6
7. An aged man with only one eye happened to take pity on the lonely Hadding, robbed of his nurse, and brought him into friendship with a pirate, Liser, by establishing a covenant between them. Now our ancestors, when they meant to strike a pact, would sprinkle their combined blood in their footprints and mingle it, so as to strengthen the pledge of their fellowship. When this was effected and Liser and Hadding were bonded together in closest association, they declared war on Loker, lord of the Kurlanders. However, they were defeated and Hadding in his flight was taken on horseback by the old man to his home. There, after he had refreshed him with the aid of a soothing potion, he told him that his body would become reinvigorated and strong. He demonstrated his prophetic advice by singing…
10. After being captured by Loker and finding the whole course of events happen to him exactly as prophesied, he conducted a military attack on Handvan, king of the Hellespont, in the stronghold of Dunaburg.* Handvan was entrenched behind impregnable defence works and used the fortifications rather than a battle line for resistance. Since they could not surmount the parapet by assault, Hadding caused various species of birds whose habitat was there to be taken by skilled fowlers, and had burning fungi attached beneath their wings; when they sought the refuge of their nests again they set the city completely alight. The townsfolk in rushing about to extinguish the blaze left the gates undefended. He took Handvan in the attack, gave him the opportunity of ransom by paying his own weight in and, although he was entitled to do away with his enemy, to grant him life; thus he tempered his ferocity with mercy.
[*note: Daugavpils]
Book II
Chapter 1
4. Enriched by his treasure-trove the king was able to equip hlmselt with a fleet and sail into the territories of the Kurlanders. Their king Dorn, fearing a catastrophic war, is reported to have addressed this speech to his troops: ‘Chieftains as we are faced by a foreign enemy furnished with the arms and wealth of almost the whole western world, we must strive for a sensible delay before fighting and keep him under the powerful grip of starvation. Such a malady is internal. It will be extremely difficult for him to vanquish this peril within his own people. Starving men are easily resisted. More effectively than with weapons we shall test our foes by making them fast, and drive home no sharper lance than famine. Having little to eat will supply a canker to gnaw at their strength. A plentiful armoury is undermined by a lack of food. This can hurl our missiles for us as we sit here, can undertake the duties and functions of battle for us. In this way we may cause danger without danger to ourselves. We shall be able to let their blood without shedding ours. One ought to conquer an adversary at one’s ease. Who would prefer a struggle with unnecessary casualties? Who would aim to undergo punishment when he could fight scot-free? The outcome of an engagement will be more fortunate if Hunger wages war first. With him as our general let us take the earliest opportunity to strike…
5. Acting accordingly, Dorn destroyed everything that he was uncertain of being able to defend, and so far anticipated the enemy’s wrath in devastating his land that he left nothing intact for the invaders to seize. Then, taking the majority of his forces inside a town of tested strength, he allowed himself to be blockaded. Frothi was not sure whether he could storm it and therefore gave orders for several ditches of unusual depth to be dug within his camp, the earth to be secretly carted in baskets and dumped in the river near the city walls. He took care to keep Dorn ignorant of his device by covering the pits with a of turf, intending that the ground should cave in before the unsuspecting enemy and as a result they should plunge forward and be destroyed. After this he simulated a panic and his men from the lines for a short while. The people from the town bore hard on the camp, could gain no footing anywhere, and pitched headlong into the trenches, where Frothi?s men rained down their spears and massacred them.
6. Journeying from there he came upon Trann, prince of the Russians; preparatory to spying out his naval forces Frothi made a large number of spikes out of sticks and loaded them into a coracle. After rowing up to the enemy fleet at night, he bored the bottoms of their ships with an auger. Then, to prevent a sudden inrush of the sea he plugged the gaping holes with the pins he had provided, temporarily repairing the damage he had caused. When, however, he believed there were enough perforations to sink the fleet, the bungs were removed to give quick access to the waters, upon which he speedily crowded his own vessels round the enemy’s. Harassed by a double danger, the Russians were not sure whether to combat weapons or water. Their ships were foundering even as they battled to defend them against their foes. Yet the crisis from within was more desperate, for while they were actually unsheathing their blades in the gangways, they were having to retreat before the waves. The wretches were assailed on two fronts at once. So, they were doubtful whether swifter salvation lay in swimniing or fighting. This new and fateful emergency interrupted them in the midst of the conflict. The single attack carried twin deaths, two related ways of destruction. It was impossible to tell whether sword or sea offered greater hazard. The waves lapped up quietly and overtook ley beat off the weapons, and, conversely, they were enfolded the waters. The ocean wash was polluted with the spraying of blood.
7. After this victory over the Russians Frothi once more sought his own country. But when he learnt that the envoys he had dispatched to Russia to demand tributes had been savagely murdered by the treacherous inhabitants, in anger he followed up this twofold by putting the city of Rotala* under very tight siege. Lest its capture be retarded by the intervening river, he channelled the total water into a number of fresh courses, and where there had been a bed of unmeasured depth made passable fords; he only stopped when its rapid flood had been diminished through drawing it off into the various runnels so that it propelled its streams in a gentler flow, hemming it into winding conduits which gradually thinned into shallows. When the river had thus been brought under control, the town, deprived of its’ natural defence, fell before the unobstructed incursion of his troops. This task accomplished, he conveyed his army to the city of Paltisca.** Since he believed it was invincible by force, he exchanged warfare for deception. Letting only a very few individuals into the secret, he found a dark, hidden retreat and, to assuage the enemy’s apprehension, had it publicly proclaimed that he was dead. In order to gain verisimilitude they celebrated his funeral and erected a barrow. His soldiers, who were now made party to the ruse, mourned as they attended their leader’s supposed last rites. Hearing the report, the city’s ruler, Vespasius, thought the war as good as won; consequently he kept such slack, negligent guard that his adversaries were given the chance to break in and he was slaughtered amid his games and relaxations.
[*note: Ridala, Estonia?]
[**note: Polotsk or Pultusk?]
8. Once the city was taken, Frothi’s mind aspired to an Eastern empire and he advanced against the bastions of Handvan. Alerted by the memory of how Hadding had sent his city up in flames, he rid every house of its resident birds so that there should be no risk of similar damage being inflicted. Frothi, however, had a new trick up his sleeve. Exchanging clothes with the maidservants, he disguised himself as a young female warrior and went to the town as a deserter, shedding his masculine appearance and impersonating a woman. After conducting a complete and careful reconnaissance he sent an attendant the next day to order his army to station themselves by the walls; he would personally ensure that the gates were opened. That was how the sentinels were tricked; buried in sleep the city was torn apart, paying for its complacency with annihilation and finding its own indolence more grievous than the enemy’s valour. In military affairs you may observe nothing more ruinous than men dozing in comfort, carefree, relaxed, unobservant, unwarrantably self-confident.
9. When Handvan saw his country’s fortunes utterly overturned, he loaded his regal wealth onto ships and sank them in the open sea, to enrich the waves before his foes, though it would have been more satisfactory to capture his adversaries’ goodwill by gifts of money than grudge mankind the advantage of its use. Later, on Frothi’s sending emissaries to request the hand of his daughter, he replied that a victor should take care not to be corrupted by his triumphal success and so become haughty; rather he should remember to spare the vanquished, respect their former splendour, now overthrown, and learn to value the earlier prosperity of those whose fortunes had suffered. He should be cautious not to seize empire where he sought kinship and, if he desired to honour someone through marriage, should not at the same time sully him with mean degradation, for in his fervent greed he was liable to taint the dignity of the union. By the good breeding of his words he simultaneously made the conqueror his son-in-law and preserved the freedom of his realm.
Chapter 2
10. Meanwhile a man called Ubbi who had long been married to Ulfhild, Frothi’s sister, after administering Denmark as a deputy, traded on his wife’s noble rank and took the kingdom into his own possession. For this reason Frothi was forced to abandon his Eastern campaigns and fought a hard battle in Sweden against Svanhvita [Hadding’s daughter], his other sister. In this he was beaten, but having boarded a skiffat night he steered secretly through twisting channels to try to find an approach to the enemy’s fleet so that he could bore holes in it. But he was intercepted by his sister, who demanded to know why he was rowing silently and pursuing such a circuitous route; however, he brought her interrogation to a halt by a similar mode of questioning. She too had embarked at the same hour of night on a lone excursion, coming and going on a gently winding course. She reminded her brother that he had once bestowed on her the freedom to marry and requested that, as he had given her this right of matrimonial independence on the eve of his expedition against the Russians, he should now allow her to enjoy the husband she had taken and after the event validate the match he had sanctioned. Swayed by such reasonabTe entreaties, Frothi made peace with Regner and at her petition forgave the insult which he felt he had received through his sister’s skittish behaviour. They also presented him with the same number of men they had caused him to lose, delighting him with this handsome gift, which compensated for his humiliating setback.
Chapter 3
1. While this was going on, the idea occurred to Frothi of making an attack on Friesland, since he was anxious to display to onlookers in the West the glory he had won in his conquest of the East. His first clash as he marched for the Ocean was with a Frisian pirate, Vitte; Frothi ordered his comrades to take the initial brunt of their enemy’s attacks passively, merely by making a barrier of their shields, and told them not to launch their own missiles till they perceived that the rain of hostile javelins had died out completely. The more keenly the Frisians flung these, the more patiently were they borne by the Danes, making Vitte believe that Frothi’s submissiveness rose from a desire for a truce. Then the battle trumpet brayed loudly and shafts flew off, hissing fiercely. Once the unwary Frisians had run out of weapons, the Danes poured down their spears and overcame them. They fled, hugging the coast, and were slaughtered among the serpentine twists of the canals. Afterwards Frothi’s fleet penetrated the Rhine, where he laid hands on the outlying districts of Germany. Making again for the Ocean, he assailed the Frisian fleet, which had run on to the tortuous shoals, and added carnage to shipwreck.
Chapter 5
2. His sons were Roi and Helgi. The former is remembered for his foundation of Roskilde, whose population was enlarged and size increased later by Sven, well known for his epithet of Forkbcard. Roi was short and lean, Helgi taller. In dividing the kingdom with his brother, Helgi obtained sway over the sea and with his navy attacked and subjugated Skalk, king of the Wends. When he had reduced it to the status of a province, he sailed up and down surveying the various coastal inlets. Although his disposition was savage he matched ferocity with lechery. He threw himself so readily into sensual delights that you could hardly judge whether he was fired more by despotism or lust, On the island of Thuro he raped a virgin, Thora, who afterwards gave birth to a daughter she named Yrsa.
Chapter 7
5. Biarki was woken by his words; he promptly roused his groom, Skalk, and spoke to him thus:
‘Arise, lad, and fan the flames up hard; rake the hearth with a stick and clear the thin ashes. Strike up the sparks, rekindle the dying embers, entice the cinders to yield their smothered blaze. Force the languid fire to bring forth its light, and make the coals glow red with dry tinder. It will help to stretch one’s fingers towards the warmth. In aiding a friend your hands must unfreeze, fully dispel the unhealthy pallor induced by cold.’
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