When the frosts had been melted by the springtime sun, he went back to Sweden and there spent five years in warfare.

By dint of this prolonged expedition, his soldiers, having consumed all their provision, were reduced almost to the extremity of emaciation, and began to assuage their hunger with mushrooms from the wood.

At last, under stress of extreme necessity, they devoured their horses, and finally satisfied themselves with the carcases of dogs.
Worse still, they did not scruple to feed upon human limbs.

So, when the Danes were brought unto the most desperate straits, there sounded in the camp, in the first sleep of the night, and no man uttering it, the following song: "With foul augury have ye left the abode of your country, thinking to harry these fields in War.

What idle notion mocks your minds?
What blind self-confidence has seized your senses, that ye think this soil can thus be won.