They were too numerous, too scattered, and too firmly seated in the various districts of the island, of some of which they had been in possession for many years.

Time passed on, battles were fought, treaties of peace were made, oaths were taken, hostages were exchanged, and then, after a very brief interval of repose, hostilities would break out again, each party bitterly accusing the other of treachery.

Then the poor hostages would be slain, first by one party, and afterward, in retaliation, by the other.
In one of these temporary and illusive pacifications, Alfred attempted to bind the Danes by Christian oaths.

Their customary mode of binding themselves, in cases where they wished to impose a solemn religious obligation, was to swear by a certain ornament which they wore upon their arms, which is called in the chronicles of those times a _bracelet_.

What its form and fashion was we can not now precisely know; but it is plain that they attached some superstitious, and perhaps idolatrous associations of sacredness to it.