The Battle of the Brávellir was a legendary battle that took place in the 8th century on the Brávellir between Sigurd or Hakon Ring king of Sweden, and the Geats of West Götaland, and Harald Wartooth, king of Denmark and the Geats of East Götaland. It is retold in several sources, such as the Norse sagas Hervarar saga, Bósa saga ok Herrauds and Sögubrot af Nokkrum, but it is most extensively described in the Danish Gesta Danorum. Harald Wartooth had inherited Sweden from his maternal grandfather Ivar Vidfamne, but ruled Denmark and East Götaland, whereas his subordinate king Sigurd Ring was the ruler of Sweden and West Götaland. According to legend Harald Wartooth realised that he was growing old (150) and may die of old age and so never go to Valhalla. In Norse mythology, the four stags of Yggdrasill feed on the world tree. The stag Eikþyrnir lives on top of Valhalla. The god Freyr killed Beli with an antler. In the legend of Blenda, recorded in the 1680s, the women army assembled on the Brávellir; the inheritance rights were awarded by king Hakon Ring (Sigurd Ring) to the women after the Battle of Brávellir, in which they had shown valour against Harald Wartooth. Sigurd married Alfhild, the daughter of king Alf of Alfheim. Together with Alfhild, he had the son Ragnar Lodbrok. As Sigurd grew old, distant parts of his realm began to secede, and it is told how he lost England due to old age. According to Gesta Danorum (book 7), by Saxo Grammaticus, Ring was the son of the Swedish king Ingjald (Ingild) and the maternal nephew of the Danish king Harald Wartooth.
The historic Ragnar Lodbrok was an Earl at the court of the Danish king Hårek who participated in the Viking plunderings of Paris in 845. The warriors belonging to the army of Charles the Bald, were placed to guard the monastery in St Denis, but fled when the Danish Vikings executed their prisoners ferociously in front of their eyes. After the "danegeld" which contained 7000 pounds of silver, Ragnar went back to Denmark. By 845, Ragnar was a powerful man and most likely a contemporary of the first ruler of Russia, the Viking Rurik. It was in 845 that he is said to have sailed southward, looking for new worlds to conquer. With 120 ships and 5,000 Viking warriors, he landed in modern France, probably at the Seine estuary, and ravaged West Francia, as the westernmost part of the Frankish empire was then known. Paris was also captured in this year and held ransom by a Viking raider, whom the sagas say was Ragnar Lodbrok.
The King of West Francia, Charlemagne's grandson Charles the Bald, paid him a fantastic amount of money not to destroy the city. Among their feats was destroying the city of Rouen several times. After he was done with France, he turned his attention to England. In 865, he landed in Northumbria on the north-east coast of England. It is claimed that here he was defeated in battle for the only time, by King Aelle II of Northumbria. Aelle's men captured Ragnar, and the King ordered him thrown into a pit filled with poisonous snakes. Alternative versions of the story say that he landed by accident in East Anglia and there befriended King Edmund before being killed by a jealous courtier. The murderer escaped to Denmark and blamed Edmund for Lodbrok's demise. One Viking saga states that when his four sons heard the manner of his death, they all reacted in great sorrow. Björn Ironside grabbed a spear so tightly that he left an impression in it, and Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, who was trimming his nails, cut straight through to the bone. Ragnar Lodbrok's other sons, Ivar the Boneless (alias Hingwar) and Ubbe soon learned the details of their father's death and swore that they would avenge his killing, in time-honoured Viking tradition. In 866, Ivar and Ubbe crossed the North Sea with a large army, sacked York, met King Aelle in battle, and captured him. They then moved south to East Anglia, on the way attacking the monasteries of Bardney, Croyland and Medeshampstede. These wars were a prelude to the long struggle of the Saxons of Alfred the Great against the Danes a generation later. Ragnar was jealous with his sons' successes, and set Eysteinn as the jarl of Sweden, telling him to protect Sweden from his sons.
When Ragnar Lodbrok was visiting Eysteinn at Uppsala, Eysteinn suggested that Ragnar marry Ingeborg and have her as wife instead of the pauper Aslaug (Kraka) of the Volsungs-daughter of Sigurd and Brynhild. Ragnar consequently betrothed himself to Ingeborg. Eysteinn sent the fiery cross in all directions and assembled the Swedish leidang. Sigurd's foster-father assembled five longships for him. Hvitserk and Björn Ironside mustered fourteen, while Aslaug and Ivar the Boneless marshalled ten ships each. Ivar would not allow his mother Aslaug to go by sea, but she could join the army of riders that would go across land. She accepted and changed her name to Randalin. When the armies met in battle, Ivar told everyone to make such a din that the bellowing from Sibilja could not be heard. The Swedish leidang was beaten and Eysteinn fell. Ragnar's sons commanded that their brother had been avenged and that the Swedes should be spared pillaging.
Hervarar saga made Harald Wartooth the king of Sweden and Sigurd Ring the king of Denmark. It tells that Eysteinn inherited Sweden from his father Harald Wartooth and ruled it until he was killed by the sons of Ragnar Lodbrok, as told in Ragnar Lodbrok's saga. When Ragnar died, Björn Ironside became the king of Sweden. Other authors by Blenda have proposed that it took place at the time of Sigurd Jorsalfar's attack on Kalmar, 1123, or during the battles before the meeting of the three kings Inge I, Magnus Barefoot and Eric Evergood at Kungahälla in 1101.
According to Saxo Grammaticus, both hosts prepared for seven years, and mustered armies of 200,000 men. Harald Wartooth was joined by the legendary heroes Ubbe of Friesland, Uvle Brede, Are the One-eyed, Dag the Fat, Hroi Whitebeard and Hothbrodd the indomitable as well was 300 shieldmaidens led by Hed, Visna and Hedborg. Sigurd recruited the legendary heroes Starkad, Egil the Bald, Grette the Evil (a Norwegian), Blig Bignose, Einar the Fatbellied and Erling Snake. They were joined by scores of Norwegians, Saxons, Angles, Frisians, Irish, Rus', Finns, etc. Whole forests were chopped down in order to build 3000 longships to transport the Swedes. Harald's Danes had built so many ships that they could walk across The Sound.
The numbers are obviously exaggerated, certainly tenfold or more. For comparison with the 3000 Swedish ships, the leidang fleets of the Scandinavian kingdoms numbered around 300 ships each during the Viking Age. The location of the Brávellir according to a local tradition, took place at lake Åsnen in Småland, but according to Hervarar saga it is described as Brávelli í eystra Gautlandi (i.e. Bråvalla in East Götaland) and in Sögubrot af Nokkrum the battle is said to have taken place south of Kolmården which separated Sweden (i.e. Svealand) from East Götaland and where Bråviken is located. Sigurd won the battle and became the sovereign ruler of all of Sweden and Denmark. 40,000 warriors had died. In Norse mythology, there are four stags living in the branches of Yggdrasill. The following is related in the Gylfaginning section of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda. or Aeoda
The location of Jamtland in Sweden- Jamtlandic is a well-defined variety of the Scandinavian dialect spoken in the province Jamtland, Sweden. It is defined by the province's proximity to the modern Norwegian border in the west and the old Swedish border in the east. For historical reasons, Jamtland was originally settled by fugatives from Norway after Harald the Fairhaired made the Hebrides and Norway into one country in the 9th century.
Jamtlandic shares many caracteristics with the Viking age the northeastern varieties, the dialect spoken in the Norwegian district. It is considered belonging to the West Norse group like Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic, unlike the bordering Swedish dialects east of Jamtland which are considered to be of East Norse origin. (Old West Norse and Old East Norse.) From a mainland scandinavian point of view, the four most important features of genuine Jamtlandic include vowel balance, preserved old norse diphtongs, preserved four case system and preserved verb conjugation with respect to person. Even though the four case system of Jamtlandic has been simplified, one still use the four cases of Old Norse, i.e. nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. It should be emphasized that many dialects in Northern Scandinavia have some, if not all, of these features, but that they are manifested in different ways in different dialects. This distinction is due to the fact that the nouns in these examples were monosyllabic in Old Norse and the verbs were bisyllabic. Thus, the apocopation process has not entirely wiped out the traces of the syllabic structure of Old Norse.