Palnatoki, when asked by the king why he had taken more arrows
from the quiver, when it had been settled that he should only
try the fortune of the bow ONCE, made answer, 'That I might
avenge on thee the swerving of the first by the points of the
rest, lest perchance my innocence might have been punished,
while your violence escaped scot-free.' "[2]

[2] Saxo Grammaticus, Bk. X. p. 166, ed. Frankf. 1576.

This ruthless king is none other than the famous Harold
Blue-tooth, and the occurrence is placed by Saxo in the year
950. But the story appears not only in Denmark, but in
Fingland, in Norway, in Finland and Russia, and in Persia, and
there is some reason for supposing that it was known in India.
In Norway we have the adventures of Pansa the Splay-footed,
and of Hemingr, a vassal of Harold Hardrada, who invaded
England in 1066. In Iceland there is the kindred legend of
Egil brother of Wayland Smith, the Norse Vulcan. In England
there is the ballad of William of Cloudeslee, which supplied
Scott with many details of the archery scene in "Ivanhoe."
Here, says the dauntless bowman,

"I have a sonne seven years old;
Hee is to me full deere;
I will tye him to a stake--
All shall see him that bee here--
And lay an apple upon his head,
And goe six paces him froe,
And I myself with a broad arrowe
Shall cleave the apple in towe."