the hands of his challenger. The berserkr accordingly had the unhappy
man at his mercy. If he slew him, the farmer's possessions became his,
and if the poor fellow declined to fight, he lost all legal right to
his inheritance. A berserkr would invite himself to any feast, and
contribute his quota to the hilarity of the entertainment, by snapping
the backbone, or cleaving the skull, of some merrymaker who incurred
his displeasure, or whom he might single out to murder, for no other
reason than a desire to keep his hand in practice.

It may well be imagined that popular superstition went along with the
popular dread of these wolf-and-bear-skinned rovers, and that they
were believed to be endued with the force, as they certainly were with
the ferocity, of the beasts whose skins they wore.

Nor would superstition stop there, but the imagination of the
trembling peasants would speedily invest these unscrupulous disturbers
of the public peace with the attributes hitherto appropriated to
trolls and jötuns.

The incident mentioned in the Völsung Saga, of the sleeping men being
found with their wolf-skins hanging to the wall above their heads, is
divested of its improbability, if we regard these skins as worn over
their armour, and the marvellous in the whole story is reduced to a
minimum, when we suppose that Sigmund and Sinfjötli stole these for
the purpose of disguising themselves, whilst they lived a life of
violence and robbery.

In a similar manner the story of the northern "Beauty and Beast," in
Hrolf's Saga Kraka, is rendered less improbable, on the supposition
that Björn was living as an outlaw among the mountain fastnesses in a