Harald Fairhair's champions are admirably described in the contemporary Raven Song by Hornclofe-- "Wolf-coats they call them that in battle Bellow into bloody shields.
They wear wolves' hides when they come into the fight, And clash their weapons together." and Saxo's sources adhere closely to this pattern.
These "bear-sarks", or wolf-coats of Harald give rise to an O.N.term, "bear-sarks' way", to describe the frenzy of fight and fury which such champions indulged in, barking and howling, and biting their shield-rims (like the ferocious "rook" in the narwhale ivory chessmen in the British Museum) till a kind of state was produced akin to that of the Malay when he has worked himself up to "run-a-muck." There seems to have been in the 10th century a number of such fellows about unemployed, who became nuisances to their neighbours by reason of their bullying and highhandedness.

Stories are told in the Icelandic sagas of the way such persons were entrapped and put to death by the chiefs they served when they became too troublesome.

A favourite (and fictitious) episode in an "edited" Icelandic saga is for the hero to rescue a lady promised to such a champion (who has bullied her father into consent) by slaying the ruffian.

It is the same "motif" as Guy of Warwick and the Saracen lady, and one of the regular Giant and Knight stories.
Beside men-warriors there were "women-warriors" in the North, as Saxo explains.

He describes shield-maidens, as Alfhild, Sela, Rusila (the Ingean Ruadh, or Red Maid of the Irish Annals, as Steenstrup so ingeniously conjectures); and the three she-captains, Wigbiorg, who fell on the field, Hetha, who was made queen of Zealand, and Wisna, whose hand Starcad cut off, all three fighting manfully at Bravalla fight.
SOCIAL LIFE AND MANNERS.
"Feasts" .-- The hall-dinner was an important feature in the old Teutonic court-life.