"Champions".--Professed fighting men were often kept by kings and
earls about their court as useful in feud and fray. 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