Battle of Brávellir The Battle of Brávellir or the Battle of Bråvalla was a legendary battle that is described in the Norse sagas as taking place on the Brávellir between Sigurd Ring , king of Sweden and the Geats of West Götaland , and his uncle Harald Wartooth , king of Denmark and the Geats of East Götaland . Sources . This battle is said to have taken place in the mid 8th century and it is retold in several sources , such as the Norse saga s " Hervarar saga " , " Bósa saga ok Herrauds " and " Sögubrot af Nokkrum " , but it is most extensively described in the Danish " Gesta Danorum " . Cause . Harald 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 . He consequently asked Sigurd if he would let him leave this life gloriously in a great battle . Preparation . According to Saxo Grammaticus , both hosts prepared for seven years , and mustered armies of 200 000 men . Harald 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 as 300 shieldmaiden s 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 . Famous Swedes were Arwakki , Keklu - Karl , Krok the peasant , Gummi and Gudfast from Gislamark . They were joined by scores of Norwegians , Finns , Estonians , Curonians , Bjarmians , Livonians , Saxons , Angles , Frisians , Irish , Rus ' etc . . . All picking their sides . 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 . Location . The " Hervarar saga " speaks about " 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 : " . . . Kolmerkr , er skilr Svíþjóð ok Eystra - Gautland . . . sem heitir Brávík . " and Saxo ends his account by saying " thus ended the battle of Bråvik " . Most historians have held the battle to have taken place near Bråviken . but in the 17th century a minority view appears to have located it in Småland at Lake Åsnen . Battle . The accounts found in " Gesta Danorum " and " Sögubrot " are essentially the same . At first the two armies fought collectively , but after a while Ubbi was in the centre of attention . He slew first Ragnvald the Wise Councilor , then the champion Tryggvi and three Swedish princes of the royal dynasty . Humbled , king Sigurd Ring sent forth the champion Starkad who managed to wound Ubbi but was himself even more seriously wounded . Then Ubbi killed Agnar , and took the sword in both hands and slashed a path through the Swedish host , until he fell riddled with arrows from the archers of Telemark . Then the shieldmaiden Veborg killed the champion Soti and managed to give additional wounds to Starkad who was greatly angered . Furious Starkad went forth in the Danish army killing warriors all around him and cut off the shieldmaiden Visna ' s arm , which held the Danish banner . Starkad then proceeded to slay the champions Brai , Grepi , Gamli and Haki . When Harald had observed these heroic feats , he stood on his knees in his chariot with one sword in each hand and killed a great many warriors both to his left and to his right . After a while , Harald ' s steward Bruni deemed that his liege had amassed enough glory and crushed the king ' s skull with a club . Outcome . Sigurd won the battle and became the sovereign ruler of all of Sweden and Denmark ( 40 , 000 warriors had died ) . Historicity . The general agreement on the historicity of the battle has turned back and forth during the last two centuries depending on what was the prevalent ideology among Scandinavian historians . In 1925 , the Swedish archaeologist Birger Nerman summarized the ebbs and tides of its historicity . He stated that older scholarship had treated the accounts of the battle uncritically and perceived the accounts as largely historical . During the last decades of the 19th century , however , the hypercritical school considered the battle as entirely fictional and considered even the area where it took place as mythical . The pendulum turned and during the first decades of the 20th century , the opinion was once again in favour of its historicity , although the contemporary scholarship regarded it as a fictionalized historic event . In 1990 , the Swedish encyclopedia " Nationalencyklopedin " summed up the debate by claiming that the historicity of the battle is impossible to verify . There is also a hypothesis relating the battle to the events of 827 when Harald Klak was expelled from Denmark .