Meanwhile the ill-disposed people of his own kingdom, which seems to have included the districts we now know as Zealand or Jutland, one of those small divisions into which the Northern countries were at that time broken up,[3] during the absence of Ragnar stirred up the inhabitants to depose him and set up one Harald as king. Ragnar, hearing of this, and having few men at his command, sent envoys to Norway to ask for assistance. They gathered a small host together, of weak and strong, young and old, whomsoever they could get, and had a hard fight with the rebels. It is said that Ivar, though he was hardly seven years of age, fought splendidly, and seemed a man in courage though only a boy in years. Siward, or Sigurd Snake-eye, Ragnar’s eldest son, received a terrible wound, which it is said that Woden, the father of the gods of the North, came himself to cure. The battle would have gone against Ragnar but for the courage of a noble woman named Ladgerda, who, “like an Amazon possessed of the courage of a man,” came to the hero’s assistance with a hundred and twenty ships and herself fought in front of the host with her loose hair flying about her shoulders. All marvelled at her matchless deeds, for she had the spirit of a warrior in a slender frame, and when the soldiers began to waver she made a sally, taking the enemy unawares on the rear, so that Harald was routed with a great slaughter of his men. This was by no means the only occasion in the history of these times that we hear of women-warriors; both in the North and in Ireland women often went into battle, sometimes forming whole female battalions. The women of the North were brave, pure, and spirited, though often fierce and bitter. They took their part in many ways beside their husbands and sons. About this time Thora, Ragnar’s wife, died suddenly of an illness, which caused infinite sorrow to her husband, who dearly loved his spouse. He thought to assuage his grief by setting himself some heavy task, which would occupy his mind and energies. After arranging for the administration of justice at home, and training for war all the young men, feeble or strong, who came to him, he determined to cross over to Britain, since he had heard of the dissensions that were going on, and the weakness of the country. This was before the time of Ælla, when, as the Danish annals tell us, his father, Hame, “a most noble youth,” was reigning in Northumbria. This king, Ragnar attacked and killed, and then, leaving his young and favourite son to rule the Danish settlers of Northumbria, he went north to Scotland, conquered parts of Pictland, or the North of Scotland, and of the Western Isles, where he made two others of his sons, Siward Snake-eye and Radbard, governors.