When they got to Herle, Egil and his men wasted no time but ran fully armed up to the farmstead. When Thorir and his household saw this, everyone of them who could shift for themselves, men and women alike, ran for their lives from the farm. Egil and his men looted everything they could get their hands on, then went back to their ship, and they didn't have long to wait before a good wind began to blow from the mainland. They prepared to sail, but when they were ready to set out Egil went ashore onto the island, picked up a branch of hazel and went to a certain cliff that faced the mainland. Then he took a horse head, set it up on a pole and spoke these formal words: "Here I set up a pole of insult against King Eirik and Queen Gunnhild" --then, turning the horse head toward the mainland-- "and I direct this insult against the guardian spirits of this land, so that every 
one of them shall go astray, neither to figure nor find their dwelling places until they have driven King Eirik and Queen Gunnhild from this country."
Next he jammed the pole into a cleft in the rock and left it standing there with the horse head facing the mainland, and cut runes on the pole declaiming the words of his formal speech. After that he went aboard, and they hoisted sail and made for the open sea.
--From ch. 57, Egil's Saga, written ca 1230 by Snorri Sturluson (1158-1241) of Iceland about Egil Skallagrimsson (910-990), translated by Hermann Pálsson (1921-2002) and Paul Edwards
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