One Christmas, some years before the Battle of Hastings, Gilbert of Gent held his traditional festivities at his Northumbrian household. He held thrice-yearly contests, ‘testing the strength and spirit of those young men who were hoping for the belt and arms of knighthood by letting wild beasts out from cages’. This season's beast was a particularly ferocious bear: the ‘offspring of a famous Norwegian bear which had the head and feet of a man and human intelligence, which understood the speech of men and was cunning in battle’. Its father had allegedly raped a girl in the woods and fathered Beorn, king of Norway.

Gilbert's eighteen-year-old godson, Hereward, was visiting, having been banished from his homeland for being troublesome. Hereward was eager to have his strength and spirit tested, but Gilbert refused, ‘because although … [he] perceived the bravery of the young man, he feared for his youthfulness’. The bear escaped, and went on a killing spree. Hereward leapt into action, heading the bear off as he was about to attack Gilbert's wife and her women. He drove ‘his sword through its head as far as the shoulder-blades. Leaving the blade there, he lifted up the animal in his arms and held it out to those who followed, at which sight they were much amazed’.