King Gylfi ruled over the lands now called Sweden. It is said that he offered a travelling woman, in return for the pleasure of her company, a piece of ploughland in his kingdom as large as four oxen could plough in a day and a night. But this woman, named Gefjun, was of the Æsir. She took four oxen from Jotunheim [Giant Land] in the north. They were her own sons by a giant, and she yoked them to the plough, which dug so hard and so deep that it cut the land loose. The oxen dragged this land westward out to sea, stopping finally at a certain channel. There Gefjun fastened the land and gave it the name Sjaelland.1 The place where the land was removed has since become a body of water in Sweden now called Logrinn [the Lake],2 and in this lake there are as many inlets as there are headlands in Sjaelland. So says the poet Bragi the Old:
Gefjun dragged from Gylfi gladly the land beyond value, Denmark’s increase, steam rising from the swift-footed bulls. The oxen bore eight moons of the forehead and four heads, hauling as they went in front of the grassy isle’s wide fissure.