Blenda

In the Småland tradition, Blenda is a local woman who organized the rural women of the five hundreds of Värend to repel and annihilate a pillaging Danish host. The legend situates the mobilization on the Brávellir and reports that when King Alle returned from campaigning he granted the women enduring privileges—equal inheritance with brothers and husbands, the right to wear a belt as a sign of vigilance, and the right to beat the bridal drum—thereby explaining and legitimating local customs. Scholarly treatments note the tale is aetiological: the narrative explains existing practices and toponyms (e.g., Bländinge, Värnslanda) and its dating is disputed (traditional attributions link it to a King Alle c. 500, while other commentators place or compose versions in later medieval or early modern contexts). The earliest printed connection of the legend to inheritance rights appears in Johan Stiernhöök's De iure sueonum et gothorum vetusto (1672), and the version often cited in local histories was shaped by Petter Rudebeck (1660–1710).

The sources supply no physical or iconographic description of Blenda; the retellings emphasize her actions—leadership, the sending of a rallying signal described as a "fiery cross," arranging a banquet, and directing the killing of the invaders—rather than bodily features, dress, or distinctive attributes.

Blenda's attributed capacities are organizational, rhetorical, and martial within the legend: she is a leader who mobilizes women across multiple hundreds (by sending a rallying signal), arranges a deceptive banquet to defeat the Danish warriors, and directs or inspires the collective killing of the invaders with simple weapons (axes and staffs). These are presented as human strategic and leadership skills; no supernatural powers or magical faculties are described in the supplied sources.