It's not a bug. Norse Scouts only have 8 speed by default, and Bella would always kill them (since she has speed 10). So instead, their speed was set to 10 for this quest specifically. Doing so resulted in them losing their gear.
Originally Bella/Norse gave us Seers or Rhapsodes or Chiefs. Seers/Rhapsodes = restart until you got Chiefs. Chiefs are painfully slow, but they had enough HP to withstand Bella's attacks.
In my opinion this current solution is much better. Naked Scouts with the same speed as Bella (and the same speed as any other civs' Scouts).