Chapter III: Introduction (1)

I. EARLIEST HISTORICAL NOTICES OF THE ORKNEYS.

The historical notices of the Orkneys previous to the Norse occupation are few in number, and exceedingly obscure. We learn little more from the allusions of the Roman writers than that scarcely anything was known to them with certainty of these remote localities. It may be inferred, however, that the first wave of Celtic population that overspread the northern mainland of Britain must have gradually extended northward to the outlying Isles. The correspondence of the early remains found in the Islands with those of northern Scotland is of itself a striking testimony to the connection of their early population with the Celtic stock of the northern mainland of Scotland. We gather from these remains that the earliest population of the Islands, of which we have any reliable evidence, lived in the same manner as the natives of the northern mainland, fought with the same varieties of weapons of stone and bronze, erected the same forms of defensive structures, practised the same funereal rites, and constructed similar forms of sepulchral chambers, over which they piled the great mounds which are among the most striking features of an Orkney landscape.[1] The number and magnitude of these monuments and structural remains bear witness in a most remarkable manner to the activity, intelligence, and social organisation of the times that have no other record.

It is not until the middle of the 5th century of the Christian era that the early chronicles begin to cast occasionally a feeble and uncertain light upon the history of the northern isles. It is stated in the “Historia Britonum” of Nennius that the Saxon chiefs Ochtha and Ebissa, who came over with “forty keels” in the year 449, laid waste the Orkney Islands, and seized a great many regions beyond the Frisic Sea.[2] At that time, and for a long period previously (according to Nennius), the Picts had been in possession of the Orkneys. Whatever value may be attached to these statements as referring to events which took place 400 years before the author’s own time, there can be no reason for discrediting his testimony when he says that the Picts continued in possession of the Orkneys in his day.[3]

Adamnan, in his Life of St. Columba, mentions that the saint being on a visit to Bruide Mac Meilcon, king of the Northern Picts, at his stronghold on the river Ness, requested the king to recommend to the _reguli_ of the Orkneys (one of whom was then present, and whose hostages were then in the king’s hands) that Cormac and the clerics who had accompanied him on a missionary voyage to the Orkneys should receive no harm; and it is added that this was the means of saving them from a violent death. But if the authority and influence of the king of the Northern Picts extended to these islands in the reign of Bruide, it does not seem to have been effectual in protecting them from foreign invasion. Bruide Mac Meilcon died in 584, and some time before his death the new and rising power of the Dalriadic kings had made itself felt as far as the Orkneys. In the Annals of Ulster there is a notice under the year 580 of an expedition against the Orkneys by Aedan, son of Gabran, seventh king of the Dalriad Scots, who, coming over from Ireland (then called Scotia) about the year 503, had established themselves in Argyle and the Western Highlands, and founded the kingdom of Dalriada. From the date of Aedan’s expedition in 580 we have no mention of the islands in the native chronicles for a whole century, and the next entry, which occurs under the year 682, gives colour to the supposition that they may have been under Dalriadic rule in the interval. The record in 682 is simply, that the Orkneys were wasted by Bruide Mac Bile, the king of the Northern Picts, and apparently brought once more under the rule of the Northern Pictish kings.

II. EARLY CHRISTIANITY OF THE ISLANDS.

It is probable that both the island groups of Orkney and Shetland were visited at a very early period by wandering clerics of the Irish Church, whose missionary efforts contributed so much to the diffusion of Christianity in Scotland. But we have no record of an earlier visitation than that of the companions of St. Columba, although there are indications that between that time and the colonisation of the islands by the heathen Northmen, these Irish clerics were no strangers in any of the island groups.

The Irish monk Dicuil, who wrote his treatise “De Mensura Orbis Terrarum” in or about the year 825, states that “thirty years before that time some clerics had told him that they had lived in an island which they supposed to be Thule, where at the summer solstice the sun only hid himself behind a little hill for a short time during the night, which was quite light; and that a day’s sail towards the north would bring them from thence into the frozen sea.” This island is obviously Iceland. He then states that there are many other islands in the northern British sea, which lie at the distance of two days and two nights from the northern islands of Britain, in a straight course, and with a fair wind and a full sail. “One of these,” he says, “a certain honest monk told me he had visited one summer after sailing a day, a night, and another day, in a two-benched boat.” These appear to be the Shetland Islands. Dicuil further states that “there are also some other small islands, almost all divided from each other by narrow sounds, inhabited for about a century by hermits proceeding from our Scotia;[4] but as they had been deserted since the beginning of the world, so are they now abandoned by these anchorites on account of the Northern robbers; but they are full of countless sheep, and swarm with sea-fowl of various kinds. We have not seen these islands mentioned in the works of any author.” Here the reference to the “small isles separated by narrow sounds” is distinctive of the Faroes, of which the long narrow sounds are the peculiar physical feature; while the statement that they are full of countless sheep, taken in connection with the fact that the Northmen named them “Sheep-isles” (Fær-eyiar), establishes the identity of the group which Dicuil describes. The Faroes were colonised by “the Northern robbers,” led by Grim Kamban, in 825, the very year in which Dicuil was writing.

The first Norwegian settlement was made in Iceland in 875, by Leif and Ingulf, who carried with them a number of Irish captives; and the Landnamabók states that “before Iceland was colonised from Norway, men were living there whom the Northmen called Papas; they were Christians, and it is thought they came over the sea from the west, for after them were found Irish books, and bells, and crosiers, and other things, so that one could see that they were Westmen: these things were found in Papey, eastwards, and in Papyli.” Again, in the Islendingabók of Ari Frodi the same reason is assigned for the departure of the monks as is given by Dicuil. Ari Frodi also says, speaking of Iceland:—“Christian men were here then called by the Northmen _Papa_, but afterwards they went their way, for they would not remain in company with heathens; and they left behind them Irish books, and bells, and pastoral staves, so that it was clear that they were Irishmen.”

Thus by the concurrent testimony of Adamnan, the biographer of St. Columba, himself an abbot of the monastery of Hy; of the Irish monk Dicuil, writing during the lifetime of the men who had fled from the Northern robbers; and lastly, of the Icelandic historians themselves—it is established that the whole of the northern islands were visited by Christian teachers, and probably, in part at least, converted to the Christian faith, before they were overrun by the Norwegian invaders, and the new faith swallowed up in the rising tide of heathenism thrown upon their shores from the land of Odin and the Aser.

In the absence of all record we cannot expect to ascertain to what extent these early missionary settlements had succeeded in leavening the Celtic population of the islands of Orkney and Shetland with the Christian faith. But it seems probable that during the three centuries that intervened between the coming of Cormac in his coracle and the arrival of Harald Harfagri with his fleet of war galleys, the new faith had been firmly established and widely extended both in the northern mainland of Scotland and in the remoter isles.

The indications which point to a Christian occupation of the isle, of no inconsiderable extent and continuance, previous to their occupation by the Norsemen, are:—The dedications of the early ecclesiastical foundations; the occurrence of monumental stones sculptured in the style peculiar to the earliest Christian monuments of the mainland of Scotland, and bearing inscriptions in the Ogham character; the finding (as at Saverough and Burrian) of ecclesiastical bells of the square-sided form, peculiar to the early ages of the Church; and the occurrence in the Norse topography of the islands of place-names indicative of the previous settlement of Celtic Christian priests.

The earliest dedications were probably those to St. Ninian and St. Columba, St. Brigid, and St. Tredwell. It may be significant that in the south parish of South Ronaldsay, where in all probability the companions of St. Columba would make their first landing in Orkney, there were no fewer than three chapels dedicated to him.[5]

The sculptured monuments furnish us with three collateral lines of inference, tending to the same conclusion. These inferences are derived from the inscriptions, the ornamentation, and the symbols of the monuments.

Two of these monuments bear inscriptions in the Ogham character, a style of cryptographic writing characteristic of the early inscribed stone monuments of Ireland, but occurring also in Cornwall, in Wales, and in Scotland. One of these two was found near the ancient church of Culbinsbrugh, in the island of Bressay in Shetland. It is a slab of chlorite slate, 4 feet in length, about 16 inches wide at the top, tapering to a little less than a foot at the bottom, and about 1¾ inch thick. It is sculptured on both sides in low relief, and the inscription is incised on the edges of the stone. On one of its sculptured faces it bears the Christian emblem of the cross, and among the figures sculptured on it are those of two ecclesiastics with pastoral staves (see Plates). The other inscribed stone was found by Dr. William Traill in the Pictish Tower or “Broch” of Burrian, in North Ronaldsay in Orkney. The inscription scratched on it has not yet been deciphered. It also bears the Christian emblem of the cross. The association of the cross with these Ogham inscriptions[6] points to a period anterior to the Norse occupation of the islands.

In examining the characteristics of the art of these monumental stones, we are guided to similar conclusions. The Bressay stone bears none of the symbols peculiar to the Scottish monuments, and in its artistic features it comes nearer to some of the Irish than to the general style of the Scottish sculptures. It is sculptured in low relief, while all the Orkney examples are merely incised. But some of the forms of their ornamentation are also characteristic of the art of the illuminated Irish manuscripts of the 7th and 8th centuries, and others are equally characteristic of the art of the bronzes of what has been styled the late Celtic period.

The Scottish sculptured monuments scattered over the territory ranging from the Forth to the Orkneys are characterised by a peculiar set of symbols of unknown significance, which are often associated with the Christian emblem of the cross.[7] The symbol which is of most frequent occurrence, and which may therefore be said to be the most characteristic of the period of the monuments, is a crescent conjoined with what has been called a double sceptre, as represented in the first figure of the accompanying Plate.

This characteristic symbol occurs on a sculptured slab which was found built into St. Peter’s Church in South Ronaldsay, and which had evidently formed part of a monument older than the church. It occurs also on the slab found at Firth, on the mainland of Orkney. Most singularly, it occurs on the phalangial bone of an ox which was found in the Broch of Burrian along with the slab previously described as bearing an Ogham inscription and a peculiar form of cross. It occurs associated with the same form of cross on the elaborately-sculptured stone at Ulbster in Caithness. We have this crescent symbol also associated with the cross on the inscribed stone of St. Vigeans in Forfarshire. This stone bears the only inscription which is known to have been left to us in the Pictish language:—[8]

DROSTEN │ IPE │ VORET │ ELT │ FORCUS
“Drost, │son of│ Voret, │of the race of│Fergus,”

and is believed to refer to that Drost, king of the Picts, who fell at the battle of Blathmig, according to the Annals of Tighearnac, in A.D. 729.

The indications afforded by the Norse topography of the Islands, if taken in connection with the passages previously quoted from the Landnamabók and the Islendingabók of Ari Frodi regarding the origin of the names Papa and Papyli in Iceland, require only to be mentioned. The most obvious of these are the frequency with which the name Papa[9] occurs both in the topography of Orkney and Shetland, and the occurrence of such names as St. Ninian’s Isle in Shetland, Rinansey (Ringan’s-ey, St. Ninian’s Isle) in Orkney, Daminsey, now Damsey (St. Adamnan’s Isle), and Enhallow (Eyin-Helga, Holy Isle), given, we must suppose, intelligently by the Norsemen.

Thus, at the very starting-point of their recorded history, we find indications of Christianity, with suggestions even of its civilisation and its art shedding their benign influence over the isles.

III. ARRIVAL OF THE NORTHMEN, AND ESTABLISHMENT OF THE EARLDOM OF ORKNEY
AND CAITHNESS.

The earliest notice we have of the visits of the Northmen to the shores of Britain occurs in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the date A.D. 787:—

“In this year King Beorhtric took Eadburh, King Offa’s daughter, to
wife. And in his days first came three ships of Northmen from
Hæretha-land; and then the reeve rode thereto, and would drive them
to the king’s vill, for he knew not what they were, and they there
slew him. These were the first ships of Danish men that sought the
land of the English race.”

As they came from Hæretha-land, now Hördaland, on the west coast of Norway, they were Norwegians, not Danes.

The Irish Annals and the Welsh Chronicles agree in representing the first inroads of the Norsemen on the Irish coasts as having commenced in the year 795. In 798 they plundered Inispatrick of Man and the Hebrides; in 802, and again in 806, they ravaged Iona, slaying in the latter year sixty-eight of the monastic family there. In 807 they established themselves on the mainland of Ireland; and a few years afterwards we find a Norseman making Armagh the capital of his kingdom.

In 852, Olaf the White, a chieftain descended from the same family as Harald Harfagri, conquered Dublin, and founded the most powerful and permanent of the Norse kingdoms in Ireland.

By the victory of Hafursfiord in 872, Harald Harfagri made himself sole monarch of Norway. Large numbers of the wealthy and powerful odallers, whom he had dispossessed of their territorial possessions, fled to the islands of Orkney and Shetland, which, for a full century previous to this time, had been well known to the Norsemen as the viking station of the western haf—the rendezvous of the Northern rovers, who swept the coasts of the Hebrides and swarmed in the Irish Seas. Being fugitives from their country, and outlaws of the new kingdom which Harald had succeeded in establishing in Norway, they settled themselves permanently in the islands. Then they turned their haven of refuge into a base of operations for retaliatory warfare, harrying the coasts of Norway during the summer months, and living at leisure in the islands during winter on the plunder. At length King Harald, irritated by their incessant ravages, collected a powerful fleet, and visiting Shetland, Orkney, and the Hebrides, in succession, he swept their coasts clear of the plunderers, subduing the whole of the Northern and Western islands as far south as Man.

In this expedition Ivar, a son of Rögnvald, Earl of Moeri, was killed.[10] In order to recompense Rögnvald for the loss of his son, King Harald bestowed on him the territory of the subjugated isles of Orkney and Shetland, with the title of Earl of the Orkneys. Harald seems to have dealt similarly with the Hebrides, but his conquest of the vikings in these remote isles was not so complete as in the Orkneys. Ketil Flatnef (Flat nose), who, according to the Laxdæla Saga, had emigrated to the Hebrides because he could not resist King Harald in Norway, had married his daughter Aud to Olaf the White, the powerful king of Dublin, and had established himself in a kind of independent sovereignty in the Hebrides; and though he seems to have migrated from them to Iceland in consequence of King Harald’s expedition, the continued hostility to King Harald’s rule is evinced by the fact that the second earl whom he sent to the Hebrides, AsBjörn Skerablesi, was slain by two relatives of Ketil Flatnef, his wife and daughter taken captive, and the latter sold as a slave. Rögnvald, however, returned to his own Earldom in Norway, and made over his newly-acquired possessions to his brother Sigurd, the “first earl” of the Saga.

IV. THE EARLDOM IN THE NORSE LINE, 872-1231.

Thorstein the Red, son of Olaf the White, king of Dublin, came then to the north, and allying himself with Earl Sigurd, they crossed over to the mainland of Scotland, and subdued Caithness and Sutherland as far as Ekkialsbakki, and afterwards carried their conquests into Ross and Moray. In this invasion Earl Sigurd killed Maelbrigd the buck-toothed (Melbrigda tönn), a Scottish maormor of Ross or Moray; and having tied his head to his saddle-bow, “the tooth,” which was very prominent, inflicted a wound on his leg, and the wound inflaming caused the death of the earl, who was hoy-laid (buried in a mound or cairn) on Ekkialsbakki.[11] After his death, Thorstein the Red reigned as king over the conquered districts of Scotland, which at that time, says the Landnamabók,[12] comprehended “Caithness and Sutherland, Ross and Moray, and more than the half of Scotland.” The Laxdæla Saga[13] says that in his engagements with the Scots Thorstein was always successful, “until at length he became reconciled with the King of the Scots, and obtained possession of the half of Scotland, over which he became king.” But he was shortly afterwards slain in Caithness by the treachery of the Scots; and after his death Aud, his mother, migrated to Iceland. Previous to her departure she had given Groa, the daughter of Thorstein, in marriage to Duncan, earl or maormor of Duncansby in Caithness. Thus the Norse earldom of Caithness passed for a time into the family of one of its native chiefs. But by the subsequent marriage of Grelauga, the daughter of Duncan and Groa, with Thorfinn Hausakliuf, son of Torf-Einar, Earl of Orkney, the Scottish earldom was again added to the earldom of the Isles.

While Thorstein the Red ruled on the northern mainland of Scotland, Guttorm, the son of Sigurd Eysteinson, had succeeded to the Orkney earldom on the death of his father, but after having held it for one year he died childless.

Meantime, when Rögnvald, Earl of Moeri, heard in Norway of the death of his brother Sigurd, he obtained a grant of the earldom of Orkney from King Harald for his own son Hallad. Hallad found the Islands so much infested by vikings that he soon gave up the earldom in disgust, and returned to Norway, preferring the life of a farmer to that of an earl.[14]

Then Rögnvald sent another son, Einar, to take possession of the earldom. Einar was a man of a different stamp from Hallad. He soon made his power felt among the western vikings, and freed his possessions entirely from their ravages. The sons of Harald Harfagri, Halfdan Hálegg and Guthrod, grew up to be men of great violence. One spring they went north to Moeri and burnt Earl Rögnvald in his own house with sixty of his men. Halfdan Hálegg then sailed west to Orkney to dispossess Einar of the earldom, but having allowed himself to be surprised by Einar, he was captured in Rinansey, and killed by having a blood-eagle cut on his back.[15] Harald Harfagri came west, and fined the Orkneys in sixty marks of gold for the death of his son. Earl Einar offered to the Bœndr[16] that he would pay the money on condition that he should have all the odal possessions in the islands—a condition to which they agreed the more readily, says the Saga, “that all the poorer men had but small lands, while those who were wealthy said they would redeem theirs when they pleased.”[17] But the odal lands remained in the possession of the earl till Einar’s great-grandson, Sigurd Hlödverson, was obliged to buy the assistance of the odallers against the Scots when hard pressed by the Scottish earl Finnleik.[18]

When Einar died he left three sons, two of whom, Arnkell and Erlend, were killed with King Erik Bloodyaxe in England. The third, Thorfinn Hausakliuf, married Grelauga, daughter of Duncan, earl of Duncansbay, and thus reunited in the Norse line the two earldoms of Orkney and Caithness. Earl Thorfinn Hausakliuf left five sons. Arnfinn, the eldest, who was married to Ragnhild, a daughter of King Erik Bloodyaxe, was killed by his wife at Myrkhol (Murkle) in Caithness. She then married Havard, his brother. She soon tired of him, and instigated Einar Klining, his sister’s son, to kill him. Havard fell in the fray at Stennis, and was buried there.[19] Ragnhild had promised to marry Einar if he killed her husband Havard. When the deed was done, however, she refused to perform her promise, and instigated another Einar, by the promise of her hand, to slay Einar Klining. This he did, but again Ragnhild was faithless. Then she married Liot, the third son of Earl Thorfinn Hausakliffer, and brother of the two husbands whom she had already had and slain. Meanwhile Skuli, a fourth brother, had gone to Scotland and obtained an earl’s title for Caithness from the King of Scots.[20] He was defeated by Liot, and slain in the Dales of Caithness, and thus Liot became sole earl of Caithness and Orkney. He fell in battle with a native chieftain, named Magbiód[21] in the Sagas, at Skida Myre[22] (Skitten) in Caithness, and was succeeded in the earldom by Hlödver, the last of the five brothers.

Earl Hlödver married Audna, the daughter of the Irish king Kiarval. He died shortly after his accession to the earldom, and was buried at Hofn (Huna) in Caithness.[23] His son Sigurd, sometimes called “the Stout,” succeeded him. He is said to have been a mighty warrior, and to have driven the Scots completely from Caithness.[24] But he was not left in undisturbed possession of his Scottish earldom. The Scottish earl or maormor, Finlay (MacRuari?) invaded Caithness and gave him battle at Skida Myre, where his uncle Liot had fallen before another Scottish maormor not long previously. Finlay had so large a force that there were no less than seven Scotsmen to one of Sigurd’s men, and the Orkneymen who were with Earl Sigurd were unwilling to fight against such odds. Then Sigurd offered to restore to the Bœndr their allodial lands, which they had resigned to Earl Einar, his great-grandfather. By this means, more than by the charmed raven-banner made for him by his Irish mother, he obtained the victory. “After this,” says the Njal Saga,[25] “Earl Sigurd became ruler over these dominions in Scotland, Ross and Moray, Sutherland and the Dales” (of Caithness), which seem also to include the old Strathnaver. But his troubles with the Scots were not yet over. Caithness was invaded by two Scottish maormors, called Hundi and Melsnati in the Saga.[26] A battle took place at Duncansbay, in which Melsnati was slain, but Hundi fled, and the Norsemen, learning that another Scottish earl, Malcolm, was assembling an army at Duncansbay, gave up the pursuit and returned to Orkney. Afterwards Sigurd became reconciled to Malcolm, King of the Scots, and obtained his daughter in marriage.

But the most notable event in the life of Earl Sigurd was that which befel him as he lay in the harbour of Osmondwall shortly after his accession to the earldom. Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway, returning from a western cruise, happened to run his vessels into the same harbour, as the Pentland Firth was not to be passed that day. On hearing that the earl was there he sent for him on board his ship, and told him, without much parley, that he must allow himself to be baptized, and make all his people profess the Christian faith. The Flateyjarbók says that the king took hold of Sigurd’s boy, who chanced to be with him, and drawing his sword, gave the earl the choice of renouncing for ever the faith of his fathers, or of seeing his boy slain on the spot. In the position in which he found himself placed, Sigurd became a nominal convert, but there is every reason to believe that the Christianity which was thus forced upon the Islanders was for a long time more a name than a reality. Nearly twenty years afterwards we find Earl Sigurd bearing his own raven-banner “woven with mighty spells,” at the battle of Clontarf, against the Christian king Brian; and Sigurd’s fall was made known in Caithness by the twelve weird sisters (the Valkyriar of the ancient mythology) weaving the woof of war:—[27]

“The woof y-woven
With entrails of men,
The warp hardweighted
With heads of the slain.”

An incident which occurred just before he set out for Ireland gives a striking illustration of the fierce manners of the times. King Sigtrygg, who had come from Dublin to obtain Earl Sigurd’s aid, was being entertained at the Yule-feast in Earl Sigurd’s hall in Hrossey (the Mainland of Orkney), and was set on the high seat, having Earl Sigurd on the one side and Earl Gilli, who had come with him, on the other. Gunnar Lambi’s son was telling the company the story of the burning of Njal and his comrades, but giving an unfair version of it, and every now and then laughing out loud. It so happened that as, in answer to an inquiry of King Sigtrygg’s how they bore the burning, he was saying that one of them had given way to tears, one of Njal’s friends, Kari by name, who had just arrived in Orkney, chanced to come into the hall. Hearing what was said, Kari drew his sword, and smote Gunnar Lambi’s son on the neck with such a sharp blow that his head spun off on to the board before the king and the earls, so that the board was all one gore of blood, and the earls’ clothing too. Earl Sigurd called out to seize Kari and kill him, but no man stirred, and some spoke up for him, saying that he had only done what he had a right to do, and so Kari walked away, and there was no hue and cry after him.

The battle of Clontarf, in which Earl Sigurd fell, is the most celebrated of all the conflicts in which the Norsemen were engaged on this side of the North Sea. “It was at Clontarf, in Brian’s battle,” says Dasent, “that the old and new faiths met in the lists face to face for their last struggle,” and we find Earl Sigurd arrayed on the side of the old faith, though nominally a convert to the new. The Irish account of the battle[28] describes it as seen from the walls of Dublin, and likens the carnage to a party of reapers cutting down a field of oats. Sigurd is described as dealing out wounds and slaughter all around—“no edged weapon could harm him, and there was no strength that yielded not, and no thickness that became not thin before him.” Murcadh, son of Brian Borumha, was equally conspicuous on the side of the Irish. He had thrice passed through the phalanx of the foreigners, slaying a mail-clad man at every stroke. Then perceiving Sigurd, he rushed at him, and by a blow of his right-hand sword, cut the fastenings of his helmet, which fell back, and a second blow given with the left-hand sword cut into his neck, and stretched him lifeless on the field. In the Njal Saga the incidents connected with Earl Sigurd’s death are differently related. His raven-banner, which was borne before him, was fulfilling the destiny announced by Audna, when she gave it to him at Skida Myre, that it would always bring victory to those before whom it was borne, but death to him who bore it. Twice had the banner-bearer fallen, and Earl Sigurd called on Thorstein, son of Hall of the Side, next to bear the banner. Thorstein was about to lift it, when Asmund the White called out, “Don’t bear the banner, for all they who bear it get their death.” “Hrafn the Red!” cried Earl Sigurd, “bear thou the banner.” “Bear thine own devil thyself,” said Hrafn.[29] Then said the earl, “’Tis fittest that the beggar should bear the bag,” and with that he took up the banner, and was immediately pierced through with a spear. Then flight broke out through all the host.

When the news of Earl Sigurd’s death reached Scotland King Malcolm gave the earldom of Caithness to Thorfinn, his daughter’s son by Sigurd, then only five years of age, and Sumarlidi, Brúsi, and Einar, Sigurd’s sons by his former marriage, divided the Orkneys between them. Sumarlidi soon died, and Einar got his portion. Einar made himself unpopular by the violence with which he exacted his services from the Bœndr for his viking expeditions, and was killed by Thorkel Fóstri (Amundi’s son) at Sandwick, in Deerness. Brúsi then took possession of the whole earldom of the Orkneys, as Thorfinn had that of Caithness. Thorfinn, however, claimed a share of the Islands, and as he had the assistance of his grandfather Malcolm, the King of Scots, Brúsi felt himself unable to cope with him. He therefore went to Norway to negotiate with King Olaf Haraldson for a grant of the whole of the earldom of the Islands. Thorfinn followed him on the same errand, but the king was more than a match for them both, and the result was that he gave each a third of the Islands, declaring the third which had belonged to Earl Einar to be forfeited to himself for the murder of his friend and henchman Eyvind Urarhorn, whom Einar had slain in revenge for Eyvind’s helping the Irish king Conchobhar against him at Ulfreksfiord. After Thorfinn’s departure, however, he gave Brúsi to understand that he was to have the forfeited third of the earldom, as well as his own third, to enable him to hold his own against Thorfinn. An arrangement was afterwards made between Brúsi and Thorfinn that the latter should receive two-thirds of the Islands on condition of his undertaking the defence of the whole, as they were at that time much exposed to the predatory incursions of Norse and Danish vikings.

When Thorfinn’s maternal grandfather, King Malcolm, died, Kali Hundason[30] took the kingdom in Scotland. He attempted to exact tribute from Thorfinn for his dominions in the north of Scotland, and failing in this he sent his sister’s son, Moddan, into Caithness, giving him the title of Earl. Thorfinn was supported by the inhabitants, however, and after an unsuccessful attempt to establish himself in Caithness, Moddan returned to King Kali with the news that Thorfinn was plundering in Ross and Sutherland. King Kali embarked a considerable force in eleven ships at Beruvik (apparently Berriedale on the southern frontier of Caithness), and sent Moddan northwards by land with another division of his army, intending to enclose Thorfinn in the north-east corner of Caithness, and attack him from two sides at once. Thorfinn, however, was aware of the trap laid for him, and retired to the Islands. There Kali came up with him off Deerness, in Orkney, and a fierce battle took place, in which Kali was defeated. He fled southwards, and Thorfinn, following him, obliged him again to give battle at Baefiord, where he was again defeated, while Thorkel Fóstri fell upon Moddan at Thurso and slew him. Then, say the Sagas, Earl Thorfinn overran Scotland as far south as Fife, burning and slaying, and subduing the land wherever he went. By these conquests he became the most powerful of all the Earls of Orkney.

Rögnvald Brusison was in Norway when he heard of his father’s death, and being odal-born to his father’s third of the Islands, and having received from King Magnus Olafson a grant of that third which King Olaf had declared forfeited to himself for Eyvind Urarhorn’s murder, he went west to the Orkneys, prepared to maintain his rights against the claims of Thorfinn, who had taken possession of the whole. An amicable arrangement was made between the kinsmen, and they joined their forces for viking forays upon the Hebrides, venturing even upon an extensive foray in England during the absence of Hardicanute in Denmark. After an eight years’ alliance, however, discord broke out between the kinsmen, and in a sea-fight in the Pentland Firth, off Rauda Biorg,[31] in Caithness, Rögnvald was defeated and fled, and Thorfinn reduced the whole of the Islands. Rögnvald went to Norway, and stayed some time with King Magnus. Then he came west to the Islands in a single ship, and surprising Thorfinn in a house on the Mainland of Orkney, he set fire to it. Thorfinn broke down part of the wall of the house and leapt out, carrying his wife Ingibiorg in his arms, and escaped through the smoke. Rögnvald, believing that Thorfinn had perished, took possession of the Islands. Thorfinn, who had got secretly over to his dominions in Caithness, returned shortly afterwards, and surprising Rögnvald in a house on Papa Stronsay, burnt the house and all who were in it, except Rögnvald, who sprang over the heads of the men who surrounded him, and got away in the darkness. He concealed himself among the rocks by the shore, but was discovered by the barking of his dog, and slain by Thorkel Fóstri. Thus Thorfinn was again sole ruler of the Orkney earldom, as well as that of Caithness. He went to Norway to make his peace with King Magnus, who was foster-brother to Earl Rögnvald, and therefore would seek vengeance for his death. At that time Magnus was at war with Swein Ulfson, King of Denmark. While he lay with his fleet at Seley two war-ships rowed up to the king’s vessel, and a man in a white cloak went straight aboard, and up to the quarter-deck, where the king sat at meat. Saluting the king, the man reached forth his hand, took a loaf from the table, broke it, and ate of it. The king handed the cup to him when he saw that he had broken bread at his table, and then he learned that it was Earl Thorfinn, who, having broken his bread and drunk from his cup, was, for the present at least, safe from his vengeance, according to the ancient laws of hospitality. He deemed it wise, however, to take his departure without having obtained a formal reconciliation. King Magnus died shortly afterwards, and was succeeded by his uncle Harald Hardradi. Thorfinn again went to Norway on hearing of King Magnus’ death, and effected a reconciliation with King Harald, so that he was now established in the earldom of Orkney by consent of the over-lord, the King of Norway.

From Norway he went to Denmark, visiting King Swein at Aalborg, and proceeded thence through Germany on a pilgrimage to Rome, where he obtained absolution for all his deeds. After his return from Rome it is said that he turned his mind more to the government of his dominions and the welfare of his people than he had previously done in his career of conquest. He built Christ’s Kirk in Birsay, and established there the first bishop’s see in the Orkneys. He died in 1064, having been Earl, by the Saga account, for “seventy winters,” and the most powerful and wide-landed of all the Earls of the Orkneys. After his death, as the Saga states, his widow Ingibiorg was married to King Malcolm Canmore,[32] and became the mother of Duncan, whom, however, the Scottish historians have always represented as a bastard.

Thorfinn was succeeded by his two sons, Paul and Erlend, who were with King Harald Hardradi in his unfortunate expedition to England. After the battle of Stamford Bridge, in which King Harald fell, the Orkney earls were allowed to go home by the victorious Harold Godwinson, and they ruled their dominions jointly in great harmony till their sons grew up to manhood, when there began to be discord between the families. Hakon, the son of Paul, was of a turbulent and overbearing disposition. He seems to have had a lingering attachment to the Pagan faith of his forefathers, for, while in Sweden (which was longer in being converted to Christianity than Norway), he is said to have sought out the Pagan spaemen to learn his future from them. Coming to Norway he tried hard to induce King Magnus Barelegs to undertake an expedition to the Orkneys and the Western Isles, hoping that the king would conquer the Islands for the glory of the conquest, and hand them over to him, as Harald Harfagri had given them to Rögnvald, Earl of Mœri. He was more successful than he anticipated. King Magnus, fired with the love of conquest, did make the expedition, but he deposed Paul and Erlend, and carried them to Norway, placing his own son Sigurd, a mere child, over the Orkneys.

Although the Saga speaks as if there had been only one expedition by King Magnus to Scotland, there were in reality three. Fordun[33] states that when Donald Bane, Duncan, and Edgar, were struggling for the kingdom on the death of Malcolm in 1093, King Magnus was ravaging the gulfs of the Scottish seaboard, and it is stated in the Saga[34] that he assisted Murcertach in the capture of Dublin in 1094. In his second expedition in 1098 he carried off the Earls Paul and Erlend, and made his own son Sigurd Earl of Orkney. Munch surmises that the motives of this expedition were two-fold—to secure his power in the Orkneys, and to assist his protégé Donald Bane, who had again usurped the crown of Scotland on the death of Duncan in 1095, and was in 1097 hard pressed by Edgar with an English army. King Magnus took with him from the Orkneys Magnus Erlend’s son (afterwards St. Magnus), and proceeded southwards to the Hebrides, where he ravaged Lewis, Skye, Uist, Tiree, and Mull, sparing Iona on account of its sanctity. The Saga says that he opened the door of the little church of Columbkill (St. Oran’s chapel), and was about to enter, but stopped suddenly, closed the door, forbade any one to enter, and gave the inhabitants peace. Then he went on to Isla and Kintyre, and thence to Man and Anglesea, where he fought the battle with the two Hughs, Earls of Chester and Shrewsbury. On his return northward he caused his vessel to be drawn across the isthmus of Tarbert, in imitation of the fabulous sea-king Beite, of whom a similar story is told. He returned to Norway in 1099, and during the next two years was occupied with the Swedish war. In 1102 he returned to the west, married his son Sigurd to Biadmynia, the daughter of Murcertach, and fell in a skirmish with the Irish in Ulster in 1103. He was buried in St. Patrick’s church in Down.[35]

Sigurd, the son of King Magnus, remained Earl of the Orkneys until his father’s death, when he succeeded to the throne of Norway.

Hakon Paul’s son, and Magnus Erlend’s son, then succeeded to the earldom, and held it jointly until Magnus was murdered in Egilsey by Hakon on the 16th April, A.D. 1115.[36]

After the murder of Magnus, Hakon became sole earl. He went on a pilgrimage to Rome and the Holy Land, and after his return became a good ruler, and was so popular “that the Orkneymen desired no other rulers than Hakon and his issue.”

Earl Hakon left two sons, Harald and Paul (the silent). Harald, who had succeeded to the earldom of Caithness, which “he held from the King of Scots,” was in some way unintentionally put to death by his mother Helga and her sister Frákork. As the Saga tells the story, he met his death by insisting on putting on a poisoned shirt which the sisters intended for his half-brother Paul, who, on Harald’s death, became sole Earl of the Orkneys.

A new claimant arose, however, in the person of Kali, son of Kol, a nobleman resident at Agdir, in Norway, who had married a sister of Earl Magnus the saint. Kali received from King Sigurd the gift of half the Orkneys, which had belonged to his uncle Magnus, and his name was changed from Kali Kolson to Rögnvald, because his mother said that Rögnvald Brusison was the most accomplished of all the Earls of Orkney, and thought the name would bring her son good fortune.

Rögnvald had many romantic adventures in the prosecution of his attempt to obtain possession of half of the earldom held by Paul, which are detailed at length in the Saga. At last he was advised by his father Kol to make a vow to St. Magnus, that if he should succeed in establishing himself in the Orkneys he would build and endow a “stone minster” at Kirkwall, dedicated to St. Magnus, “to whom the half of the earldom rightly belonged.” The vow was made, and Rögnvald’s next expedition was successful. He landed in Shetland, and by a dexterous stratagem the beacons on Fair Isle and in the Orkneys were made to give a false alarm of his descent upon the Orkneys, so that when he did land there he was unopposed. Then he secured the intervention of the bishop, and an agreement that he should have half the Islands was concluded between him and Earl Paul. Shortly thereafter Earl Paul was captured by Swein Asleifson, a notable leader at that time in the Islands, and the last and greatest of the Orkney vikings. Swein carried the earl off in his vessel, and, landing him on the southern shore of the Moray Firth, delivered him into the safe keeping of Maddad, Earl of Athole,[37] who was married to Margaret, a sister of Earl Paul. What became of the earl is not known, “but this,” says the Saga, “is well known, that he came never again to the Orkneys, and had no dominions in Scotland.” Swein Asleifson returned to Orkney, and by the joint consent of Earl Rögnvald, Bishop William of Orkney, and Bishop John of Athole, Harald, the son of Maddad, earl of Athole, was made Earl, along with Rögnvald, though he was at that time a child of only five years old. This arrangement was afterwards confirmed by a meeting, held in Caithness, of the Bœndr and chiefs of the Orkneys and Caithness.

The Earls Rögnvald and Harald visited King Ingi by invitation at Bergen, and there Earl Rögnvald met with Eindridi Ungi, a returned Crusader, and became possessed by a strong desire to visit the Holy Land. On his return voyage to Orkney, Earl Rögnvald was shipwrecked at Gulberwick in Shetland, and narrowly escaped with his life. Bishop William strongly approved of his project to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and agreed to accompany him. Accordingly he went back to Norway to organise the expedition, and returned to the Orkneys followed by a large number of Jorsala-farers—mostly adventurers of very indifferent character, if we are to judge by their turbulent and lawless behaviour during their stay in the Orkneys, where they spent the winter previous to their departure for the East. Early in the spring of the year 1152 Earl Rögnvald called a Thing-meeting of the inhabitants of the Islands, and told them of his purposed voyage, announcing that he was to leave the sole government in the hands of Harald during his absence, and asking them all to obey him and help him faithfully as their lawful lord. The summer was far advanced before he sailed, but he had a prosperous voyage, the adventures of which are detailed in the Saga; and after visiting Jerusalem and bathing in the Jordan, he returned by way of Constantinople, Durazzo, Apulia, and Rome, and so overland to Norway, the whole expedition occupying about three years.

In the same summer that Earl Rögnvald left the Orkneys on his pilgrimage, King Eystein came from Norway with a large force, and seizing Earl Harald Maddadson as he lay at Thurso with a single ship, made him pay a ransom of three marks of gold, and swear fealty to him for Orkney and Shetland. Earl Maddad of Athole was now dead, and Margaret, the mother of Earl Harald, had come to the Orkneys. Erlend, the son of the Earl Harald (Slettmali), who was killed by the poisoned shirt, had set up his claim to half the earldom after Rögnvald’s departure. His cause was favoured by King Eystein, and espoused by Swein Asleifson, and Earl Harald was obliged to make peace by taking oath to allow Erlend to remain in possession of the Islands, an arrangement which was afterwards confirmed by a Thing-meeting of the Bœndr of the Orkneys, Earl Rögnvald’s claim to his share of the Islands being, however, reserved. Earl Harald (Maddadson) was thus denuded of all power in the Islands. He fled across to Caithness, but after a time he returned to the Orkneys with four ships and a hundred men, and after an unsuccessful attempt to surprise Erlend[38] he was obliged to abandon the enterprise for a time. Meanwhile, Erlend had carried off Harald’s mother Margaret (who seems to have been still a beautiful woman, though of very indifferent character), and fled with her to the island of Mousa in Shetland, where they fortified themselves in the old Pictish tower or borg of Mousa, which about two centuries before had given shelter during a whole winter to a pair of lovers from Norway, under circumstances somewhat similar.[39] Harald pursued them, and laid siege to the borg, which could not be taken by assault, but the two earls came to a mutual understanding, and the siege was abandoned. Erlend married Margaret, and the same summer he and Harald went each on a visit to Norway to meet Earl Rögnvald on his return from the Holy Land.

Erlend succeeded in making an alliance with Earl Rögnvald. Earl Harald was not aware of this till he returned from Norway, and heard the news in Orkney. He and Rögnvald met at Thurso, and a skirmish took place between their respective followers, in which thirteen of Rögnvald’s men were slain, but by the efforts of their mutual friends the two earls were brought to an agreement of peace. Erlend and his faithful ally Swein Asleifson surprised the squadron of the two earls at Scapa, taking fourteen ships, and putting both the earls to flight. They crossed over to Caithness during the night, each in a separate boat, and returning some time after with a fresh force, they surprised Erlend in Damsey, and slew him. Then they made peace with Erlend’s old ally, Swein Asleifson, although this was not effected without some difficulty. Harald and Rögnvald then ruled the two earldoms jointly, and apparently in great harmony, until the death of the latter in 1158. Rögnvald was slain at Calder, in Caithness, by Thorbiörn Klerk, the former friend and counsellor of Earl Harald, who had been made an outlaw by Earl Rögnvald for a murder committed in Kirkwall, following on a series of acts of violence.[40]

Earl Harald Maddadson now became sole ruler of the earldoms of Orkney and Caithness. But by his second marriage he had allied himself with Hoarflad (Gormlath), daughter of Malcolm MacHeth, the so-called Earl of Moray, ex-bishop Wimund, and pretender to the Scottish throne, and consequently there could be no pacific relations between him and King William the Lion. The events of this period are somewhat confusedly told in the chronicles, but it seems probable that Harald was one of the six earls who rebelled against King Malcolm in 1160, in order to place William of Egremont, grandson of Duncan, on the throne,[41] and that he also supported Donaldbane, the son of William who aspired to the throne, and from 1180 maintained himself in Moray and Ross, till he was slain at the battle of Macgarvey, 1187.[42] When Harald Ungi, son of Eirik Slagbrellir, by Ingigerd (or Ingirid), daughter of Earl Rögnvald, appeared as a rival claimant to the earldom of Orkney, having received from King Magnus Erlingson a grant of his grandfather’s share of the Islands, King William embraced his interests, and gave him a grant of half of Caithness, which was thus taken from Earl Harald. Then Earl Harald became involved in difficulties with his other suzerain, the reigning King of Norway, through the expedition of the Eyarskeggiar or partisans of Sigurd, son of Magnus Erlingson, whom they endeavoured to place upon the throne in opposition to King Sverrir. Sigurd’s cause was largely espoused by the Orkneymen, and the expedition (which was organised and fitted out in Orkney) did much mischief in Norway. Earl Harald was obliged to present himself before King Sverrir in Bergen. He went from Orkney accompanied by Bishop Bjarni. In presence of a great assembly in the Christ’s Kirk garth, the earl confessed his fault, saying that he was now an old man, as his beard bore witness; that he had bent the knee before many kings, sometimes in closest friendship, but oftener in circumstances of misfortune; that he had not been unfaithful to his allegiance, although some of his people might have done that which was contrary to the king’s interests; and that he had not been always able to rule the Orkneys entirely according to his own will; and that now he came to yield up himself and all his possessions into the king’s power. So saying, he advanced, and casting himself to the earth, he laid his head at King Sverrir’s feet. The king granted him pardon, but took from him the whole of Shetland,[43] “which never after that formed part of the Norwegian earldom of Orkney,” though after the time of the Saga-writer, Shetland as well as Orkney was granted to Henry St. Clair in 1379 by King Hakon Magnusson, the second of that name.

Yet though humiliated in this manner, and stripped of a great part of his dominions, Earl Harald, according to Hoveden, dared to contest the possession of Moray with King William, instigated no doubt by his wife, in whose right alone he could have had any feasible claim to its possession.

Roger de Hoveden, chaplain to Henry II., a contemporary chronicler, thus records the events that followed:—[44]