Read Ebook: The Orkneyinga Saga by Anonymous Anderson Joseph Editor Goudie Gilbert Translator J N A Hjaltal N J N Andr Sson Hjaltal N Translator

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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 Landnamab?k and the Islendingab?k 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 occurs both in the topography of Orkney and Shetland, and the occurrence of such names as St. Ninian's Isle in Shetland, Rinansey in Orkney, Daminsey, now Damsey , and Enhallow , 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.

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 Haeretha-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 Haeretha-land, now H?rdaland, 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.

In this expedition Ivar, a son of R?gnvald, Earl of Moeri, was killed. In order to recompense R?gnvald 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 , who, according to the Laxdaela 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, AsBj?rn Skerablesi, was slain by two relatives of Ketil Flatnef, his wife and daughter taken captive, and the latter sold as a slave. R?gnvald, 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.

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 , 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 on Ekkialsbakki. After his death, Thorstein the Red reigned as king over the conquered districts of Scotland, which at that time, says the Landnamab?k, comprehended "Caithness and Sutherland, Ross and Moray, and more than the half of Scotland." The Laxdaela Saga 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 R?gnvald, 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.

Then R?gnvald 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 H?legg and Guthrod, grew up to be men of great violence. One spring they went north to Moeri and burnt Earl R?gnvald in his own house with sixty of his men. Halfdan H?legg 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. Harald Harfagri came west, and fined the Orkneys in sixty marks of gold for the death of his son. Earl Einar offered to the Boendr 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." But the odal lands remained in the possession of the earl till Einar's great-grandson, Sigurd Hl?dverson, was obliged to buy the assistance of the odallers against the Scots when hard pressed by the Scottish earl Finnleik.

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 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. 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. 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 Magbi?d in the Sagas, at Skida Myre in Caithness, and was succeeded in the earldom by Hl?dver, the last of the five brothers.

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 Flateyjarb?k 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 weaving the woof of war:--

"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 , 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 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. 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, Br?si, 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 Boendr for his viking expeditions, and was killed by Thorkel F?stri at Sandwick, in Deerness. Br?si 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, Br?si 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 Br?si 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 Br?si 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.

R?gnvald 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, in Caithness, R?gnvald was defeated and fled, and Thorfinn reduced the whole of the Islands. R?gnvald 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. R?gnvald, 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 R?gnvald in a house on Papa Stronsay, burnt the house and all who were in it, except R?gnvald, 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 F?stri. 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 R?gnvald, 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, 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 , 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 R?gnvald, Earl of Moeri. 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 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 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 prot?g? 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 , 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 , 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.

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.

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 . 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 Fr?kork. 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 R?gnvald, because his mother said that R?gnvald Brusison was the most accomplished of all the Earls of Orkney, and thought the name would bring her son good fortune.

R?gnvald 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 R?gnvald'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, 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 R?gnvald, Bishop William of Orkney, and Bishop John of Athole, Harald, the son of Maddad, earl of Athole, was made Earl, along with R?gnvald, 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 Boendr and chiefs of the Orkneys and Caithness.

The Earls R?gnvald and Harald visited King Ingi by invitation at Bergen, and there Earl R?gnvald 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 R?gnvald 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 R?gnvald 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 R?gnvald 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 , who was killed by the poisoned shirt, had set up his claim to half the earldom after R?gnvald'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 Boendr of the Orkneys, Earl R?gnvald's claim to his share of the Islands being, however, reserved. Earl Harald 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 he was obliged to abandon the enterprise for a time. Meanwhile, Erlend had carried off Harald's mother Margaret , 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. 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 R?gnvald on his return from the Holy Land.

Erlend succeeded in making an alliance with Earl R?gnvald. Earl Harald was not aware of this till he returned from Norway, and heard the news in Orkney. He and R?gnvald met at Thurso, and a skirmish took place between their respective followers, in which thirteen of R?gnvald'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 R?gnvald then ruled the two earldoms jointly, and apparently in great harmony, until the death of the latter in 1158. R?gnvald was slain at Calder, in Caithness, by Thorbi?rn Klerk, the former friend and counsellor of Earl Harald, who had been made an outlaw by Earl R?gnvald for a murder committed in Kirkwall, following on a series of acts of violence.

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 , 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, 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. When Harald Ungi, son of Eirik Slagbrellir, by Ingigerd , daughter of Earl R?gnvald, 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 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, "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.

"In the same year William, King of Scots, having gathered a great army, entered Moray to drive out Harald MacMadit, who had occupied that district. But before the king could enter Caithness, Harald fled to his ships, not wishing to risk a battle with the king. Then the King of Scots sent his army to Turseha , the town of the aforesaid Harald, and destroyed his castle there. But Harald, seeing that the king would completely devastate the country, came to the king's feet and placed himself at his mercy, chiefly because of a raging tempest in the sea, and the wind being contrary, so that he could not go to the Orkneys; and he promised the king that he would bring to him all his enemies when the king should again return to Moray. On that condition the king permitted him to retain a half of Caithness, and the other half he gave to Harald, the younger, grandson of Reginald , a former Earl of Orkney and Caithness. Then the king returned to his own land, and Harald to the Orkneys. The king returned in the autumn to Moray, as far as Ilvernarran , in order to receive the king's enemies from Harald. But though Harald had brought them as far as the port of Lochloy near Invernairn, he allowed them to escape; and when the king returned late from hunting, Harald came to him, bringing with him two boys, his grandchildren, to deliver them to the king as hostages. Being asked by the king where were the king's enemies whom he had promised to deliver up, and where was Thorfinn his son, whom he had also promised to give as a hostage, he replied, 'I allowed them to escape, knowing that if I delivered them up to you they would not escape out of your hands. My son I could not bring, for there is no other heir to my lands.' So, because he had not kept the agreement which he had made with the king, he was adjudged to remain in the king's custody until his son should arrive and become a hostage for him. And because he had permitted the king's enemies to escape, he was also adjudged to have forfeited those lands which he held of the king. The king took Harald with him to Edinburgh Castle, and laid him in chains until his men brought his son Thorfinn from the Orkneys; and on their delivering him up as a hostage to the king, Harald was liberated.

"So Harald returned to Orkney, and there remained in peace and quiet, until Harald the younger, having received a grant of the half of the Orkneys from Sverrir Birkebein, the King of Norway, joined himself to Sigurd Murt, and many other warriors, and invaded Orkney. Harald the elder, being unwilling to engage with him in battle, left the Orkneys and fled to the Isle of Man. He was followed by Harald the younger, but Harald the elder had left Man before his arrival there, and gone by another way to the Orkneys with his fleet, and there he killed all the adherents of the younger Harald whom he found in the Islands. Harald the younger returned to Caithness to Wick, where he engaged in battle with Harald the elder, and in that battle Harald the younger and all his army were slain. Harald the elder then went to the King of Scots, on the safe conduct of Roger and Reginald, the bishops of St. Andrews and Rosemarkie, and took to the king a large sum in gold and silver for the redemption of his lands of Caithness. The king said he would give him back Caithness if he would put away his wife , the daughter of Malcolm MacHeth, and take back his first wife, Afreka, the sister of Duncan, Earl of Fife, and deliver up to him as a hostage Laurentius his priest, and Honaver the son of Ingemund, as hostages. But this Harald was unwilling to do; therefore came Reginald, son of Sumarlid, King of Man and the Isles, to William, King of Scots, and purchased from him Caithness, saving the king's annual tribute."

Reginald, being supplied with auxiliary forces from Ireland by his brother-in-law, John of Courcy, overran Caithness, and, returning home, left the conquered earldom in charge of three deputies. Harald procured the murder of one of them, and then, coming over from Orkney with a strong force, landed at Scrabster, where the bishop met him and endeavoured to mollify him. But Harald had a special grudge against Bishop John, which added to his rage at what he considered the defection of his Caithness subjects. The bishop had refused to collect from the people of Caithness a tax of one penny annually from each inhabited house, which Earl Harald had some years previously granted to the papal revenues. Accordingly he stormed the "borg" at Scrabster, in which the bishop and the principal men of the district had taken refuge, slew almost all that were in it, and caused the bishop to be blinded and his tongue to be cut out. The two remaining deputies of King Reginald fled to the King of Scots, whose first act was to take revenge on Harald's son Thorfinn. He was blinded and castrated after the barbarous manner of the times, and died miserably in the dungeon of Roxburgh Castle. King William, then collecting a great army, marched north to Eysteinsdal on the borders of Caithness in the spring of 1202. Though Harald had collected a force of 6000 men, he felt himself unable to cope with the king, and was obliged to sue for peace, which was obtained on the hard condition of the payment of every fourth penny to be found in Caithness, amounting to 2000 marks of silver.

Earl Harald's career was now drawing to a close. He died in 1206, at the advanced age of seventy-three, having had the earldom for twenty years jointly with Earl R?gnvald, and forty-eight years after R?gnvald's death.

His sons John and David succeeded him, and ruled jointly for seven years, when David died and John became sole Earl of Orkney and Caithness. The most notable event of his time was the burning of Bishop Adam at Halkirk in Caithness.

Bishop Adam was a man of low birth. According to the Saga he was a foundling, and had been exposed at a church door. Previous to his consecration to the see of Caithness, in 1214, he had been Abbot of Melrose. He arbitrarily increased the exaction of the bishop's seat to such an extent that the populace rose in a body, and proceeding tumultuously to Halkirk, where he was residing, demanded abatement of the unjust exactions. Earl John, who was in the neighbourhood at the time, declined to interfere, and the exasperated populace, finding the bishop indisposed to treat them more liberally, first killed his adviser, Serlo, a monk of Newbottle, and then burnt the bishop. In the quaint language of Wyntoun--

"Thre hundyre men in cumpany Gaddyrt on hym suddanly, Tuk hym owt quhare that he lay Of his chawmyre befor day, Modyr naked hys body bare; Thai band hym, dang hym, and woundyt sair In-to the nycht or day couth dawe. The monk thai slwe thare, hys falawe, And the child that in hys chawmyr lay, Thare thai slwe hym before day. Hymself bwndyn and wowndyt syne Thai pwt hym in hys awyn kychyne, In thair felny and thare ire Thare thai brynt hym in a fyre."

The Saga tells that when the tidings of this outrage reached King Alexander he was greatly enraged, and that the terrible vengeance he took was still fresh in memory when the Saga was written. Fordun states that the king had the perpetrators of this deed mangled in limb and racked with many a torture. The Icelandic Annals are more precise. They say that he caused the hands and feet to be hewn from eighty of the men who had been present at the burning, and that many of them died in consequence.

With this tragic and ill-omened event the chequered history of the line of the Norse Earls draws to a close. Earl John sought to clear himself from the guilt of complicity in the murder of the bishop by the testimony of "good men" that he had no hand in it; but seeing that he had neither assisted the bishop nor sought to punish his murderers, he was heavily fined by King Alexander, and deprived of part of his Scottish earldom. Subsequently he had an interview with the king at Forfar, and bought back his lands. In the summer of 1224 he was summoned by King Hakon to Norway, having fallen under suspicion of a desire to aid the designs of Earl Skule against Hakon's power in Norway; and after a conference with the king at Bergen he returned to Orkney, leaving his only son Harald behind him as a hostage. In 1226 Harald was drowned at sea, probably on his passage home from Norway. In 1231, Earl John having become involved in a feud with Hanef Ungi, a commissioner whom King Hakon had sent over to the Orkneys, Snaekoll Gunnason, grandson of Earl R?gnvald , and Aulver Illteit, they attacked him suddenly in an inn at Thurso, set fire to the house, and slew him in the cellar, where he had sought to conceal himself.

Thus the ancient line of the Norse Earls, that had ruled the Orkneys since 872--a period of 350 years--became extinct, and the earldom passed into the possession of the house of Angus.

Magnus seems to have been confirmed in the earldom of Orkney by the King of Norway; but from this time the notices of Orkney and its earls in the Icelandic or Norwegian records are so few and obscure, that but little is to be gathered from them. The Iceland Annals, however, record the death of Magnus, Earl of Orkney, in 1239.

According to the Diploma, Gilbride had one son, Magnus, and a daughter, Matilda. This Magnus is mentioned in the Saga of Hakon Hakonson as accompanying the ill-fated expedition of that monarch against Scotland in 1263. "With King Hakon from Bergen went Magnus, Earl of Orkney, and the king gave him a good long-ship." Pilots had previously been procured from the Orkneys, and the fleet, after being two nights at sea with a gentle wind, put into Bressay Sound in Shetland, where they remained nearly half a month. Then they sailed for the Orkneys, and lay for some time in Elwick Bay, opposite Inganess, near Kirkwall. Then they moved round South Ronaldsay, and lay some time in Ronaldsvoe, while men were sent over to Caithness to levy a contribution from the inhabitants, of which the scald sings that "he imposed tribute on the dwellers on the Ness, who were terrified by the steel-clad exactor of rings." Ordering the Orkneymen to follow him as soon as they were ready, the king sailed south to Lewis and Skye, where he was joined by Magnus, King of Man. The fleet, which now consisted of more than a hundred vessels, for the most part large and all well equipped, was divided into two squadrons, one of which, consisting of fifty ships, plundered the coasts of Kintyre and Mull, rejoining King Hakon at Gigha. A detached squadron now plundered Bute, and the fleet cast anchor in Arran Sound, from which King Hakon sent Gilbert, Bishop of Hamar, and Henry, Bishop of Orkney, with three other envoys, to treat for peace with the Scottish King. The negotiations failed, and soon after the fleet was disabled by a storm, and the power of the Norwegian King utterly broken in the battle of Largs. King Hakon, gathering together the shattered remnants of his fleet and army, retired slowly northwards, meeting with no impediment until they arrived off Durness, in Sutherlandshire, when the wind fell calm, and the fleet steered into the sound, where seven men of a boat's crew, who had been sent ashore for water, were killed by the Scots. In passing through the Pentland Firth one vessel went down with all on board in the "Swelkie," a dangerous whirlpool in certain states of the tide, and another was carried by the current helplessly through the Firth, and made straight for Norway. King Hakon laid up his fleet in Midland Harbour and Scapa Bay. He then rode to Kirkwall, and lay down to die. He was lodged in the bishop's palace, and after having been confined to his bed for some days, he recovered so much that he attended mass in the bishop's chapel, and walked to the cathedral to visit the shrine of St. Magnus. But there came a relapse, and he was again laid prostrate. He caused the Bible and Latin books to be read to him to beguile the tedium of the sick bed, until he was no longer able to bear the fatigue of reflecting on what he heard; and then he desired that Norwegian books should be read to him night and day--first the Sagas of the Saints, and then the Chronicles of the Kings, from Halfdan the Black through all the succession of the Kings of Norway. Then he set his affairs in order, caused his silver plate to be weighed out to pay his troops, and received the sacrament. He died at midnight on Saturday, 15th December 1263. On Sunday the corpse, clothed in the richest garments, with a garland on the head, was laid in state in the upper hall of the palace. The king's chamberlains stood round it with tapers, and all day long the people came to view the remains of their king. The nobles kept watch over the bier through the night; and on Monday the royal remains were borne to St. Magnus' Cathedral, where they lay in state all that night. On Tuesday they were temporarily interred in the choir of the church, near the steps leading to the shrine of St. Magnus. Before his death the king had given directions that his body should be carried east to Norway, and buried beside the remains of his father and his relatives in Bergen. In the month of March the corpse was exhumed and conveyed to Scapa, where it was placed on board the great ship in which he had sailed on the unfortunate expedition to Largs, and taken to Bergen, where it was interred in the choir of Christ's Church.

Magnus Gilbride's son, who was Earl of Orkney at the time of King Hakon's expedition, died in 1273.

He was succeeded by a son of the same name. The Annals have the entry under the year 1276:--"Magnus, King of Norway, gave to Magnus, son of Earl Magnus of Orkney, the title of Earl, at Tunsberg." He appears also as Earl of Orkney in the document, dated 5th February 1283, declaring Margaret, the Maiden of Norway, the nearest heir to the Scottish throne. The death of Earl Magnus, Magnus' son, is recorded in the year 1284, along with that of Bishop Peter of Orkney and Sturla the Lawman. The Diploma states that he died without issue, and was succeeded by his brother John in the earldom of Orkney and Caithness.

John, as Earl of Caithness, appears in 1289 as one of the signatories to the letter addressed by the nobles to King Edward of England proposing that the young Prince Edward should marry Margaret, the Maid of Norway. His name also occurs in the list of those summoned to attend the first parliament of Balliol. He swore fealty to King Edward at Murkle in Caithness, in 1297.

It was about the time of Earl John's visit to the court of King Hakon, on the occasion above referred to, that there occurred in Norway one of the most extraordinary instances of imposture on record. A woman appeared in Bergen, in 1300, declaring that she was the princess Margaret, daughter of King Eirik, and heiress to the crown of Scotland, who was believed by all in Norway and in Britain to have died off the coast of Orkney some ten years previously. She had come over in a ship from Lubeck, and her story was that she had been "sold" or betrayed by her attendant Ingibiorg Erlingsdatter, in the interest of certain persons who wished her out of the way, and had falsely given her out for dead. Although her appearance and circumstances were strongly against the credibility of her story, it seems to have taken a strong hold of the popular mind, and not a few of the clergy and the higher classes, possibly influenced by political motives, appear to have given her countenance. She was a married woman, and was accompanied by her husband, a German. She is described by Bishop Audfinn as being well up in years, her hair was greyish, and partially whitened with age, and to all appearance she was at least twenty years older than the date of King Eirik's marriage with Margaret of Scotland, and consequently about seven years older than King Eirik himself, who was but thirteen when he was married. "Yet," says Munch, "though the king's daughter Margaret had died in the presence of some of the best men of Norway, though her corpse had been brought back by the bishop and Herr Thore Hakonson, to King Eirik, who himself had laid it in the open grave, satisfied himself of the identity of his daughter's remains, and placed them in the Christ's Kirk by the side of her mother's;--though this woman, in short, was a rank impostor, yet she found many among the great men to believe her story, and not a few of the priests also gave her their countenance and support. That this German woman, purely of her own accord, should have attempted to personate the princess Margaret ten years after her death, and should have ventured to appear publicly in Norway on such an enterprise, seems hardly credible. It is more likely that she may have been persuaded to it by some parties perceiving in her a certain personal resemblance, who schooled her in the story she must tell to give her personation an air of reality." King Hakon was away from Bergen, and no action was taken in regard to her case until he returned in the early part of the winter of 1301. It was natural that he should wish personally to see and examine the impostor, and confront her with the princess's attendants, especially to hear the testimony of Ingibiorg Erlingsdatter, before deciding on anything. There is no record of the trial, but soon after the king's arrival the "false Margaret" was burnt at Nordness in Bergen, as an impostor, and her husband was beheaded. As she was being taken through the Kongsgaard gate to the place of execution, she is reported to have said--"I remember well when I as a child was taken through this self-same gate to be carried to Scotland. There was then in the High Church of the Apostles an Iceland priest, Haflidi by name, who was the court priest of my father King Eirik; and when the clergy ceased singing, then Sir Haflidi struck up with the 'Veni Creator,' and the hymn was sung out to the end just as I was being taken on board the ship." Notwithstanding the manifest nature of the imposture she was regarded by the multitude as a martyr; a chapel was erected on the spot where she suffered, and the number of pilgrimages made to it increased to such an extent that Bishop Audfinn interfered and forbade them.

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