Orkneyinga Saga Quotes

VIII. The Bishopric of Orkney—1060-1469.

King Erik Bloodyaxe in England

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.

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.

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,

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.

Kamban,

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]

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

The Annals only notice one Gilbride, whom they call “Gibbon, Earl of Orkney.” His death is placed in the year 1256. 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

Earl

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

impignorate

The Bishopric of Caithness appears to have been co-extensive with the older earldom, comprehending Caithness and Sutherland as far south as Ekkialsbakki or the Kyle of Sutherland. In

Oft it is that bearded men Are guilty deemed for taking sheep; But my offence is that I slew The young son of the Islands’ king. Men may say that danger waits me From the great king’s speedy vengeance; But his wrath shall never daunt me, In whose shield I’ve made a dint.

Man broad-bearded oft is outlawed, Many a one, for stealing sheep; But in isles here I for felling Mighty Harold’s youthful son: Risk hangs o’er me, say the freemen, From the king so courage-full, Harold’s shield I’ve hewn a hole in, None can call that dint in doubt.