Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time

n-Earl

and drove them from its fertile seaboard, probably with the help of Sigurd Hlodverson, Jarl of Orkney. The men of Moray, however, and their Pictish Maormors remain

by a series of matrimonial alliances. He had no son; but he had three available daughters,2 of whom

leader of the time, Crinan, Abthane of Dunkeld, th

ds Duncan I of Scotl

as Gospatrick, and whose second son was Do

ably about 1040, his father being possibly of the family of Moldan of Duncansby, whose sons Gritgard and Snaekolf, if we may believ

of North Moray, and a chief of the northern Picts, and they had a son, Macbeth, born about

as we have seen, was killed in 1014 at the decisive battle of Clontarf, his wife having died probably before that event; and thei

hrough the fathers of Duncan, Macbeth, and Thorfinn respectively; and we may note that from Thorfinn are

the fiction of Holinshed, Boece, and William Shakespeare, they were all about the sam

at least of Scotland. To accomplish this, he would have to bring under the supremacy of the Scottish crown in addition to the Picts of Atholl, whom the Scots had absorbed, the Gallgaels of Argyll, the Picts of Moray and of Ross within and beyond the Grampians, and those of the province of Cat, with the Norsemen there as well. He

nn appears to have established himself at Duncansby in Caithness, on the shore of the Pentland Firth, and to have occupied himself in endeavouring to induce his three surviving half-brothers, Somarled, Brusi, and Einar, to part with as large a share as possible of Orkney and Shetland, and cede it to himself. In this he had much assistance from King Malcolm. Thorfinn, whose mother probably died in his infancy if we are to credit his father's matrimonial stipulations as regards an Irish wife in 1014, succeeded to t

wanted two shares for himself, and fought to retain them, he only wearied out his followers and alienated them by his cruelty. They, therefore, went over to Thorfinn in Caithness. More important

nar having the control of both; and Thorfinn got his trithing,6 managing it by his men, who collected his scatt and tolls under Thorkel Fostri, whom Einar plotted to kill. Einar next seized Eyvind U

king as Einar was in disgrace. Brusi then tried to reconcile Thorfinn and Einar, and Thorkel was to be included in the settlement. Thorkel, however, after inviting Einar to a feast in his hall at Sandvik in Deerness, a promontory south-east of Kirkwall, discovered a plot by Einar to attack him by three several ambushes as t

n Norway, ultimately awarded Brusi two-thirds, Thorfinn having the rest. Brusi, however, being unable to defend the isles from pirates, about the year 1028

ed by Duncan's unfortunate raids south of the Tweed, ended by his creating Mumtan or Moddan, his own sister's son, Earl of Caithness instead of Thorfinn. With a force collected in Sudrland, which thus appears to have been on the Scottish side, Moddan tried to make good his title, but Thorfinn raised an army in Caithness, and Thorkel

proceeding thither himself by sea with eleven ships. Duncan caught Thorfinn and his five ships off the Mull of Deerness in the Mainland of

ich Moddan was, and killed him there as he tried to escape. Thorkel next raised levies in Caithness, Sutherland, and Ross, joined forces with Thorfinn in

is found in abundance, though now submerged; and the battle was fought at Standing Stane in

wing description of the

left.... He went thither first where the battle of those Irish was; so hot was he with his train, that they gave way at once before him, and never afterwards got into good order agai

ay up into Scotland, and after that he fared about

ting men, "while the women and old men dragged themselves off to the woods and wastes with weeping and wailing," and it also tells of his journey north along Scotland to his ships.13 "He fared then north to Caithness, and sate t

ing to note14 that Duncan died, not in old age, (as Shakespeare, following Boece and the English chronicler Holinshed would have us believe) but a young man of thirty-nine years, either in, or after, Thorfinn's battle, and that he fell a victim not of Groa, Macbeth's wife'

all and an able splendid man of great mind and polite manners." He had saved King Olaf's brother Harald Sigurdson at the great battle of Stiklastad, after King Olaf, Ragnvald's own foster-father, was killed, and had fought with great distinction in Russia. Shortly after his father's death, Ragnvald returned, and, fortified by a grant from Kin

V, page 171, Mr. Collingwood suggests that the King of Catanesse, who fought for years to gain possession of Gratiana, the lost wife of William

n him, but, finding he could not cope with Thorfinn's Orkney, Caithness and Scottish forces, Ragnvald fled to King Magnus, who gave h

ler, and, save Thorfinn's own, lower in the waist than those of his enemy, who thus easily boarded them, and then attacked Thorfinn. Surrounded and boarded on both sides, Thorfinn cut his ship free and rowed t

Orphir in which he was, but the earl tore out a panel at the back, and, escaping through it with his young wife Ingibjorg in his arms, rowed in the dark ov

and, led by his lapdog's barking, discovered him among the rocks by the sea, where Thorkel Fostri slew him, Thorfinn meanwhile annihilating his following, save one man. This man, who like the rest, was one of King Magnus' bodyguard, he bade go to his king and tell t

and, and sole earl of Caithness and Sutherland, and he also held Ross and the western island

fter visiting King Sweyn in Denmark, and Henry III, Emperor of Germany, rode south to Rome probably in 1050 along with, it is said, his cousin Macbeth, king, and a good king, of Scotland, returning thence

ealm. Then he left off warfare, and he turned his mind to ruling his people and land, and to law-giving. He sate almost always

t we hear nothing of Thorfinn in this, and the question arises whether he had died before it took place. Had he been alive, such an expedition would hardly have been possible with

his foster-father, Thorkel Fostri, the slayer of his three chief competitors-Jarl Einar and Earl Moddan and Jarl Ragnvald Brusi-son-the captain of his armies, the collector of his revenues and the guardian, in his absence on his Viking cruises and in his travels abroad, of his

ded, in his Hall at Birsay, north of Marwick Head in the north-west corner of Mainland of Orkney, within a few miles of the scene of Earl Kitchener's recen

and died in 1057 or 1058, after being an earl for his whole life of "fifty years," while his widow married Malcolm III in 1059. The phrase "in the latter days of Harald Hardrada" is after all an expression wide enough to cover the last seven years of a re