The Northmen in Britain

The wildest of all the vikings were those who settled in the Orkney Isles and carried on their raids from there. After Ragnvald had given up his possessions in the Isles to Earl Sigurd, the earl made himself a mighty chief; he joined with Thorstein the Red, son of Olaf the White of Dublin and Unn the Deep-minded, and together they harried and won, as we have seen, all Caithness, and Moray and Ross,23 so that they united the northern part of Scotland to the Orkney and Shetland Isles. The Scottish earl of those lands was ill-pleased at this, and he arranged that he and Sigurd should meet and discuss their differences and the limits of both their lands. Melbrigd the Toothy was the name of the Scots’ earl, because his teeth protruded from his jaws; and they arranged to meet at a certain place, each with forty men. But Sigurd suspected treachery, and he caused eighty of his men to mount on forty horses. As they rode to the place of meeting Melbrigd said: “I shrewdly suspect that Sigurd hath cheated us; I think I see two men’s feet at each side of the horses; thus, they are twice as many as we. Let us, however, do our best, and see that each man of us can answer for a man of them before we die.” So they marshalled themselves to fight, and when Sigurd saw this he ordered one half of his men to dismount and attack from behind, while the other half set on them in front. They had a good tussle after that, and Earl Melbrigd fell with all his men, and Sigurd’s men cut off their heads and fastened them to their horses’ cruppers, and set off home boasting of their victory. The bleeding heads dangled behind them; and as he rode, Earl Sigurd, intending to kick his horse with his foot to urge him on, scratched his leg against a tooth of Melbrigd which stuck out from his head, and the wound became so swollen and painful that in the end he died of it. Sigurd the Mighty is buried in a “howe,” or burial-mound, on the banks of the Oikel, in Sutherlandshire.

When Earl Ragnvald heard that his possessions in Orkney were again without a lord, and that Sigurd his brother was dead, he sent one of his sons, Hallad, to take his place; but vikings went prowling all over those lands, plundering the headlands and committing depredations on the coast. The yeomen brought their complaints to Hallad, but he did not do much to right them; he soon grew tired of the whole business, resigned his earldom, and went back to Norway to take up his own property. When his father heard of this, he was by no means well pleased. All men mocked at Hallad, and Ragnvald said his sons were very unlike their ancestors. His eldest son, Rolf, was away in Normandy, plundering and conquering. He was a mighty viking, and he was so stout that no horse could carry him, and whithersoever he went he must walk on foot; hence he was called Rolf Ganger, or Rolf the Walker. He was the conqueror of Normandy, and from him the Dukes of Normandy and Kings of England were descended. King Harald drove him out of Norway because he had one summer made a cattle foray on the coast of Viken, and plundered there. King Harald happened to be in the neighbourhood, and he heard of it, and it put him into the greatest fury; for he had forbidden, under heavy penalties, that anyone should plunder within the bounds of his territories. Rolf’s mother, Hild, interceded for him, but it was of no avail. She made these lines:—

What she had predicted came to pass, for Ganger-Rolf went west over the sea to the Hebrides, and thence to the west coast of France, which the Norsemen called Valland, where he conquered and subdued to himself a great earldom, which he peopled with Northmen, from which it was called Normandy. He was ancestor of William the Conqueror, King of England, and ruled in Normandy from 911 to 927.

Earl Ragnvald had three other sons living at home with him, and after Hallad’s return from Orkney he called them to him and asked which of them would like to go to the islands; for he heard that two Danish vikings were settling down on his lands and taking possession of them. Thorir said that he would go if his father wished. But Ragnvald replied that he thought he had need of him at home, and that his property and power would be greatest there where he was.

Then the second, Hrollaug, said: “Father, would you like me to go?” The earl said: “I think your way lies toward Iceland; there you will increase your race, and become a famous man; but the earldom is not for you.”

Then Einar, the youngest, came forward; he was a tall, ugly man, with only one eye, yet very keen-sighted, and no favourite with his father. What he said was: “Would you wish me to go to the islands? One thing I will promise you that I know will please you; it is that I will never come back. Little honour do I enjoy at home, and it is hardly likely that my success will be less anywhere else than it is here.”

Earl Ragnvald said: “Never knew I any man less likely for a chief than yourself, for your mother’s people come of thralls; but it is true enough that the sooner you go and the longer you stay the better pleased I shall be. I will fit out for you a ship of twenty benches,24 fully manned, and I will get for you from King Harald the title of Earl of Orkney in my place.”

So this was settled, and Einar sailed west to Shetland and gathered the people round him, for they were glad to get rid of the vikings. They slew them both in a battle in the Orkneys, and Einar took possession of their lands. He was the first man who found out how to cut turf for fuel, for firing was scarce on those islands and there was little wood; but after that men used peat; and they called him Torf-Einar, or Turf-Einar, on account of that.

The chief difficulty that Torf-Einar had was from King Harald Fairhair’s sons, who were now grown to be men. They were overbearing and turbulent, for they thought their father ought to have given his lands to them and not to his earls, and they set themselves to revenge their wrongs (as they thought them) on the King’s friends. They came down suddenly on Earl Ragnvald and surrounded his house and burnt him in it and sixty with him. The King was so angry at this that one of them, Halfdan Long-legs, had to fly before his wrath, and he rushed on shipboard and sailed west, appearing suddenly in the Orkneys. When it became known that a son of King Harald was come, the liegemen were full of fear, and Earl Einar fled to Scotland to gather forces to resist him. But later in the year, about harvest-time, he came back and fought Halfdan, and gained the victory over him. Halfdan slipped overboard in the dusk of eventide and swam to land, and a few followers after him, and they concealed themselves in the rocks and cliffs of the islands. Next morning, as soon as it was light, Einar’s men went to search the islands for runaway vikings, and each man who was found was slain where he stood. Then Torf-Einar began to search himself, and he saw something moving in the island of Ronaldsay, very far off, for he was more keen-sighted than most men. He said: “What is that I see on the hillside in Ronaldsay? Is it a man or is it a bird? Sometimes it raises itself up and sometimes it lays itself down. We will go over there.” There they found Halfdan Long-legs, and they cut a spread-eagle on his back, and killed him there, and gave him to Odin as an offering for their victory; and Einar sang a song of triumph over him, and raised a cairn over him, and left him there.25

But when this news reached Norway it was taken very ill by Halfdan’s brothers and King Harald, and the King himself ordered out a levy, and proceeded westward to Orkney. When he heard that Harald was coming, Torf-Einar fled to Caithness, but in the end the quarrel was made up between them, on condition that the isles should pay the King sixty marks of gold. The people were so poor that they could not meet the fine, but Einar undertook the whole payment himself, on condition that they should make over to him their allodial holdings, or freeholds. They had no choice but to submit to this, and from that time till the time of Earl Sigurd the Stout the earls possessed the properties; but Sigurd restored most of them to their original owners.26

Then King Harald went home to Norway, and Earl Einar ruled the Orkneys till his death.

It was a bad time for the Orkneys during the stay of Eric Bloodaxe and his sons in England. He ruled from York, which had been the capital of Northumbria ever since the half-mythical days of Ragnar Lodbrok. Every summer Eric and his band of followers from Norway, bold and reckless men like himself, went on a cruise, plundering in the Hebrides and Orkneys, and as far as Ireland or Iceland. Wherever they appeared the people fled before them. In the Orkneys they committed great excesses and were much dreaded. This was in the time of Thorfin Skull-splitter, Torf-Einar’s son, and of Earl Hlodver, his son, the father of Earl Sigurd the Stout, who fell at the battle of Clontarf. Sigurd’s mother was Eithne, or Audna, an Irish princess, daughter of Karval, King of Dublin (872–887). It was she who worked the raven-banner that was carried before the earl at Clontarf, which brought its bearers ill-luck.27 She was a very wise and courageous woman, and people thought she was a witch on account of her knowledge.

Earl Sigurd the Stout was a powerful man and a great warrior. While he was Earl of Orkney, Olaf Trygveson made a raid upon the Orkney Isles on his way to recover his kingdom of Norway. The earl had gathered his forces for a war expedition, and was lying in a harbour near the Pentland Firth, for the weather was too stormy to cross the channel. As it happened, Olaf, or, as he was then called, Ole (for he was still in hiding), ran into the same harbour for shelter. When he heard that Sigurd the Stout was lying there he had him called, and addressed him thus: “You know, Earl Sigurd, that the country over which you rule was the possession of Harald Fairhair, who conquered the Orkneys and Shetland (then called Hjaltland), and placed earls over them. Now these countries I claim as my right and inheritance. You have now come into my power, and you have to choose between two alternatives. One is that you, with all your subjects, embrace the Christian faith, be baptized, and become my men; in which case you shall have honour from me, and retain your earldom as my subject. The other is that you shall be slain on the spot, and after your death I will send fire and sword through the Orkneys, burning homesteads and men. Choose now which you will do.”

Though Sigurd saw well what a position he was in and that he was in Olaf Trygveson’s power, he replied at once: “I will tell you, King Olaf, that I have absolutely resolved I will not, and dare not, renounce the faith which my kinsmen and forefathers had before me, because I am not wiser than they; moreover, I know not that the faith you preach is better than that which we have had and held all our lives. This is my reply.”

When the King saw the determination of the earl he caught hold of his young son, who was with his father, and who had been brought up in the islands. The King carried the boy to the forepart of the ship, and, drawing his sword, said: “Now I will show you, Earl Sigurd, that I will spare no one who will not listen to my words. Unless you and your men will serve my God, I shall with this sword kill your son this instant. I shall not leave these islands until you and your son and your people have been baptized and I have completely fulfilled my mission.” In the plight in which the earl found himself, he saw that he must do as the King desired; so he and his people were baptized, and he became the earl of King Olaf, and gave him his son in hostage. The boy’s name was Whelp, or Hound, but Olaf had him baptized by the name of Hlodver, and took him to Norway with him; the boy lived but a short time, however, and after his death Earl Sigurd paid no more homage to King Olaf. It was fourteen years after the death of Olaf that the earl went to Ireland, and was slain at the battle of Clontarf in Dublin.