United States or Saudi Arabia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The history of these early jarls is not told in detail in any surviving contemporary record, for the Sagas of the jarls as individuals have perished; but there is a brief account of them in the beginning of the Orkneyinga Saga, another in chapters 99 and 100 of the St. From these the following story may be gathered.
After making due allowance for the legends which generally cluster round a saint or jarl, and grow with time, and for the desire for dramatic contrast and effect, we must give credit to the writer of the Orkneyinga Saga, probably the Orkney Bishop Bjarni, for the vividness and simplicity of his account of St.
In the following pages an attempt is made to fit together facts derived, on the one hand, from those portions of the Orkneyinga, St.
Having arrived, under the guidance of the Orkneyinga, at the closing years of the 12th century, so far as the affairs of Orkney and Shetland and Sutherland and Caithness are concerned, it remains for us to turn and observe the tide of civilisation and order which under our Scottish kings was now setting strongly northwards and ever further north in each successive reign, the Catholic Church and the feudal baron being the chosen instruments of national organisation and discipline, and the charter being the method of establishing them in the land.
Although the history of the time of Thorfinn Sigurdson, the first Scottish Earl of Caithness and Sutherland, would have been of great interest to inhabitants of those counties, the Orkneyinga Saga contains but little information about his doings in them, because he bent all his efforts towards extending his dominion over the islands which formed his father Sigurd's jarldom, his policy, in his youth at least, being directed to this object by his grandfather, Malcolm II. Indeed during the life of that king, Thorfinn 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.
The pedigree of the descendants of Earl Harold Maddadson, and particularly of his daughters, who are named in the Orkneyinga Saga, ceases; and that of Earl John's family and of Harald Ungi and his sisters downwards stops also, save in the case of Ragnhild, the youngest of them, whose son Snaekoll Gunni's son is mentioned as claimant in 1231 from Earl John of certain lands in Orkney and in Caithness as well.
Of the next nine centuries from 1000 to the present time it is proposed to deal with the first two hundred and seventy years only, which, with the preceding century and a half, form a chapter of Scottish history complete in itself. The narrative, as already stated, will be based largely upon the great Stories or Tales known as the Orkneyinga, St.
Here the Orkneyinga Saga ends. From these we learn that of Eric Stagbrellir and Ingigerd's children, who were settled in Sutherland, the sons, Harald Ungi, Magnus, and Ragnvald Eric's son, fared east to Norway to King Magnus Erling's son, where young Magnus Eric's son fell with that king in the battle of Norafjord in Sogn in 1184.
Thorfinn's life forms the subject of no less than twenty-six chapters of the Orkneyinga Saga.
Hakon, from boyhood, went with Sweyn on all his spring and autumn "vikings" or piratical cruises, undertaken every year to the Hebrides, Man, and Ireland, in one of which Sweyn took two English ships near Dublin, and returned to Orkney laden with broadcloth, wine, and English mead. Sweyn's life is thus described in c. 114 of the Orkneyinga Saga.
Word Of The Day