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Shortly after his father's death, Ragnvald returned, and, fortified by a grant from King Magnus of Norway, whom he had helped to gain the throne, claimed his father's two trithings of the Orkney jarldom.
After the great decisive battle of Hafrsfjord in Norway in 872, because Orkney and Shetland and the Hebrides had become refuges for the Norse Vikings, who had been expelled from their country or had left it on the introduction of feudalism with its payment of dues to the king, but were raiding its shores, Harald Harfagr, king of Norway, along with Jarl Ragnvald of Maeri attacked and extirpated the pirate Vikings in their island lairs; and, as compensation to the jarl for the loss of his son Ivar in battle, Harald transferred his conquests with the title of Jarl of Orkney and Shetland to Ragnvald, who, in his turn, with the king's consent, soon made over his new territories and title to his brother Sigurd.
Ragnvald Gudrodson forthwith collected a great army in Ireland and the Sudreys and invaded Caithness, and, meeting Harold Maddadson in battle at Dalharrold, where the River Naver issues from the loch, drove him northwards down the strath to the coast, whence he escaped to Orkney.
His vow accomplished, all Norway now his, Harold at last consented to the cutting of his hair, this being done by Ragnvald, the earl of Möre. The tangled strands being cut and the hair deftly combed, those who saw it marvelled at its beauty, and from that day the king was known as Harold the Fair-Haired.
As already stated, it contained, especially in connection with the sea, and ships, gear, and tackle, many old Norse words, and, in the Gaelic of Sutherland, as in the English of Orkney and Shetland and of Caithness and Moray the Old Norse roots remain. Nor need we believe that every Magnus or Sweyn, or Ragnvald was a pure Norseman.
But the Norwegians of the ninth century had as yet no national feeling; and they regarded King Harold's prohibition against plundering their own shores as absurd and arbitrary. Rollo or Rolf, the son of the king's best friend, Ragnvald, Earl of Möre, undertook to disregard the order.
Ragnvald Jarl, at Kirkwall, which took the place of Thorfinn's church at Birsay as the seat of the Orkney bishopric. Magnus, it seems, was all through assisted by the Scottish king, and favoured by the Caithness folk, yet the Saga jealously claims him as "the Isle-earl," and adds the following description of him:
Soon after this time his grandfather's friend, the first Freskyn, died between 1166 and 1171, and was succeeded by his son William MacFrisgyn, whose son Hugo would then be quite young. Harold Maddadson had in 1165 been for twenty-six years Earl of Caithness, and Jarl of Orkney and Shetland for nineteen years jointly with Ragnvald, and for seven years sole jarl of those islands.
After a round of harrying and piracy, especially in Sutherland, no doubt among the Moddan clan, Sweyn was heartily welcomed home by Jarl Ragnvald, from whom he immediately obtained another fleet for another set of raids on Wales, the coasts of the Bristol Channel and the Scilly Isles.
But the ancient Irish were sadly careless on such points; and as Giraldus Cambrensis says, "followed the example of men of old in their vices more willingly than in their virtues." More than forty years had elapsed since that famous battle of Clontarf, and since Ragnvald, Reginald, or Ranald, son of Sigtryg the Norseman, had been slain therein by Brian Boru.
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