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The two jarls met in battle in the Pentland Firth, off Rautharbiorg or Rattar Brough in Caithness, east of Dunnet Head, Kalf Arnason with his six ships standing out of the fight. Thorfinn had sixty ships, smaller, and, save Thorfinn's own, lower in the waist than those of his enemy, who thus easily boarded them, and then attacked Thorfinn.

Thorfinn next claimed two trithings of Orkney from his nephew Ragnvald, who demurred to giving up what the Norse king had conferred on him, but, finding he could not cope with Thorfinn's Orkney, Caithness and Scottish forces, Ragnvald fled to King Magnus, who gave him a force of picked men, and bade Kalf Arnason also to help him, although Kalf was Thorfinn's friend, and near connection by marriage.

Surrounded and boarded on both sides, Thorfinn cut his ship free and rowed to land. Arrived there, he removed his seventy dead, and all his wounded. Next he persuaded Kalf Arnason to join him with his six ships, and renewed and won the fight, though Ragnvald himself escaped to Norway.

Among the Icelandic legends collected by Jón Arnason is a story which, in certain important particulars, is very much like the story about Bjarki's fight with the troll-dragon. A portion of it is as follows: "A man named Gudmundur lived once upon a time at a farm called Silfrúnarstadir, in the bay of Skagafjördur.