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Updated: June 14, 2025
The date of the succession of Paul and Erlend to the Norse jarldom was, as we have seen, after 1057. Possibly in 1059, or certainly not later than 1064 or 1065, Ingibjorg, Thorfinn's widow, as by Norse law widows alone had the right to do, "gave herself away" to the Scot-King Malcolm III, known as Malcolm Canmore. As a matter of policy, the marriage was a wise step.
"We cannot fight Norway," he said, "so we must even flit hence to the mainland and wait until Harald is tired of seeking us. It is in my mind that he seeks not so much for revenge as for payment of scatt from our islands. Now he has a reason for taking it by force. He will seek to fine us, and then make plans by which I shall hold the jarldom from him for yearly dues."
When Eric Bloody-axe had been defeated and killed, his sons came to Orkney and seized the jarldom, and his widow, the notoriously wicked Gunnhild and her daughter Ragnhild settled there for a time. Thorfinn Hausa-kliufr had five sons, Arnfinn, Havard, Hlodver, Ljotr and Skuli. Three of these, Arnfinn. Havard and Ljotr, successively married Ragnhild, and Ragnhild rivalled her mother in wickedness.
After holding the jarldom for a long term, Torf-Einar died in his bed, as the Saga contemptuously tells us, probably in or after the year 920, leaving three sons, Arnkell, Erlend, and Thorfinn Hausa-kliufr or Skull-splitter, of whom the two first, Arnkell and Erlend, fell with Eric Bloody-axe, king of Norway, in England.
Erlend, only son of Harald Slettmali, and really entitled to the whole earldom, obtained from his relative King Malcolm, then a boy of under twelve, through his powerful kin, a grant of half of the earldom of Caithness jointly with Harold Maddadson, who objected to give him half the Orkney jarldom unless King Eystein confirmed the grant. Erlend then went to Norway to get it confirmed.
Lastly, neither Johanna nor her husband Freskin nor any descendant of hers ever claimed either the whole of or any share in the Orkney jarldom, which Earls Harald Maddadson, David and John had held in its entirety, and to which Johanna, had she been Earl John's only daughter, or her husband Freskin would have been entitled to claim to succeed as sole heir; while if John had had two daughters, and Johanna had been one of them, she or her husband Freskin would have been entitled to claim a grant of some share at least of the lands appertaining to the Orkney jarldom.
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.
In 1226, Harald was drowned at sea, probably on his return voyage, thus leaving John without any male heir, and save for his nameless hostage daughter or her children, if any, without any direct lineal heirs for the jarldom and earldom of Orkney and of Caithness respectively.
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