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He probably then built the round church at Orphir in Mainland of Orkney, the only Templar Church in Scotland. Ingibiorg afterwards married Olaf Bitling, king of the Sudreys; and Ragnvald Gudrodson, the great Viking, was of her line, and, as we shall see, in 1200 or thereabouts, had the Caithness earldom conferred upon him for a short time. To Margret we shall return later.
His murder of Sweyn Breast-rope was committed just after an adjournment of the feast at Orphir for Nones in the Templar Church there, and Jarl Ragnvald's gift of the ships for Frakark's punishment was made while the jarl was piously engaged in completing and adorning St. Magnus' Cathedral at Kirkwall. The strategy leading up to the Burning is characteristic of Sweyn and his stratagems.
When I was but an infant my father had carried me out in his great strong arms, and for the first time showed me the sun rising over the furrowed hills of Orphir. He had directed my childish eyes to the deep green of the sea water as it rippled gently against the wall of our house.
The news of his brother's death, which arrived during the feast, was considerately withheld from him, and he was greatly honoured there; but he roused the jarl's anger by slaying Sweyn Breast-rope, the jarl's forecastle-man, at Orphir, not indeed so much for the murder, as because Sweyn had fled and did not come to submit himself after it to the jarl, and so offended him.
With the object of getting rid of Paul, they went over with Sigurd Slembi-diakn to Orphir in Orkney; and we have the story of the poisoned shirt, made there by Frakark and Helga, and by them intended for Paul, but put on, in spite of their expostulations and entreaties, by Harald, who died of its poison, leaving, however, one son, Erlend, then an infant.
On a certain bright morning in the month of May, 1843, the little port of Stromness wore an aspect of unwonted commotion. The great whaling fleet that every year sailed from this place for the Greenland fisheries was busily preparing for sea. The sun was shining over the brown hills of Orphir, and casting a golden sheen over the calm bay.
Then there was Jock Eunson, a good-humoured Orphir man, who, on many a dark night, had kept his mates merry as they beat about in the outer sea in search of ships; and Ringan Storlsen, of Finstown, who had been at school with my father, and with whom he had had many an adventure. "Hurry along, my lads; there's Kinlay started," said my father, seating himself in the stern sheets.
The place-name, "Skaill," remains both in Sutherland and Caithness. But no skilled antiquary, has as yet laid bare by excavation the secrets of likely sites of Norse dwellings in these counties, as Mr. A.W. Johnston has done at The Jarls' Bu at Orphir, in Orkney. There was also a castle of note on the northern shore of the modern port of Helmsdale, which is probably the castle of Sorlinc of Mr.
Sailing thence in 1046 with one ship and a picked crew, Ragnvald surrounded Thorfinn, who was wintering in Mainland of Orkney, and set fire to the Hall at Orphir in which he was, but the earl tore out a panel at the back, and, escaping through it with his young wife Ingibjorg in his arms, rowed in the dark over to Caithness, where he remained in hiding among his friends, all in Orkney believing him dead.
Ultimately, the earls were reconciled on the 25th of September 1154, and about 1156 joined forces and went to Orkney against Sweyn and Erlend, who pretended they were sailing for the Hebrides, but put their ships about at Store Point in Assynt, and after all but seizing Jarl Ragnvald at Orphir in Orkney, captured his ships, though he and Harold escaped, each in a small boat, across the Pentland Firth to Caithness.
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