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This war was put an end to by the release of Malcolm MacHeth, who was created Earl, probably of Ross, after another civil war in Somarled's own country had called Somarled back to the Isles; and the young king Malcolm joined Henry II of England in his wars in France.
He was, in fact, by race and descent, almost a pure Gael, and at Malcolm's court must have spoken only Gaelic. Of his three half-brothers, Somarled and Brusi were not unwilling to give Thorfinn a share of the Orkney jarldom.
For they were meek men, especially Brusi; and, when Somarled died, though Einar wanted two shares for himself, and fought to retain them, he only wearied out his followers and alienated them by his cruelty. They, therefore, went over to Thorfinn in Caithness.
He could thus ultimately hope to oust Somarled, Brusi and Einar, Jarl Sigurd's sons by his first wife, and their overlords, the Norse kings, from Orkney and Shetland, and to add those islands to his dominions. Meantime, Somarled, Brusi and Einar took no share in Cat. Thorfinn had Cat, all for himself, as a fief of the Scottish king.
In the same year Somarled of Argyll and the sons of MacHeth engaged in a joint rebellion, which lasted three years until the eldest of them, Donald, was taken and placed as a prisoner with his father in Roxburgh Castle, leaving Somarled to continue the war alone.
Malcolm next defeated another rising by Somarled, who was killed in 1164, by treachery or surprise, in a skirmish at Renfrew, and was not Somarled the freeman, who is said in the Orkneyinga Saga to have been slain by Sweyn in the Isles, in his pursuit and defeat of Gilli Odran in the Myrkfjord about seven years earlier. Then King Malcolm, after a short but brilliant reign, died in his 24th year.
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.
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