FOOTNOTES:
[8] English version by Sir G. W. Dasent.
[9] This song was probably composed soon after the events with which it is concerned and was first rendered into English by the poet Gray under the title The Fatal Sisters.
CHAPTER VI
THE VIKINGS IN THE ORKNEYS, SCOTLAND,
THE WESTERN ISLANDS AND MAN
When the Vikings sailed to England and Ireland in the late 8th and early 9th centuries their most natural path was by the Orkneys and Shetlands and round the Western Islands of Scotland. We have seen how early they formed settlements in the Shetlands, and they soon reached the Orkneys and the Hebrides. From the Orkneys they crossed to the mainland, to Sutherland and Caithness—the very names bear witness to Scandinavian occupation—while Galloway (i.e. the land of the Gaill-Gaedhil, v. supra, p. [56]) was settled from the Isle of Man. Already in the 9th century the Norse element in the Hebrides was so strong that the Irish called the islands Innsi-Gall (i.e. the islands of the foreigners), and their inhabitants were known as Gaill-Gaedhil. The Norsemen called the islands Suðreyjar (i.e. Southern Islands) in contrast to the Orkneys and Shetlands, which were known as Norðreyjar, and the name survives in the composite bishopric of 'Sodor' and Man, which once formed part of the archdiocese of Trondhjem in Norway. The Isle of Man was plundered almost as early as any of the islands of the West (v. supra, p. [12]), and it was probably from Man that the Norse settlements in Cumberland and Westmorland were established. Olaf the White and Ívarr made more than one expedition from Ireland to the lowlands of Scotland, and the former was married to Auðr the daughter of Ketill Flatnose who had made himself the greatest chieftain in the Western Islands. After the battle of Hafrsfjord, when Harold Fairhair had finally crushed his rivals in Norway itself, so powerful were the Norse settlements in the West that he felt his position would be insecure until he had received their submission. Accordingly he made a great expedition to the Shetlands, Orkneys and the west coast of Scotland, fulfilled this purpose and entrusted the Northern Islands to Sigurd, brother of Rögnvaldr, earl of Möre, as his vassal.
The history of the Norse settlements in the Orkneys is well and fully told in the Orkneyingasaga[10]. The first Orkney-earl was the above-named Sigurd. He entered into an alliance with Thorstein the Red, son to Olaf the White, and together they conquered Caithness and Sutherland, as far south as the river Oikel on the borders of Ross and Cromarty. Sigurd's son Einar, known as Turf-Einar because he first taught the islanders to cut peat for fuel, founded a long line of earls of the Orkneys. He had a quarrel with Harold Fairhair and when that king imposed a fine on the islanders for the murder of his son and the farmers could not pay it, Einar paid it himself on condition that the peasants surrendered their óðal rights, i.e. their rights of possession in the lands they cultivated. Turf-Einar's son Sigurd the Stout was the most famous of all the Orkney-earls, renowned both as warrior and poet. He conquered Sutherland, Caithness, Ross, Moray, Argyle, the Hebrides and Man, securing the support of the men of Orkney by giving them back their óðal. He married a daughter of Malcolm king of Scotland, and met his end, as we have already seen, fighting on the side of the heathen Norsemen in the battle of Clontarf in 1014. After this the power of the Orkney-earls declined. The Norse line of earls was replaced by one of Scottish descent in 1231, but the islands did not pass definitely to the Scottish crown until the 15th century[11].
Of the Norse settlements in the Hebrides we have no such definite or continuous record. Mention is made in Irish annals of the middle of the 9th century of a king in the Hebrides—one Guðröðr son of Fergus—whose very name shows him to have been one of the Gaill-Gaedhil. Ketill Finn (v. supra, p. [56]) was another such. In the latter half of the 9th century Ketill Flatnose was the chief Norse leader in the Hebrides until his power was destroyed by Harold Fairhair. Many of the settlers then betook themselves to Iceland, the most famous of them being Auðr the deep-thoughted, widow of Olaf the White and daughter of Ketill. Norse rule was all powerful during the 10th and 11th centuries. There was a line of kings but we find ruling side by side with them certain officers known as 'lawmen' (v. infra, p. [103]), while in the late 10th and for the greater part of the 11th century, the Hebrides were under the sovereignty of the Orkney-earls. Norse rule in the Hebrides did not finally come to an end until 1266 when Magnus Hákonsson, king of Norway, renounced all claims to the islands.
The early history of the settlements in Man is equally obscure. At first the island suffered from repeated raids, then about the middle of the 9th century it passed under the authority of the kings of Dublin and remained so until, with the Hebrides and Western Scotland generally, it was conquered by Sigurd the Orkney-earl. From the Orkney-earls it passed to the great conqueror Godred Crovan—the King Gorry or Orry of Manx tradition—who came from the Hebrides, and his successors down to the cession of the islands in 1266 were known as kings of Man and the Isles.
Of the details of the settlement of the Scottish mainland, of Caithness, Sutherland, and Galloway, of the occupation of Cumberland and Westmorland we know almost nothing, but when we speak later of Norse influence in these districts we shall realise how strong was their hold on them. Our knowledge of the Norse occupation of Man and the Islands is somewhat scanty in detail, but there can be no question that their settlements in lands often closely resembling in physical features their own home-country were of the highest importance.