In 852, Olaf the White, a chieftain descended from the same family as Harald Harfagri, conquered Dublin, and founded the most powerful and permanent of the Norse kingdoms in Ireland.
By the victory of Hafursfiord in 872, Harald Harfagri made himself sole monarch of Norway. Large numbers of the wealthy and powerful odallers, whom he had dispossessed of their territorial possessions, fled to the islands of Orkney and Shetland, which, for a full century previous to this time, had been well known to the Norsemen as the viking station of the western haf—the rendezvous of the Northern rovers, who swept the coasts of the Hebrides and swarmed in the Irish Seas. Being fugitives from their country, and outlaws of the new kingdom which Harald had succeeded in establishing in Norway, they settled themselves permanently in the islands. Then they turned their haven of refuge into a base of operations for retaliatory warfare, harrying the coasts of Norway during the summer months, and living at leisure in the islands during winter on the plunder. At length King Harald, irritated by their incessant ravages, collected a powerful fleet, and visiting Shetland, Orkney, and the Hebrides, in succession, he swept their coasts clear of the plunderers, subduing the whole of the Northern and Western islands as far south as Man.
In this expedition Ivar, a son of Rögnvald, Earl of Moeri, was killed.[[10]] In order to recompense Rögnvald for the loss of his son, King Harald bestowed on him the territory of the subjugated isles of Orkney and Shetland, with the title of Earl of the Orkneys. Harald seems to have dealt similarly with the Hebrides, but his conquest of the vikings in these remote isles was not so complete as in the Orkneys. Ketil Flatnef (Flat nose), who, according to the Laxdæla Saga, had emigrated to the Hebrides because he could not resist King Harald in Norway, had married his daughter Aud to Olaf the White, the powerful king of Dublin, and had established himself in a kind of independent sovereignty in the Hebrides; and though he seems to have migrated from them to Iceland in consequence of King Harald’s expedition, the continued hostility to King Harald’s rule is evinced by the fact that the second earl whom he sent to the Hebrides, AsBjörn Skerablesi, was slain by two relatives of Ketil Flatnef, his wife and daughter taken captive, and the latter sold as a slave. Rögnvald, however, returned to his own Earldom in Norway, and made over his newly-acquired possessions to his brother Sigurd, the “first earl” of the Saga.
IV. The Earldom in the Norse Line, 872-1231.
Thorstein the Red, son of Olaf the White, king of Dublin, came then to the north, and allying himself with Earl Sigurd, they crossed over to the mainland of Scotland, and subdued Caithness and Sutherland as far as Ekkialsbakki, and afterwards carried their conquests into Ross and Moray. In this invasion Earl Sigurd killed Maelbrigd the buck-toothed (Melbrigda tönn), a Scottish maormor of Ross or Moray; and having tied his head to his saddle-bow, “the tooth,” which was very prominent, inflicted a wound on his leg, and the wound inflaming caused the death of the earl, who was hoy-laid (buried in a mound or cairn) on Ekkialsbakki.[[11]] After his death, Thorstein the Red reigned as king over the conquered districts of Scotland, which at that time, says the Landnamabók,[[12]] comprehended “Caithness and Sutherland, Ross and Moray, and more than the half of Scotland.” The Laxdæla Saga[[13]] says that in his engagements with the Scots Thorstein was always successful, “until at length he became reconciled with the King of the Scots, and obtained possession of the half of Scotland, over which he became king.” But he was shortly afterwards slain in Caithness by the treachery of the Scots; and after his death Aud, his mother, migrated to Iceland. Previous to her departure she had given Groa, the daughter of Thorstein, in marriage to Duncan, earl or maormor of Duncansby in Caithness. Thus the Norse earldom of Caithness passed for a time into the family of one of its native chiefs. But by the subsequent marriage of Grelauga, the daughter of Duncan and Groa, with Thorfinn Hausakliuf, son of Torf-Einar, Earl of Orkney, the Scottish earldom was again added to the earldom of the Isles.
While Thorstein the Red ruled on the northern mainland of Scotland, Guttorm, the son of Sigurd Eysteinson, had succeeded to the Orkney earldom on the death of his father, but after having held it for one year he died childless.
Meantime, when Rögnvald, Earl of Moeri, heard in Norway of the death of his brother Sigurd, he obtained a grant of the earldom of Orkney from King Harald for his own son Hallad. Hallad found the Islands so much infested by vikings that he soon gave up the earldom in disgust, and returned to Norway, preferring the life of a farmer to that of an earl.[[14]]
Then Rögnvald sent another son, Einar, to take possession of the earldom. Einar was a man of a different stamp from Hallad. He soon made his power felt among the western vikings, and freed his possessions entirely from their ravages. The sons of Harald Harfagri, Halfdan Hálegg and Guthrod, grew up to be men of great violence. One spring they went north to Moeri and burnt Earl Rögnvald in his own house with sixty of his men. Halfdan Hálegg then sailed west to Orkney to dispossess Einar of the earldom, but having allowed himself to be surprised by Einar, he was captured in Rinansey, and killed by having a blood-eagle cut on his back.[[15]] Harald Harfagri came west, and fined the Orkneys in sixty marks of gold for the death of his son. Earl Einar offered to the Bœndr[[16]] that he would pay the money on condition that he should have all the odal possessions in the islands—a condition to which they agreed the more readily, says the Saga, “that all the poorer men had but small lands, while those who were wealthy said they would redeem theirs when they pleased.”[[17]] But the odal lands remained in the possession of the earl till Einar’s great-grandson, Sigurd Hlödverson, was obliged to buy the assistance of the odallers against the Scots when hard pressed by the Scottish earl Finnleik.[[18]]
When Einar died he left three sons, two of whom, Arnkell and Erlend, were killed with King Erik Bloodyaxe in England. The third, Thorfinn Hausakliuf, married Grelauga, daughter of Duncan, earl of Duncansbay, and thus reunited in the Norse line the two earldoms of Orkney and Caithness. Earl Thorfinn Hausakliuf left five sons. Arnfinn, the eldest, who was married to Ragnhild, a daughter of King Erik Bloodyaxe, was killed by his wife at Myrkhol (Murkle) in Caithness. She then married Havard, his brother. She soon tired of him, and instigated Einar Klining, his sister’s son, to kill him. Havard fell in the fray at Stennis, and was buried there.[[19]] Ragnhild had promised to marry Einar if he killed her husband Havard. When the deed was done, however, she refused to perform her promise, and instigated another Einar, by the promise of her hand, to slay Einar Klining. This he did, but again Ragnhild was faithless. Then she married Liot, the third son of Earl Thorfinn Hausakliffer, and brother of the two husbands whom she had already had and slain. Meanwhile Skuli, a fourth brother, had gone to Scotland and obtained an earl’s title for Caithness from the King of Scots.[[20]] He was defeated by Liot, and slain in the Dales of Caithness, and thus Liot became sole earl of Caithness and Orkney. He fell in battle with a native chieftain, named Magbiód[[21]] in the Sagas, at Skida Myre[[22]] (Skitten) in Caithness, and was succeeded in the earldom by Hlödver, the last of the five brothers.
Earl Hlödver married Audna, the daughter of the Irish king Kiarval. He died shortly after his accession to the earldom, and was buried at Hofn (Huna) in Caithness.[[23]] His son Sigurd, sometimes called “the Stout,” succeeded him. He is said to have been a mighty warrior, and to have driven the Scots completely from Caithness.[[24]] But he was not left in undisturbed possession of his Scottish earldom. The Scottish earl or maormor, Finlay (MacRuari?) invaded Caithness and gave him battle at Skida Myre, where his uncle Liot had fallen before another Scottish maormor not long previously. Finlay had so large a force that there were no less than seven Scotsmen to one of Sigurd’s men, and the Orkneymen who were with Earl Sigurd were unwilling to fight against such odds. Then Sigurd offered to restore to the Bœndr their allodial lands, which they had resigned to Earl Einar, his great-grandfather. By this means, more than by the charmed raven-banner made for him by his Irish mother, he obtained the victory. “After this,” says the Njal Saga,[[25]] “Earl Sigurd became ruler over these dominions in Scotland, Ross and Moray, Sutherland and the Dales” (of Caithness), which seem also to include the old Strathnaver. But his troubles with the Scots were not yet over. Caithness was invaded by two Scottish maormors, called Hundi and Melsnati in the Saga.[[26]] A battle took place at Duncansbay, in which Melsnati was slain, but Hundi fled, and the Norsemen, learning that another Scottish earl, Malcolm, was assembling an army at Duncansbay, gave up the pursuit and returned to Orkney. Afterwards Sigurd became reconciled to Malcolm, King of the Scots, and obtained his daughter in marriage.