[263]. Nídarós, now the town of Drontheim, so called from its being situated at the mouth of the river Nid.
[264]. King Olaf adjudged Earl Einar’s third of the islands to be forfeited for the slaying of Eyvind Urarhorn. (See chap. [v].)
[265]. Skotlandsfiord, Scotland’s Firth, was the name given to the channel between the Hebrides and the mainland of Scotland. (See chap. [xxx].)
[266]. Vatnsfiord, probably Loch Vattin, an arm of the sea branching off Loch Bracadale, in Skye.
[267]. Gaddgedlar.—This passage has given rise to a variety of conjectures. None of the explanations which have yet been offered are free from difficulties. Munch (Chronicon Manniæ, p. 46) says that, considering the situation of Caithness, and how well the author of the saga must have known it, it becomes evident that between “Caithness” and “at the place” an and must have been dropped by the subsequent writer, who, living about A.D. 1380, and in Iceland (this part of the saga existing only in the Codex Flateyensis), might easily have dropped an ok (or the abbreviation thereof), not conscious of the great blunder he committed. He further adds that Gaddgedlar is evidently the Norse corruption of “Galwydia,” Galloway. This explanation is open to the objections that, besides the improbability of Thorfinn having dwelt for the most part in Caithness and in Galloway, the latter place does not fit the description that there Scotland and England meet. The word eingland, signifying meadow, or strath land, may possibly have been used as a general term for “The Dales of Caithness,” if it may not be supposed to be a mis-transcription of the word eignarland, meaning Thorfinn’s own territory. Gaddgedlar might be the Norse pronunciation of the native word Gall-gael, applied to the mixed population of the districts where the Norse element had not entirely displaced the Celtic, or the border districts between the Norse earldom and the purely Celtic territory “where Scotland and his (Thorfinn’s) own land meet.”
[268]. Raudabiorg, or Red Headland, must be looked for in the neighbourhood of Dunnet Head, where the red beds of the Old Red Sandstone form the distinctive feature of the coast. A little to the east of Dunnet Head there is an outlying crag named Brough of Rattar, or Rattar Brough—in all probability a corrupted form of the old name Raudabiorg. Still farther to the eastward, where the burn of Rattar enters the Firth, are the ruins of an old “Pictish tower,” or broch—in old Norse, borg. In its immediate vicinity is a little promontory called Kirk o’ Taing (Kirkiu Tunga, the Tongue, or Ness of the Kirk), on which are the ruins of one of the small rudely-built chapels of the early Christian time. On the north side of the chapel the edges of a number of stone cists are visible through the turf; and from two of these, which were dug up in cutting a drain in the spring of 1872, eight silver armlets of the ancient penannular form were obtained. These correspond exactly with the armlets which formed part of the great hoard exhumed at Skaill, in Orkney, on the opposite side of the Firth, with Cufic and Anglo-Saxon coins of the tenth century—in all probability a hoard deposited by some of the vikings on their return from a plundering expedition. As Earl Thorfinn and his men were Christians, it seems probable that, if the chapel was then in existence, the bodies of the seventy slain in the fight off Raudabiorg, which were landed here, would be buried in the consecrated ground attached to this chapel.
[269]. The Mainland of Orkney.
[270]. The two Papeys, the great and the little (anciently Papey meiri and Papey minni), now Papa Westray and Papa Stronsay, are both mentioned in the Saga. Fordun, in his enumeration of the islands, has a “Papeay tertia,” which is not now known. There are three islands in Shetland called Papey, and both in Orkney and Shetland there are several districts named Paplay or Papplay, doubtless the same as the Papyli of Iceland. Munch considers that these names betray a Kelto-Christian origin. They probably indicate the settlements of Irish ecclesiastics in the islands previous to the arrival of the Northmen. The recent discoveries in Orkney of ecclesiastical bells of the early square form, and of stone monuments with Ogham inscriptions (in one case associated with a figure of the cross of an early form), seem to point to the settlement of ecclesiastical communities in the islands at a very early period. (See [Introduction].)
[271]. Now Papa Westray.
[272]. King of Denmark.