[293]. Scotland’s Firth—the channel between the west coast of Scotland and the Hebrides.
[294]. Muircearteach, grandson of Brian Boroimhe, King of Munster.
[295]. Now Drontheim, so called because situated at the mouth of the Nid.
[297]. Ulster, in Ireland.
[298]. King Sigurd, the Jorsala-farer, set out on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1107.
[299]. Borgarfiord, the “fiord of the Borg,” now Burra Firth, on the west side of the Mainland of Shetland, so named by the Norsemen on account of the “borg,” or “Pictish tower,” which still stands on the little holm of Hebrista, though greatly ruined. It is probable that the reason of Thorbiörn’s connection with Borgarfiord was its affording him and his followers a shelter and defensive position in the borg. The old name Borgarfiord occurs in a document in the Norse language dated 1299. It is a record drawn up in the Lagthing of certain charges made against Herr Thorvald Thoresson, by a woman named Ragnhild Simonsdatter, who accuses him of malversation of the land-rents of Brekasettr. (Diplom. Norvegicum, vol. i. p. 81.) Harald of Borgarfiord in Shetland witnesses a document in 1498.
[300]. The place where the Orkney Things were held is nowhere more particularly indicated. Stennis has been suggested, on the supposition that the great stone circle there would have been thus utilised by the Northmen. It does not appear, however, that the occasion on which Havard, son of Thorfinn Hausakliuf, was killed at “Steinsness” was a Thing meeting there, and this is the only occasion on which Stennis is mentioned in the whole of the Flateyjarbók. “Tingwale,” in the parish of Rendale, occurs in the Orkney Land List of 1502. This seems to be the only trace of the old Thing-völl in Hrossey.
[301]. Egilsey, in Jo. Ben’s description of the Orkneys (1529) called “Insularum Ecclesia,” is regarded by Munch as deriving its name not from the Norse proper name Egil, but from the Irish Eaglais, a church. “To this day,” he says, “Egilsey contains a church shown by its construction to have been built before the Northmen arrived in Orkney, or at all events to belong to the more ancient Christian Celtic population. (See under “[Egilsey]” in the Introduction).
[302]. These dates are self-contradictory, and utterly irreconcilable. King Magnus Barelegs fell in Ireland in the year 1103; and it is stated in the Saga of Sigurd, the Jorsala-farer, that Hákon, Paul’s son, came to Norway to King Sigurd “a year or two after King Magnus’s fall.” The King gave him the earldom and government of the Orkneys, and he went back immediately to Orkney. Then it is added that four years after the fall of King Magnus—that is, in 1107—King Sigurd set out on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Now, it is mentioned in this Saga (chap. [xxxiii].) that Earl Magnus went to Norway to see King Eystein, “for King Sigurd had then gone to Jerusalem.” This must have been after 1107. King Eystein gave him his patrimony, one-half of the Orkneys. If his visit to Norway was in the year after King Sigurd’s departure, as seems likely from the narrative, or in 1108, and “he had been seven winters Earl in the Orkneys along with Earl Hákon,” this would bring the date of his death exactly to the year assigned in the Iceland Annals appended to the Flateyjarbók, or to 1115. The entry in the “Annalar” for that year is: “Pindr enn heilagi Magnus jarl i Orkneyium.” Torfæus dates this event in 1110. The Saga of St. Magnus says he had been twelve winters Earl of the Orkneys jointly with Hákon, counting evidently from the vacancy of earldom in 1103 by the accession of Sigurd, Magnus’ son, then Earl of the Orkneys, to the throne of Norway. This also gives the date 1115.