[460]. Shetland then passed into the immediate possession of the Crown of Norway. Its revenues were granted by King Hakon Magnusson, in 1312-19, to the Mary-kirk in Osloe (Christiania) for the completion of the fabric, with the proviso that then they should revert to the crown.
[461]. According to the Iceland Annals of the Flateyjarbók, King Ingi Bardson “took the kingdom” in 1204, and Harald Maddadson died in 1206.
[462]. The death of Hakon Galinn took place in the year 1214, according to the Annals appended to the Flateyjarbók.
[463]. A spann = 24 marks, or 12 lbs. Scottish.—Balfour’s Odal Rights, p. 99.
[464]. Halkirk, in the Thurso valley.
[465]. The Icelandic Annals place the burning of Bishop Adam in the year 1222, and add that the King of Scots caused the hands and feet to be hewn off eighty men who had been concerned in the Bishop’s burning. Among the documents found in the King’s treasury at Edinburgh in 1282 (and subsequently lost) was one entitled: “A quit-claiming of the lands of the Bondi of Caithness for the slaughter of the Bishop.” A bull of Pope Honorius, dated 23d January 1223, and addressed to the Bishops of St. Andrews, Glasgow, Dunkeld, and Dunblane, speaks in terms of high commendation of King Alexander’s zealous desire to avenge such an unheard-of crime as the burning of a bishop, and thoroughly corroborates the Saga account of the manner of Adam’s death, stating that these “wolves” and “demons,” having stripped their Bishop of his garments, stoned him, mortally wounded him with an axe, and finally burned him in his own kitchen. (Theiner’s Vetera Monumenta, p. 21.)
[467]. The Mainland of Orkney.
[468]. Haugaheith, now Hoxa, a peninsula on the north-west side of South Ronaldsay, on which there are still several ancient grave-mounds, and one mound larger than the rest, which has been ascertained to cover the ruins of a Pictish tower. The grave-mound of Earl Thorfinn has not been identified, but Low mentions that in his time there was a tradition that the son of a King of Norway had been buried in the How (haug) of Hoxa (Haugs-heith).
[469]. Steinsness, in Hrossey, is the “ness” or promontory at the Loch of Stennis on the Mainland of Orkney, now so well known as the site of the “standing stones of Stennis.” The Norsemen evidently named it Steinsness from the stone circles and monoliths which stood on it when they first knew it. (See the Introduction, under “[Stennis].”)