The first step taken by the new earl was to identify his cause with the memory of his murdered uncle, whose aid had been invoked in support of the second and successful expedition. Policy as well as gratitude suggested that the fortunate result should be attributed to the intervention of the popular martyr, and Rognwald vowed that a lasting monument should hand down the remembrance of his murdered kinsman, and commemorate, at the same time, the manner in which the saint had interfered in his own behalf. In accordance with his vow a stately cathedral church arose at Kirkwall, which was dedicated in honour of St. Magnus; but it was a work far beyond the means of the earl, and to further its completion, he was obliged to restore their rights to the Odallers, who were permitted to regain their ancient privileges on payment of a large contribution in aid of the building.[462]
In the meantime the luckless Paul was conducted to the residence of the Earl of Atholl by his captor Sweyne Asleifason, a powerful nobleman of Caithness at feud with the earl on account of his banishment from the Orkneys. Here he was treated with the most ceremonious courtesy. The chair of state was resigned to him by Madach; the beautiful Margaret, surrounded by her ladies, received him with the cordial welcome of a sister; mummers and jesters relieved the monotony of the hour; and in the true spirit of northern hospitality the evening was devoted to drinking. Thus passed the leisure time of a Scottish nobleman in the twelfth century, when he was not engaged in the more stirring pursuits of war, or of the chase. One thing alone reminded the deposed earl of the real position in which he stood—the doors were invariably locked.[463]
Paul long maintained his reputation for taciturnity, but at length he appears to have spoken, and to the purpose; A. D. 1137. for two years after the accession of Rognwald, whilst that earl was celebrating with his friends some festive occasion in the month of July, their attention was attracted by the arrival of a vessel from the south with a venerable personage on board, whose purple cloak and quaintly trimmed beard aroused the curiosity of the Orkneymen, until the earl’s chaplain pronounced the mysterious stranger to be a Scottish bishop.[464] He was received with every mark of respect, and subsequently escorted to Egillsey, the residence of William, Bishop of the Orkneys; and the result of a conference between Rognwald and the two prelates was the admission of the claim of Harald Mac Madach to his uncle’s share in the earldom, in virtue of the resignation of Paul. The rights of Harald, then a child between four and five years of age, were confirmed at an amicable meeting, held in Caithness, by the leading chieftains of Atholl and the Orkneys, representing “the communities” of the respective earldoms;[465] A. D. 1138. and, in the following spring, he was consigned to the charge of Earl Rognwald, though his real supporters appear to have been Sweyne Asleifason and Thorbiorn, a grandson of Frakarka, married to the sister of Sweyne, and guardian to the youthful earl.[466]
A. D. 1153.
Fifteen years elapsed without any diminution in the friendship of Rognwald for his youthful colleague; Madach and his royal cousin sunk into the grave; and the elder earl departed for the Holy Land, leaving Harald in charge of the earldom.[467] The same year witnessed the last expedition, in which a Norwegian king enacted the part of a pirate in the western seas; Eystein, in a time of profound peace, inflicting upon the unoffending inhabitants of the English and Scottish coasts a repetition of the ravages of his heathen predecessors. Amongst the sufferers was Harald, who was surprised and captured off Thurso, but he regained his liberty at the price of several marks “in gold,” and an acknowledgment of his dependance upon Norway;[468] though he was less fortunate some years later, when his cousin Erlend Haraldson arrived to claim his share in the earldom. Erlend, who appears to have succeeded to the authority of his uncle, Ottir of Thurso, had taken advantage of the absence of Rognwald to obtain from the youthful king of Scotland, Malcolm the Fourth, a confirmation of his right to the half of Caithness, and he now demanded a similar division of the islands. Harald demurred to his claims unless they were confirmed by the Court of Norway, nor would he consent to acknowledge Erlend as his colleague, even after his rights were recognized by the Norwegian kings, till the defection of Sweyne Asleifason forced from him a reluctant acquiescence in this arrangement. Not content with depriving Harald of half the earldom, Erlend carried off the Earl’s mother, the still beautiful Margaret, bearing her to that singular fort of Mousa, in the Shetland Isles, of which the remains still exist to excite the curiosity of modern times; where he defended his prize with such tenacity, that he forced Harald to consent to their marriage, and this singular union of a nephew with his aunt is related in the Saga without a comment![469]
After a lengthened absence in the Holy Land, Rognwald returned from Palestine to find Erlend established in his place. In this dilemma the Bonders were assembled, whose unanimous verdict pronounced Rognwald to be the lawful representative of one line of their rulers; and as it then remained for them to determine which of the other earls was entitled to the remaining share in the islands, their decision was given in favour of Erlend. Their award was probably just, but Harald could hardly be expected to acquiesce in it. Retiring to the mainland he sought the assistance of his kinsmen, and when he reappeared in the Orkneys in the following spring, Rognwald immediately declared in favour of his early friend. But the redoubtable Sweyne Asleifason, who espoused the side of Erlend, long upheld the cause of the latter earl, by his courage and counsels, until the confederates, watching their opportunity, surprised and slew their rival whilst he was stupified by the effects of his potations.[470] Rognwald did not long survive their victory, falling a victim to the revenge of Thorbiorn, the former guardian of Harald, A. D. 1158. who waylaid and assassinated the earl whilst hunting in the dales of Caithness. His surviving colleague conveyed the body to Thurso, from whence, after a lapse of thirty years, A. D. 1188. it was removed to the cathedral church of Kirkwall, when the name of the murdered Rognwald was enrolled in the Calendar of the Saints.[471]
In this manner Harald found himself, at the age of five and twenty, in undisputed possession of the earldoms of Caithness and the Orkneys. In appearance, as well as in character, he must have resembled his maternal ancestor Thorfin; for, like that earl, he is described as “tall, strong, and hard-featured,”[472] and he raised his power, by his talents and military prowess, to a height unprecedented since the days of his formidable predecessor. To Sweyne Asleifason, his early friend and subsequent opponent, he appears to have been thoroughly reconciled. Sweyne was a genuine type of the chieftain of that era, a veritable representative of that numerous class which viewed, with such suspicious jealousy, the curtailment of their lawless liberty by the introduction of a novel system of government. The spring and autumn he dedicated to agriculture; a scanty crop was rudely sown and as rudely gathered in: the summer was devoted to a course of piracy; and the winter was spent in revelry. Such were still the habits of life amongst the chieftains of the north and west of Scotland; and in earlier times, as in Scandinavia and Northern Germany, the practice had been similar throughout the whole country, with the sole difference, that the dwellers upon the coasts were rovers by sea, and the inhabitants of the interior were plunderers by land.[473]
For nearly forty years Harald remained in the contented enjoyment of his two earldoms, acknowledging a nominal dependence upon the crowns of Scotland and Norway, but in all other respects as untrammelled as the most independent of his maternal ancestors. He was married to a sister of Duncan, Earl of Fife, and this connection with one of the firmest partizans of the reigning family may have kept him steady in his allegiance. At length, at the mature age of sixty and upwards, he transferred his affections to a daughter of Mac Heth, and he married the object of his elderly love after divorcing his former wife by one of those summary processes which lingered latest, with other barbarisms, in the extreme north. The union was inauspicious, as might have been expected; a daughter of Mac Heth could not fail to remind her husband of her hereditary claims upon Moray, and, yielding too readily to the suggestions of ambition, ere long Harald seized upon the province.[474]
A. D. 1196
It was the intelligence of these proceedings on the part of the earl that now brought William in haste from the south; for he had already suffered too much from such a cause to think lightly of a rebellion in the northern Highlands. Meeting Harald’s son, Thorfin, in the neighbourhood of Inverness, he defeated him with ease, killing Roderic, a partizan, apparently, of the family of Mac Heth;[475] whilst Harald retreated as the king advanced, until at length, despairing of success, he fled to his ships in the hope of escaping to the Orkneys. But the earl was doomed to misfortune; an adverse gale detained him in port, and he was compelled to become a reluctant eyewitness of the destruction of his castle at Thurso, and of the unwonted spectacle of a royal army ravaging the extremity of Caithness. Submission was now the only course left open, and he was fain to purchase the withdrawal of the hostile army by promising to surrender the enemies of the king, to place his son Thorfin as a hostage in the hands of William for his own fidelity, and to resign half the earldom of Caithness to Harald Ericson.[476]