Donald MacAlpin succeeded his brother, and for four years filled the throne of Scotland, nothing being recorded of his short reign with the exception of a council at Forteviot, in which the “Laws of Aodh the Fair,” A. D. 863. of Kintyre, were confirmed by “the Gael” and their king.[41]
Constantine the First, 863–877.
Constantine, the son of Kenneth, and the first inheritor of the name of his Pictish ancestor, ascended the throne of Scotland at an era when the efforts of Gorm, Eric, and Harald Harfager to consolidate the petty states of Scandinavia into the respective kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, had given a fresh stimulus to the incursions of the Vikings upon the British Isles, by dispossessing and driving from their homes many of the minor chieftains who refused to submit to their authority. Ireland as well as Britain had suffered from the attacks of these marauders as early as the close of the eighth century, but it was not before the middle of the following century that the Northmen first established themselves permanently in the former country, principally in Dublin and its neighbourhood, where the recollection of one branch of the invaders is still retained in the name of the adjacent district of Fingall.[42]
A. D. 850
About ten years after the first settlement of the Norsemen a fresh fleet arrived off the Irish coasts, under the command of leaders claiming to belong to “the royal race of Lochlan,” to whom the native annalists have given the name of Du Gall, or Black Strangers, in contradistinction to their predecessors the Fin Gall or White Strangers, epithets which were derived probably from some long forgotten distinction in dress or armour rather than from any difference in personal appearance or in nationality.[43] Driven from Dublin and from their settlements upon the coast of Uladh, the Fingall collected in great numbers from every quarter, and soon returned with their whole force to re-assert their lost ascendancy; but a combat between the two fleets, which is said to have lasted during three days and nights, confirmed the superiority of their rivals, and in the following year Olave the Fair, the son of Ingiald, an Upland chieftain of the same race as Harald Harfager, landed with his followers A. D. 854. amongst his countrymen, and at once assumed the lead over all the Northmen of Ireland. In alliance with the Norwegian Olave was the Danish Ivar or Ingvar, the most renowned warrior amongst all the northern chieftains, whom tradition has made a son of Ragnar Lodbroc, and the ruthless avenger of his slaughter.[44]
For several years after the arrival of the confederates their ravages were confined to the provinces of Ireland, until at length, in the same year in which Ivar and Halfdan first established themselves upon A. D. 866. the coasts of East Anglia, the storm burst upon the dominions of Constantine, and from the 1st of January to St. Patrick’s day, Olave and Auisle carried fire and sword throughout the region bordering on the Forth. A. D. 870. After a lapse of four years Olave again revisited the Scottish shores, and in company with Ivar laid siege to the rock of Dumbarton, capturing and destroying the ancient bulwark of the Britons of Strath Clyde after a lengthened blockade of four months, the sole means available to an unskilful age against a Dun so strongly situated. The confederates then marched southwards to join their countrymen in England; once more a king of Saxon race was sacrificed to the manes of Ragnar, and the fate of the Northumbrian Elli was inflicted upon the East Anglian martyr Edmund; nor was it until the close of the following year A. D. 871. that the allies returned to Dublin laden with the spoil of the Saxon, the Briton, and the Scot, and leaving behind them a fearful track of misery and bloodshed to mark the most lengthened and direful of all their inroads. Olave lost his life shortly afterwards in an obscure skirmish, fought, according to some accounts, in Scotland; and the death of Ivar in 873, A. D. 873. after surviving his confederate for only a few months, released the Saxon and Scottish princes from the ablest and most ruthless of their foes.[45]
Amongst the earlier opponents of Olave and Ivar in the course of their Irish wars was a certain Caittil the Fair, A. D. 857. probably the same person as Ketil Biornson, who established himself in independence amongst the islands along the western coasts of Scotland belonging to the mixed Scandinavian and Gaelic race who were known under the name of the Gallgael. His daughter Auda was subsequently married to his former rival Olave, and upon the death of her husband after his return to Dublin she sought the protection of Ketil in the Hebrides, whilst her son, Thorstein the Red, early treading in the footsteps of his father, pursued the career of a Viking.[46]
After the establishment of the power of Harald Harfager by the successful battle of Hafursfiord, many of his vanquished opponents fled to the Orkneys and the Shetland isles, periodically infesting the Norwegian coasts in revenge for their defeat and expulsion; and to put an end to these piratical inroads Harald at length fitted out a numerous fleet, devoting an entire summer to extirpating the hostile Vikings from the creeks and bays in which they sought shelter from his vengeance. In one of the numerous conflicts occurring during this expedition, Ivar, a son of Harald’s favourite and most trusted friend Rognwald, Jarl of Mœri, lost his life, and as some compensation for the death of his son the king bestowed his own conquests upon the father. Rognwald, however, preferring to return to his Norwegian home, transferred the royal donation to his brother Sigurd, who was accordingly confirmed as Jarl, and left behind, on the departure of the king, in possession of the Orkneys and the Shetland isles.
Not content with his newly acquired island territories Jarl Sigurd was ambitious of a wider dominion, and entering into an alliance with Thorstein Olaveson, the confederates employed their united force in invading the northern provinces of Scotland. The whole of the country as far as the banks of the Oikel,[47] embracing the modern counties of Caithness and Sutherland, was overrun and conquered by the allies, two Scottish magnates falling in an unavailing resistance; Meldun, whose wife, the daughter of an Irish king, became with her son the slave of Auda,[48] affording in their altered fortunes a striking example of the strange vicissitudes of the age; and Malbride “with the buck-tooth,” whose singular fate—if the Saga can be relied upon—avenged him after death upon the author of his misfortunes. Sigurd is said to have slain the last-named chieftain in single combat, and with the savage ferocity of the times to have cut off the head of his victim, suspending it in triumph from his saddle-bow, in which position the projecting tooth of the slaughtered chieftain is supposed to have inflicted so severe a wound upon the Jarl’s leg as ultimately to cause his death, and he was buried by his followers upon the banks of the Oikel, at the extreme limits of his conquests.
Though deprived of his ally, the Jarl of Orkney, Thorstein failed not to follow up his success, and whilst victory attended the banner of the king of the Dugall in the extreme north, the difficulties of Constantine must have been materially increased by the inroads of Halfdan A. D. 875. upon his opposite frontiers, who established himself in Northumbria during the same year, and made incessant incursions upon the neighbouring “Picts” and Britons.[49] A decisive defeat at Dollar, on the borders of Perthshire and Fife, at length forced the Scottish king to submit to the alternative imposed at a later period upon both the English Edmunds, the whole of the northern provinces were made over to the son of Olave, and Constantine purchased a temporary peace at the price of half of his dominions.[50]