May make the King’s best deer his prey!”
What she had predicted came to pass, for Ganger-Rolf went west over the sea to the Hebrides, and thence to the west coast of France, which the Norsemen called Valland, where he conquered and subdued to himself a great earldom, which he peopled with Northmen, from which it was called Normandy. He was ancestor of William the Conqueror, King of England, and ruled in Normandy from 911 to 927.
Earl Ragnvald had three other sons living at home with him, and after Hallad’s return from Orkney he called them to him and asked which of them would like to go to the islands; for he heard that two Danish vikings were settling down on his lands and taking possession of them. Thorir said that he would go if his father wished. But Ragnvald replied that he thought he had need of him at home, and that his property and power would be greatest there where he was.
Then the second, Hrollaug, said: “Father, would you like me to go?” The earl said: “I think your way lies toward Iceland; there you will increase your race, and become a famous man; but the earldom is not for you.”
Then Einar, the youngest, came forward; he was a tall, ugly man, with only one eye, yet very keen-sighted, and no favourite with his father. What he said was: “Would you wish me to go to the islands? One thing I will promise you that I know will please you; it is that I will never come back. Little honour do I enjoy at home, and it is hardly likely that my success will be less anywhere else than it is here.”
Earl Ragnvald said: “Never knew I any man less likely for a chief than yourself, for your mother’s people come of thralls; but it is true enough that the sooner you go and the longer you stay the better pleased I shall be. I will fit out for you a ship of twenty benches,[24] fully manned, and I will get for you from King Harald the title of Earl of Orkney in my place.”
So this was settled, and Einar sailed west to Shetland and gathered the people round him, for they were glad to get rid of the vikings. They slew them both in a battle in the Orkneys, and Einar took possession of their lands. He was the first man who found out how to cut turf for fuel, for firing was scarce on those islands and there was little wood; but after that men used peat; and they called him Torf-Einar, or Turf-Einar, on account of that.
The chief difficulty that Torf-Einar had was from King Harald Fairhair’s sons, who were now grown to be men. They were overbearing and turbulent, for they thought their father ought to have given his lands to them and not to his earls, and they set themselves to revenge their wrongs (as they thought them) on the King’s friends. They came down suddenly on Earl Ragnvald and surrounded his house and burnt him in it and sixty with him. The King was so angry at this that one of them, Halfdan Long-legs, had to fly before his wrath, and he rushed on shipboard and sailed west, appearing suddenly in the Orkneys. When it became known that a son of King Harald was come, the liegemen were full of fear, and Earl Einar fled to Scotland to gather forces to resist him. But later in the year, about harvest-time, he came back and fought Halfdan, and gained the victory over him. Halfdan slipped overboard in the dusk of eventide and swam to land, and a few followers after him, and they concealed themselves in the rocks and cliffs of the islands. Next morning, as soon as it was light, Einar’s men went to search the islands for runaway vikings, and each man who was found was slain where he stood. Then Torf-Einar began to search himself, and he saw something moving in the island of Ronaldsay, very far off, for he was more keen-sighted than most men. He said: “What is that I see on the hillside in Ronaldsay? Is it a man or is it a bird? Sometimes it raises itself up and sometimes it lays itself down. We will go over there.” There they found Halfdan Long-legs, and they cut a spread-eagle on his back, and killed him there, and gave him to Odin as an offering for their victory; and Einar sang a song of triumph over him, and raised a cairn over him, and left him there.[25]
But when this news reached Norway it was taken very ill by Halfdan’s brothers and King Harald, and the King himself ordered out a levy, and proceeded westward to Orkney. When he heard that Harald was coming, Torf-Einar fled to Caithness, but in the end the quarrel was made up between them, on condition that the isles should pay the King sixty marks of gold. The people were so poor that they could not meet the fine, but Einar undertook the whole payment himself, on condition that they should make over to him their allodial holdings, or freeholds. They had no choice but to submit to this, and from that time till the time of Earl Sigurd the Stout the earls possessed the properties; but Sigurd restored most of them to their original owners.[26]
Then King Harald went home to Norway, and Earl Einar ruled the Orkneys till his death.