THE VIKINGS IN THE ORKNEYS, SCOTLAND, THE WESTERN ISLANDS AND MAN
When the Vikings sailed to England and Ireland in the late 8th and
early 9th centuries their most natural path was by the Orkneys and
Shetlands and round the Western Islands of Scotland. We have seen how
early they formed settlements in the Shetlands, and they soon reached
the Orkneys and the Hebrides. From the Orkneys they crossed to the
mainland, to Sutherland and Caithness--the very names bear witness
to Scandinavian occupation--while Galloway (i.e. the land of the
Gaill-Gaedhil, _v. supra_, p. 56) was settled from the Isle of Man.
Already in the 9th century the Norse element in the Hebrides was so
strong that the Irish called the islands _Innsi-Gall_ (i.e. the islands
of the foreigners), and their inhabitants were known as Gaill-Gaedhil.
The Norsemen called the islands _Suðreyjar_ (i.e. Southern Islands)
in contrast to the Orkneys and Shetlands, which were known as
_Norðreyjar_, and the name survives in the composite bishopric of
'Sodor' and Man, which once formed part of the archdiocese of Trondhjem
in Norway. The Isle of Man was plundered almost as early as any of the
islands of the West (_v. supra_, p. 12), and it was probably from
Man that the Norse settlements in Cumberland and Westmorland were
established. Olaf the White and Ívarr made more than one expedition
from Ireland to the lowlands of Scotland, and the former was married to
Auðr the daughter of Ketill Flatnose who had made himself the greatest
chieftain in the Western Islands. After the battle of Hafrsfjord,
when Harold Fairhair had finally crushed his rivals in Norway itself,
so powerful were the Norse settlements in the West that he felt his
position would be insecure until he had received their submission.
Accordingly he made a great expedition to the Shetlands, Orkneys and
the west coast of Scotland, fulfilled this purpose and entrusted the
Northern Islands to Sigurd, brother of Rögnvaldr, earl of Möre, as his
vassal.
The history of the Norse settlements in the Orkneys is well and fully
told in the _Orkneyingasaga_[10]. The first Orkney-earl was the
above-named Sigurd. He entered into an alliance with Thorstein the
Red, son to Olaf the White, and together they conquered Caithness and
Sutherland, as far south as the river Oikel on the borders of Ross and
Cromarty. Sigurd's son Einar, known as Turf-Einar because he first
taught the islanders to cut peat for fuel, founded a long line of
earls of the Orkneys. He had a quarrel with Harold Fairhair and when
that king imposed a fine on the islanders for the murder of his son
and the farmers could not pay it, Einar paid it himself on condition
that the peasants surrendered their _óðal_ rights, i.e. their rights
of possession in the lands they cultivated. Turf-Einar's son Sigurd
the Stout was the most famous of all the Orkney-earls, renowned both
as warrior and poet. He conquered Sutherland, Caithness, Ross, Moray,
Argyle, the Hebrides and Man, securing the support of the men of Orkney
by giving them back their _óðal_. He married a daughter of Malcolm king
of Scotland, and met his end, as we have already seen, fighting on the
side of the heathen Norsemen in the battle of Clontarf in 1014. After
this the power of the Orkney-earls declined. The Norse line of earls
was replaced by one of Scottish descent in 1231, but the islands did
not pass definitely to the Scottish crown until the 15th century[11].
Of the Norse settlements in the Hebrides we have no such definite or
continuous record. Mention is made in Irish annals of the middle of the
9th century of a king in the Hebrides--one Guðröðr son of Fergus--whose
very name shows him to have been one of the Gaill-Gaedhil. Ketill Finn
(_v. supra_, p. 56) was another such. In the latter half of the 9th
century Ketill Flatnose was the chief Norse leader in the Hebrides
until his power was destroyed by Harold Fairhair. Many of the settlers
then betook themselves to Iceland, the most famous of them being Auðr
the deep-thoughted, widow of Olaf the White and daughter of Ketill.
Norse rule was all powerful during the 10th and 11th centuries. There
was a line of kings but we find ruling side by side with them certain
officers known as 'lawmen' (_v. infra_, p. 103), while in the late 10th
and for the greater part of the 11th century, the Hebrides were under
the sovereignty of the Orkney-earls. Norse rule in the Hebrides did
not finally come to an end until 1266 when Magnus Hákonsson, king of
Norway, renounced all claims to the islands.
The early history of the settlements in Man is equally obscure. At
first the island suffered from repeated raids, then about the middle
of the 9th century it passed under the authority of the kings of
Dublin and remained so until, with the Hebrides and Western Scotland
generally, it was conquered by Sigurd the Orkney-earl. From the
Orkney-earls it passed to the great conqueror Godred Crovan--the King
Gorry or Orry of Manx tradition--who came from the Hebrides, and his
successors down to the cession of the islands in 1266 were known as
kings of Man and the Isles.
Of the details of the settlement of the Scottish mainland, of
Caithness, Sutherland, and Galloway, of the occupation of Cumberland
and Westmorland we know almost nothing, but when we speak later of
Norse influence in these districts we shall realise how strong was
their hold on them. Our knowledge of the Norse occupation of Man and
the Islands is somewhat scanty in detail, but there can be no question
that their settlements in lands often closely resembling in physical
features their own home-country were of the highest importance.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] English translation by Sir G. W. Dasent.
[11] They were pledged by Christian I of Denmark and Norway for the
payment of the dowry of his daughter Margaret to James III in 1460 and
the pledge was never redeemed.