Great, Sigurd’s son by a second marriage with a daughter of Malcolm
II, King of Scots. Sigurd, however, was at first succeeded in Orkney
by Brusi, Somerled, and Einar, sons of an earlier marriage, while
Thorfinn, a boy of five, who had been fostered by the Scots King, was
invested by his grandfather in the Earldom of Caithness and Sutherland.
On attaining manhood, however, Thorfinn made good his claim to a share
of Orkney also, and after many vicissitudes of fighting and friendship
with his half-brothers, and with Jarl Rognvald I, Brusi’s son, was
finally left sole ruler there. He extended his power far and wide over
northern Scotland, controlled the Hebrides, and ruled certain parts of
Ireland. He even invaded England in the absence of King Hardicanute,
and, according to the _Saga_, defeated in two pitched battles the
forces that opposed him. In later life Thorfinn visited Rome, and he
built a minster, known as Christchurch, in Birsay, the first seat
of the Bishopric of Orkney. He died in 1064. Thorfinn’s sons Paul
and Erlend succeeded, and two years later shared the defeat of their
suzerain King Harald Sigurdson (Hardradi) at Stamford Bridge. Returning
home by grace of Harold Godwinson, the Jarls ruled in peace for some
years. As their sons grew up, however, Hakon, Paul’s son, quarrelled
with his cousins Erling and Magnus (the future saint), Erlend’s sons,
and matters grew so unquiet that in 1098 King Magnus Barelegs sent
the two Jarls prisoners to Norway, and placed his own son Sigurd over
the Jarldom. On the death of King Magnus in 1106, Sigurd returned to
Norway to share the vacant throne with his brothers, and the overlords
restored Hakon, Paul’s son, and Magnus, Erlend’s son, to the Jarldom.
Quarrels were renewed, with the final result that in the year 1116
Magnus was murdered in the island of Egilsey, where the cousins had
met to discuss their differences, by the followers of Jarl Hakon,
Hakon himself more than consenting. The fame of St Magnus soon spread
over the whole Scandinavian world, and at an early date a church was
dedicated to him even in London. Jarl Hakon, after the manner of
the times, made an expiatory journey to Rome and the Holy Land, and
thereafter ruled Orkney with great acceptance until his death in 1126.
He was succeeded by his son Paul. While in Orkney in 1098, however,
King Magnus Barelegs had married Gunnhilda, a daughter of Jarl Erlend,
to a Norwegian gentleman named Kol. To their son Kali, Sigurd King of
Norway now granted a half share of the Islands, with the title of Jarl,
and from a fancied resemblance to Jarl Rognvald I, insisted on changing
his name to Rognvald. The royal grant being strenuously opposed by Jarl
Paul, Rognvald vowed that if he succeeded in making good his claim,
he would erect a stone minster at Kirkwall, and dedicate it to his
sainted uncle, Jarl Magnus. After many vicissitudes by sea and land,
Rognvald finally proved successful, and how he fulfilled his vow the
Cathedral Church of St Magnus still shows. St Rognvald—for in 1192 he
too was canonised—was at once the most genial and the most accomplished
of the Jarls, and one of the great characters of the _Orkney Saga_. He
made a famous voyage to Palestine (1152-1155), fighting, love-making,
and poetising by the way. Incidental to his great struggle for power
with St Rognvald, Jarl Paul had in 1137 been seized by the famous
viking Swein Asleifson and carried off to Athole, where he was
placed in the hands of Maddad, Earl of Athole, who had married his
half-sister Margaret. The whole affair is shrouded by mystery, but
Countess Margaret appears to have intrigued both with her brother and
with Jarl Rognvald to have her son Harald, a boy of three, conjoined
with Rognvald in the Jarldom. In the sequel Jarl Paul mysteriously
disappears, murdered, according to one account, at the instigation
of the Countess; and in 1139 Jarl Rognvald accepted the young Harald
Maddadson as his partner. With occasional intervals of friction this
somewhat oddly assorted pair ruled together until 1159, when the
checkered career of the genial and many-sided St Rognvald was closed
by his assassination in a personal quarrel in Caithness. Thereafter
Harald ruled the Islands alone until his death in 1206. A powerful and
overbearing man, he quarrelled with John, Bishop of Caithness, blinded
the prelate and caused his tongue to be cut out; barbarities which
brought King William the Lyon to the borders of Caithness with an army
(1202). Harald bought off the King, and on the whole maintained his own
in Caithness, although all the circumstances of the times show that a
now feudalised Scotland is becoming increasingly able to reassert its
authority in these northern parts. Harald got into difficulties with
his Norwegian suzerain, King Sverrir, who deprived him of Shetland,
which was not again conjoined with Orkney until two centuries later.
Harald was succeeded by two sons, David and John, the former of whom
died in 1214. Jarl John, like his father, came into conflict with the
Church and with Scotland. Adam, Bishop of Caithness, successor to the
mutilated Bishop John, having proved too exacting in the collection of
Church dues, the laity appealed to the Jarl, who, however, declined to
intervene. Whereupon the outraged laymen burnt the Bishop in a house
into which they had thrust him. King Alexander II, came with an army,
and not only heavily fined the Jarl, but also had the hands and feet
hewn off eighty men who had been present at the Bishop’s death. Jarl
John was slain in a brawl at Thurso in 1231, and, as he left no son,
the line of the Norse Jarls of Orkney ended.
[Illustration: St Magnus’ Cathedral, Kirkwall, from South-East]
[Illustration: Tankerness House and St Magnus’ Cathedral]
King Alexander II of Scotland granted the Earldom of Caithness, now
finally disjoined from Sutherland, to Magnus, second son of Gilbride
Earl of Angus, whose wife was a daughter or sister of the late Jarl,
and Magnus was also recognised as Earl of Orkney by the King of Norway.
The old Jarls had been Norse nobles who held the northern shires of
Scotland more or less in defiance of the Scottish Crown, the future
Earls of Orkney are great Scottish nobles holding a fief of the Crown
of Norway. In consequence, an influx of Scots into the Islands now
commenced, which, accelerated by their cession to Scotland in 1468,
in the end was the means of transforming the Orcadians into a British
community. The history of this Scoto-Norse period is obscure, the
Icelandic records largely failing us, but the law of primogeniture
being now tacitly applied to the succession, Earl Magnus was followed
by two Earls of the name of Gilbride, and the second Gilbride by
another Magnus. The latter is mentioned in the _Saga_ of King Hakon
Hakonson, of Largs fame, as having accompanied the King on that
expedition, after which the monarch came back to Orkney with his
storm-shattered fleet, and died in the Bishop’s palace at Kirkwall on
15th December, 1263. By the treaty of Perth in 1266 Hakon’s successor,
Magnus the Seventh, ceded to the Scottish Crown all the islands of the
Scottish seas, except the Orkneys and Shetland, for an annual payment
of 100 merks, to be paid into the hands of the Bishop of Orkney,
within the church of St Magnus. Earl Magnus died in 1273, and was
successively followed by his sons Magnus and John, the latter of whom,
as Earl of Caithness, swore fealty to Edward I of England in 1297. In
1320, however, John’s son and successor Magnus subscribed, as Earl of
Caithness and Orkney, the letter to the Pope in which the Scottish
nobles asserted the independence of Scotland. This Magnus was the last
of the Angus line of Earls, and was succeeded in 1321 by Malise, Earl
of Stratherne, who is supposed to have married his daughter. Malise
fell at Halidon Hill in 1333, and his son of the same name succeeded
to the three Earldoms of Stratherne, Caithness, and Orkney. Malise II
died _c._ 1350, leaving only daughters, and after an unsettled period
of conflicting claims to the succession, Hakon King of Norway in 1379
finally invested Henry St. Clair of Roslin, grandson of Earl Malise I,
and son-in-law of Malise II, not only in the Earldom of Orkney, but
in the Lordship of Shetland also. Earl Henry made himself practically
independent of Norway, and built a castle at Kirkwall in defiance
of the Norwegian Crown. He was succeeded in 1400 by his son Henry,
whose active and interesting career as Lord High Admiral belongs to
the history of Scotland. The Earls of the Sinclair family lived with
considerable state, styling themselves Princes of Orkney, and their
rule was on the whole popular and fortunate; but little of outside
interest took place in the Islands at this period. Scottish customs,
however, and traces of Scottish feudal law were slowly encroaching on
the old Norse system. Earl Henry II’s son William was the last Earl
of Orkney under Scandinavian rule. By the Union of Calmar in 1397
the suzerainty of the Islands had already passed, with the crown of
Norway, to the Kings of Denmark. In the years 1460-61 a series of
raids were—not for the first time—made on Orkney by sea-rovers from
the Hebrides, and Christian I, King of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway,
failing to obtain redress from the Scottish Crown for this and other
grievances, demanded the long arrears of the annual tribute payable by
Scotland in respect of the Hebrides, in terms of the treaty of 1266.
Charles VIII of France having been called in as arbitrator, a somewhat
ugly contretemps was happily adjusted by the marriage of Christian’s
daughter Margaret to the young King James III of Scotland, and by the
terms of the marriage-contract the Danish monarch not only relinquished
the quit-rent for the Hebrides, but agreed to pay down a dowry of
60,000 florins. As Christian was able to find only 2000 florins of
this money at the time, the Orkneys and Shetland were given in pawn
to the Scottish Crown until the balance should be paid, the agreement
expressly stipulating for the maintenance of Norse law in the Islands
meantime. This happened in 1468, and a few years later King James
negotiated the surrender by Earl William St Clair of all his rights in
the Islands; whereupon by Act of the Scottish Parliament the Earldom of
Orkney and Lordship of Shetland were in 1471 annexed to the Scottish
Crown, “nocht to be gevin away in time to cum to na persain or persains
excep alenarily to ane of ye Kingis sonis of lauchful bed,” a proviso
which went by the board.
The long and painful story of Scottish oppression in Orkney and
Shetland has a literature of its own, and can only be briefly referred
to here. The Scottish Crown from the first treated the _scats_, in
origin and essence a public tax, as a sort of personal perquisite of
the King, or part of the Royal patrimonium, and farmed them out, along
with the Earldom lands, to one needy favourite or importunate creditor
after another, Orkney at the same time being now made liable to all
Scottish taxation. Many of these grantees received the jurisdiction
of Sheriff, a circumstance which led to the accelerated encroachment
of Scottish feudal law on the old Norse legal system. Mere treaty
stipulation proved a frail protection to the oppressed Odallers, when
the only appeal against strained laws and unjust exactions lay to the
Scottish Crown itself, which had installed the oppressors, and whose
ministers and judges knew and cared nothing about Odal law. Twice
indeed, first in 1503, and again in 1567, the Scottish Parliament
expressly recognised the obligation to maintain Norse law, pious or
perfunctory opinions which had no practical effect. The two most
notorious, because the most powerful, of these Scottish oppressors of
Orkney and Shetland were Lord Robert Stewart, whose half-sister, Queen
Mary, in 1564 granted him the Sheriffship of both groups, together
with all the Crown rights and possessions therein, and Lord Robert’s
son Patrick. In 1581 Lord Robert was further created Earl of Orkney
by his nephew King James VI, and Patrick succeeded him in 1591. Rents
and scats being payable to a large extent in kind, by tampering with
the old Norse weights and measures, these two harpies in a few years
actually increased their revenues from the Earldom one-half. Owing to
the unceasing complaints of all classes of the community Earl Patrick
was finally imprisoned, and in 1615 executed for high treason. As it
had now become apparent that the holders of the Earldom rights had all
along simply utilised the local courts and forms of legal procedure for
their private advantage, by an Act of the “Lordis of Secret Council,”
of date 22nd March, 1611, all foreign (_i.e._ Norse) laws theretofore
in use in Orkney and Shetland were discharged, and all magistrates
in those islands were enjoined to use only “the proper laws of this
kingdom.” Although this Act was of doubtful validity on more grounds
than one, yet it has held good; and apart from the maintenance of
Norse law in its integrity, an ideal which the conditions of the times
rendered unattainable, the change was probably the best thing that
could have happened for the Islands.
Although the fact had only a transient bearing on the history of the
Islands, we must not fail to record that Queen Mary, on her marriage
with Bothwell, in 1567, created him Duke of Orkney. After the Queen’s
defeat at Carberry, Bothwell fled to the Islands, to be repulsed from
Kirkwall Castle by the governor. Thence he proceeded northwards to play
the pirate in Shetland, and finally to find imprisonment and death in
Scandinavia. In the year 1633 the Earldom lands and rights were granted
by the Crown to the Earls of Morton, one of whom sold them in 1766 to
Sir Lawrence Dundas, with whose descendants, now represented by the
Marquis of Zetland, they still remain.
Montrose on his way to invade Scotland in 1650, first landed in Orkney,
and the major part of the force with which he met his final defeat
at Carbisdale was recruited in the Islands. Under the Commonwealth
Cromwell maintained a garrison at Kirkwall, and the Islanders are said
to have picked up improved methods of gardening and other domestic
amenities from the Ironsides. In the following century the vexed
question of Stewart _versus_ Guelph brought Orkney its own share of
commotion, but the details are, from an historical point of view, of
purely local interest.
Of vastly wider import has been the latest appearance of the islands
in the arena of history. In that great contest, the sound and fury of
which has barely subsided as we write, the Royal Navy found in Scapa
Flow an ideal base for the conduct of its widely-spreading operations.
And if, as many skilful observers appear to hold, successful strategy
at sea proved the slowly-working but inevitably certain cause of the
final defeat of the foe, it is not too much to say that for four
eventful years the little Archipelago, whose “rough island story” we
have here told in outline, stood forth as the pivot of the world’s
history and of its fate.
The dramatic death of the great Earl Kitchener in Orcadian waters,
in June 1916, further riveted the attention of the modern world on a
region which to its own sons has never ceased to be the haunted home of
Harald the Fair-haired, Olaf Tryggvi’s son, and other sea-kings of old.
14. Antiquities
The Orkney Islands offer an especially fertile field to the
archaeologist. The sites of a least 70 brochs have been located in the
group, as against 75 in Shetland, 79 in Caithness, 60 in Sutherland,
and some 70 in the northern Hebrides. These districts constitute the
main area of the brochs, which rapidly decrease in number as one
proceeds southwards, Forfarshire offering but two specimens, and
Perthshire, Stirlingshire, and Berwickshire one each.
[Illustration: Ground Plan of Broch of Lingrow, near Kirkwall]
“The typical form of the broch,” says Dr Anderson, “is that of a
hollow circular tower of dry-built masonry, about 60 feet in diameter
and about 50 feet high. Its wall, which is about 15 feet thick, is
carried up solid for about 8 feet, except where two or three oblong
chambers, with rudely-vaulted roofs, are constructed in its thickness.
Above the height of about 8 feet, the wall is carried up with a hollow
space of about 3 feet wide between its exterior and interior shell.
This hollow space at about the height of a man, is crossed
horizontally by a roof of slabs, the upper surfaces of which form
the floor of the space above. This is repeated at every 5 or 6 feet
of its farther height. These spaces thus form horizontal galleries,
separated from each other vertically by the slabs of their floors and
roofs. The galleries run completely round the tower, except that they
are crossed by the stair, so that each gallery opens in front of the
steps, and its farther end is closed by the back of the staircase on
the same level.
“The only opening in the outside of the tower is the main entrance,
a narrow, tunnel-like passage 15 feet long, 5 to 6 feet in height,
and rarely more than 3 feet in width, leading straight through
the wall on the ground level, and often flanked on either side by
guard-chambers opening into it. This gives access to the central area
or courtyard of the tower, round the inner circumference of which, in
different positions, are placed the entrances to the chambers on the
ground-floor, and to the staircase leading to the galleries above. In
its external aspect, the tower is a truncated cone of solid masonry,
unpierced by any opening save the narrow doorway; while the central
court presents the aspect of a circular well 30 feet in diameter
bounded by a perpendicular wall 50 feet high, and presenting at
intervals on the ground floor several low and narrow doorways, giving
access to the chambers and stair, and above these ranges of small
window-like openings rising perpendicularly over each other to admit
light and air to the galleries.”
[Illustration: Stone Circle of Stenness]
[Illustration: Maeshowe, Section and Ground Plan]
In some respects the most interesting broch site in Orkney is that
at Lingrow, about two miles S.S.E. of Kirkwall. Contiguous to this
building lies a perfect labyrinth of building of secondary occupation.
A coin of Vespasian and two of Antoninus were found at Lingrow when
the site was excavated in 1870. Another interesting specimen is that
at Hoxa in South Ronaldshay. The little that remains of this building
is situated on the west side of a small bight which opens northwards
on Scapa Flow, and on the east side of the bight stands the site
of a second broch. The two brochs together command both the bight
itself and a narrow isthmus of land which connects it with Widewall
Bay to the southward. Defence of the land passage between the two
areas of water was obviously a prime motive of construction in this
case. Other interesting specimens of brochs are at Okstro in Birsay,
at Burgar in Evie, and at Burrian in North Ronaldshay; but many of the
Orkney sites remain as yet unexcavated, or only tentatively explored.
Stone hand-mills (querns), stone whorls and bone combs, both used in
woollen weaving, stone lamps, imitated from Roman models, hair combs,
and fragments of pottery are some of the articles found in the Orkney
brochs, none of which now show more than a few feet of their original
height.
A consideration of the geographical position of the main area of their
distribution leaves one with little doubt that they were erected as the
best and most economical means that a scanty and scattered population
could devise to check continuous piratical incursions, probably
directed from Scandinavia and the coastal regions of north-western
Europe; but the exact era of their erection is a question that still
awaits definite solution. One may safely conjecture, however, that they
were gradually destroyed by the incursions which they were built to
withstand.
Other primitive dwellings, of somewhat wider distribution in Orkney
than the brochs, are the “Picts’ houses,” either in the form of
chambered mounds, such as the widely-known Maeshowe, or of underground
chambers of the type commonly known as weems. Maeshowe (the Maidens’
Mound) is situated in the parish of Stenness, near the high road
from Kirkwall to Stromness, and its external appearance is that of a
truncated cone 92 feet in diameter, 36 feet high, and about 100 yards
in circumference at the base. The central chamber is reached by a
straight passage 54 feet long, from 2 feet 4 inches to 3 feet 4 inches
wide, and from 2 feet 4 inches to 4 feet 8 inches high. The chamber is
15 feet square on the floor, and 13 feet high, the roof being formed
by the stones, at the height of 6 feet from the floor, gradually
overlapping. The four angles of the chamber are supported by heavy
stone buttresses from 8 to 10 feet high, and about 3 feet square at the
base. Off the main chamber on the three sides other than that which
contains the entrance, are subsidiary cells, the entrances to which
are at a height of 3 feet from the floor. The walls of the central
chamber are scored with Norse runes some of which tell that the place,
which was known to the Norsemen as _Orkahaug_, or the Muckle Mound,
was broken into by the Jorsala-farers, or pilgrims who accompanied St
Rognvald to Jerusalem (Norse, _Jorsalaheim_) in 1152. Other stones
show pictorial designs, several being of fine workmanship. Nothing
is known of the date or origin of Maeshowe, which from its elaborate
design and peculiarities of detail constitutes a thing unique among
the antiquities of Britain. Among weems, or eirde houses, as they are
sometimes called, which are irregularly-shaped chambers excavated below
the ordinary level of the ground, perhaps the finest Orcadian example
is that at Saveroch, near Kirkwall.
[Illustration: Incised Dragon, from Maeshowe]
At a distance of about a mile and a half west and south-west of
Maeshowe is the remarkable series of megalithic monuments collectively
known as the Standing Stones of Stenness. The “Ring of Brogar” is the
largest and most complete; thirteen of its stones are still standing,
while the stumps of thirteen more are still _in situ_, and ten are
lying prostrate. The highest stone stands about 14 feet above ground,
and the total number of stones is calculated to have originally been
sixty. This circle has a diameter of 366 feet, and encloses 2½ acres.
Of the “Ring of Stenness” proper, which has a diameter of 104 feet,
only two stones remain erect, but one of these is 17 feet 4 inches
high, while another lying prostrate measures 19 feet × 5 feet × 1 ft. 8
inches, and has been calculated to weigh 10.71 tons.
[Illustration: Norse Brooch, found in Sandwick, Orkney]
In a valley in Hoy, between the Ward Hill and the precipitous ridge
known as the Dwarfie Hammers, lies the celebrated Dwarfie Stone, most
puzzling perhaps of all the antiquities of the Islands. This is a huge
block of sandstone measuring about 28 feet in length, and varying
in breadth from 11 to 14½ feet. Its height falls from 6½ feet at the
southern to 2 feet at the northern end. On the west side of the stone
is an entrance giving access to two couches or berths, the southern and
larger of which has a stone pillow. When first mentioned in writing
by Jo Ben in his _Descriptio Insularum Orchadiarum_, in 1529, the
Dwarfie Stone was as great a puzzle as it is to-day, and no suggested
explanation of its origin or _raison d’être_ appears to carry much
probability.
[Illustration: Silver Ornaments, found in Sandwick, Orkney]
Important discoveries of antique jewelry, coins, and other articles of
the precious metals have been made in Orkney from time to time. Perhaps
the greatest find was that made at the Bay of Skaill, in the parish of
Sandwick, in March 1858, which consisted of 16 lbs. weight of silver
articles, including heavy mantle brooches, torques, bars of silver,
and coins, some of the last being Cufic, of the Samanian and Abbasside
Kalifs, dating from 887 to 945 A.D., and others Anglo-Saxon.
15. Architecture—(_a_) Ecclesiastical
The cathedral church of St Magnus at Kirkwall, founded by St Rognvald
in 1137 in memory of his uncle, is, except that of Glasgow, the
only mediaeval cathedral in Scotland that remains complete in all
its parts, and, in the words of the Danish historian Worsae, it
constitutes incontestably the finest monument of their dominion that
the Scandinavians have left in Scotland.
[Illustration: St Magnus’ Cathedral
View from N. Transept looking towards Choir]
The church is a cruciform building, comprising nave and nave aisles,
choir and choir aisles, north and south transepts, with a chapel off
each transept to the east, and a central tower. The interior length
of nave and choir is 217 feet 10 inches, exterior length 234½ feet;
interior width of choir and aisles at the east end 47 feet 5½ inches;
interior width across the transepts 89½ feet; height to vaulting 71
feet; height from floor under central tower to top of weather-cock 133
feet 4 inches. The stones used include two shades of red sandstone,
one lilac, one yellow, and one veiny red and yellow, all brought from
various parts of Orkney. Sir Henry Dryden professes to trace five
distinct styles of architecture in the building, which he dates:
1137-1160, 1160-1200, 1200-1250, 1250-1350, and 1450-1500. All that is
beyond conjecture as to the eras of erection, however, is that after
St Rognvald’s death, in 1159, the building proceeded under the care of
Bishop William the Old, until his death in 1168. Part at least of the
church was consecrated before 1155, and received the remains of St
Magnus, transferred from Christchurch in Birsay. The general impress of
the building is severely Norman.
A conspicuous feature of the church is its great _apparent_ size, an
effect deliberately produced by a skilful adjustment of proportions,
especially by the great relative height, the restricted width, and the
spacing of the piers both in nave and choir. Specially fine features of
the building are the beautiful east window, and the exquisitely carved
doorways in the south transept and west front. These doorways, says Sir
Henry, “are probably the finest examples in Great Britain of the use
of two stones of different colours in patterns.” Unfortunately much of
this beautiful particoloured work is badly weathered.
The church is at present undergoing “restoration” at the hands of
the town council of Kirkwall, who own the fabric, in fulfilment of a
bequest by the late George Hunter Thoms, Sheriff of Orkney.
On the highest point of the little island of Egilshay stands a very
interesting church, which has been the subject of much archaeological
conjecture since its general style appears to combine early Celtic and
Norse elements, while it possesses one of those Irish Round Towers the
only other Scottish examples of which are at Brechin and Abernethy.
Apart from the tower, the church consists of nave and chancel, the nave
measuring 30 feet by 15½ feet, and the chancel, which is vaulted, 15
feet by 9½ feet. The tower is now 48 feet high and unroofed, but is
said to have been lessened by 15 feet many years ago. An old print
shows both church and tower with slate roofs, that of the tower being
the conical cap typical of the Irish Round Towers. The church was used
for service down to the early part of last century.
[Illustration: St Magnus’ Church, Egilshay]
[Illustration: Ground Plan of St Magnus’ Cathedral, Kirkwall]
Dryden’s conjecture that the church of Egilshay was built by Norsemen
after the Irish model shortly after the reconversion of the Islands to
Christianity _c._ 998 A.D., is a view which presents no anomalies
either architectural or historical, when we consider that at that
date many early Celtic churches must have survived in Orkney, and
that, in any case, the close connection between Norse Orkney and the
Scandinavian colonies in Ireland would give Orcadians ready access
to Irish models. The alleged dedication of this church to St Magnus
rests on the late and doubtful authority of Jo Ben (1529), but it was
no doubt popularly associated with the Saint’s name because, as the
_Orkneyinga Saga_ tells, he entered it to pay his devotions on the day
of his murder.