devil may not altogether be accounted for by the fervour of his
Christianity, was chased into the river, where he was in danger of
being drowned by the rising tide. In this emergency he made a vow as
follows:—“Thy dog, Apostle Peter, hath run twice to Rome, and he would
run the third time if thou gavest him leave.” The Irish Chronicle
states that the full tide in Dublin Bay on the day of the battle
coincided with sunrise, and that the returning tide in the evening
aided in the destruction of the defeated foreigners. The date assigned
by the Chronicle for the battle is Good Friday, 23d April 1014. It has
been found by astronomical calculation that the full tide that morning
did coincide with sunrise—a remarkable attestation of the authenticity
of the narrative.
Footnote 30:
See the account of him in the Saga, chap. v. and note.
Footnote 31:
Rattar Brough, a little to the east of Dunnet Head, seems to be the
modern form of Rauda Biorg.
Footnote 32:
See the Saga account, chap. xxiii. and note. The dates do not bear out
the statement that Thorfinn was Earl for seventy years.
Footnote 33:
Fordun, v. 24.
Footnote 34:
Saga Magnus Berfoetts, Heimskringla, chap. xxv.
Footnote 35:
Chron. Manniæ, Munch’s edition, p. 59.
Footnote 36:
See the account of his death in the Saga, chap. xxxix. His feast days
were 16th April and 13th December, the former commemorating his death,
and the latter the removal of his relics from Birsay by Bishop
William. (Den Norske Kirkes Historie af R. Keyser: Christiania, 1856,
p. 162.)
Footnote 37:
The Earls of Athole seem at this time to have occupied the _rath_ or
fortress at Logierait. It is mentioned in one of the Scone charters as
the capital of the earldom in the 12th century. (Lib. Eccles. de Scon,
p. 35.)
Footnote 38:
This was the occasion in which he and his men spent the Yule-feast day
in the Orkahaug, which seems to be Maeshow. See the Saga, chap. xci.
Footnote 39:
See the notice from the Saga of Egill Skalagrimson, in the chapter on
Mousa.
Footnote 40:
Some years after his death Earl Rögnvald was canonised, but his name
is not commemorated in any of the dedications now remaining in the
Islands.
Footnote 41:
Munch, Chron. Manniæ, p. 84.
Footnote 42:
Fordun’s Annals, xvi.
Footnote 43:
From this time till 1379 Shetland passed into the immediate possession
of the crown of Norway. So we find in 1312-1319, that King Hakon
Magnusson grants to the Mary-Kirk in Oslo (Christiania), for the
completion of the fabric of the kirk, “all our incomes of Hjaltland
and the Faroes, so that those who have charge of the kirk’s building
and fabric every year shall render account thereof to our heirs, and
when the fabric is altogether completed, then shall the foresaid
revenues of Hjaltland and the Faroes revert to the crown.”
(Nicolaysen, Norske Fornlevninger, p. 426.)
Footnote 44:
Chronica Rogeri de Hoveden (Rolls Ed.), iv. pp, 10, 12.
Footnote 45:
In the Chronicle of Melrose, under the date 1175, it is stated that
“Laurentius, Abbot in Orkney, was made Abbot of Melrose.” But as his
death is recorded in the year 1178, the priest here mentioned by
Hoveden must have been a different person, though of the same name. At
the same time, as this passage shows that Earl Harald had a
hird-priest named Laurentius, it is not improbable that the so-called
Orkney abbot, who was made abbot of Melrose, may also have been
Harald’s family or court priest. Being himself the son of a Scottish
earl, and allied by marriage first with the family of the Earl of
Fife, and subsequently with the MacHeths, and having, moreover, such
close relations with the abbey of Scone, it is not unlikely that he
may have had Scottish priests about his family in preference to those
of Norwegian extraction.
Footnote 46:
So says the Saga. Fordun says that the use of his tongue and of one
eye was in some measure left him. The letter of Pope Innocent,
addressed to the Bishop of Orkney, prescribing the penance to be
performed by the man who mutilated the bishop, only mentions the
cutting out of the tongue. It is as follows:—
“We have learnt by your letters that Lomberd, a layman, the bearer of
these presents, accompanied his earl on an expedition into Caithness;
that there the Earl’s army stormed a castle, killed almost all who
were in it, and took prisoner the Bishop of Caithness; and that this
Lomberd, as he says, was compelled by some of the earl’s soldiery to
cut out the bishop’s tongue. Now because the sin is great and
grievous, in absolving him, according to the form of the church, we
have prescribed this penance for satisfaction of his offence, and to
the terror of others:—That he shall hasten home, and bare-footed, and
naked, except breeches, and a short woollen vest without sleeves,
having his tongue tied by a string, and drawn out so as to project
beyond his lips, and the ends of the string bound round his neck, with
rods in his hand, in sight of all men, walk for fifteen days
successively through his own native district, the district of the
mutilated bishop, and the neighbouring country; he shall go to the
door of the church without entering, and there, prostrate on the
earth, undergo discipline with the rods he is to carry; he is thus to
spend each day in silence and fasting until evening, when he shall
support nature with bread and water only; after these fifteen days are
passed he shall prepare within a month to set out for Jerusalem, and
there labour in the service of the Cross for three years; he shall
never more bear arms against Christians; for two years he shall fast
every Friday on bread and water, unless by the indulgence of some
discreet bishop, or on account of bodily infirmity, this abstinence be
mitigated. Do you then receive him returning in this manner, and see
that he observe the penance enjoined him.” (Epist. Innoc. III. Lib.
iii. No. 77; Diplom. Norvegicum, vii. 3.)
Footnote 47:
Chron. de Mailros, p. 114; see also p. lxxxi. _infra_.
Footnote 48:
Magnus, son of the Earl of Angus, appears among those present at the
perambulation of the boundaries of the lands of the Abbey of
Aberbrothock on 16th January 1222 (Regist. Vet. de Aberbrothock, p.
163); but he seems to have been Earl of Angus as well as of Caithness
at the date after mentioned. A charter of King Alexander II. to the
chapel of St. Nicholas at Spey, dated 2d October 1232, is witnessed by
M. Earl of Angus and Kataness (Regist. Moraviense, p. 123).
Footnote 49:
The title prefixed to the translation of this document by Dean Gule,
made for William Sinclair of Roslin, in 1554, calls it:—“A Diploma or
Deduction concerning the Genealogies of the ancient Earls of Orkney,
drawn up from the most authentic records, by Thomas, Bishop of Orkney,
with the assistance of his clergy and others, in consequence of an
order from King Eirik of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, to investigate
the rights of William Sinclair to the earldom.” But in the document
itself King Eirik is spoken of as “our former lord of illustrious
memory,” and the date is evidently erroneous. It is probably to be
assigned to about 1443. It was first printed by Wallace in 1699, and
subsequently by Jonæus in the appendix to the Orkneyinga Saga in 1780;
by Barry in his History of the Orkneys in 1805; in the Bannatyne
Miscellany, 1848; and by Munch in his Symbolæ, Christiania, 1850.
Footnote 50:
Among the documents found in the King’s Treasury at Edinburgh in 1282,
were the letters addressed by the King of Norway (presumably Hakon) to
the inhabitants of Caithness. The inhabitants of Caithness seem to
have been also obliged by the Scottish King to give hostages for their
fealty to him. In the accounts of Laurence Grant, Sheriff of
Inverness, for the year 1263, there is a charge of £15:6:3 for the
expenses of twenty-one hostages from Caithness, at the rate of one
denarius (penny) for each per day for twenty-five weeks, “and then
they were set at liberty.” (Compota Camerarium Scotiæ, i. p. 31.)
Footnote 51:
Acta Parl. Scot., vol. i. p. 82.
Footnote 52:
Iceland Annals, _sub anno_.
Footnote 53:
The Scala Cronica says off the coast of Buchan. “One Master Weland, a
clerke of Scotlande, sent yn to Norway for Margaret, dyed with her by
tempeste on the se cumming oute of Norway to Scotland yn costes of
Boghan.” (Scala Cronica, Mait. Club, pp. 110, 282.) Wyntoun says she
was “put to dede by martyry,” and assigns as the reason that the
Norwegians would not have one who was of another nation and a female
to be heir to the throne of Norway, though their laws allowed it. He
had probably heard the story of the “false Margaret.” (See p. lii.)
Footnote 54:
In the Wardrobe Rolls of King Edward I. (1290) the following payments
occur:—“Sept. 1.—To Lord Eli de Hamville going by the king’s orders
with the Lord Bishop of Durham towards Scotland to meet the messengers
of the King of Norway and the princess, and was to return with the
news to the king. To John Tyndale, the messenger from the Bishop of
St. Andrews, who brought letters from his master to the king
concerning the rumours of the arrival of the Princess of Scotland in
Orkney—by gift of the king, xxsh. To William Playfair, messenger of
the Earl of Orkney, who brought letters to our Lord the King, on the
part of Lord John Comyn, concerning the reported arrival of the
Scottish Princess in Orkney—by gift of the king, xiiish. 4d.” There is
also a detailed account of the expenses of two messengers who left
Newcastle on the 15th September, were at Haberdene on the 23d, at the
Meikle Ferry in Sutherland on the 30th, where they met the messengers
from Scotland, then proceeded by Helmsdale and Spittal to Wick, which
they reached on the 4th October. They left Wick on the 6th October,
and arrived at Norham on the 21st November. On the 13th May of the
following year (1291) Earl John of Orkney had a safe conduct to come
to King Edward till the 24th June, when the earl would doubtless
communicate to the king all that he knew of the princess’s death.
Footnote 55:
This letter was dated 1st February 1320, and the substance of it is
given by Suhm, vol. xii. p. 29. It does not seem to be known from the
original document however, but from a later “paraphrase,” as Munch
calls it, preserved in the Royal Library at Stockholm. (Det Norske
Folks Historie, vol. iv. part 2, p. 348.)
Footnote 56:
Under the date 1293 the following entry occurs in the Chronicle of
Lanercost:—“Dominica etiam post festum Sancti Martini (Nov. 15)
desponsata est filia Roberti de Carrick regi Norwagiae Magno.” (Chron.
de Lanercost, p. 155.) Magnus is plainly a mistake for Eirik, the son
of Magnus, who reigned from 1280 to 1299.
Footnote 57:
Rymer’s Fœdera, Syllabus I. p. 114.
Footnote 58:
Det Norske Folks Historie, vol. iv. part 2, p. 202.
Footnote 59:
Munch, Det Norske Folks Historie, vol. iv. part 2, pp. 195, 344.
Footnote 60:
Haflidi Steinson died nearly nineteen years after this as priest of
Breidabolstad in Iceland. The Iceland Annals, recording his death in
1319, recount the story as if this were the real Margaret (whose death
they record in 1290), and add that “to this Haflidi himself bore
witness when he heard that this same Margaret had been burnt at
Nordness.” (See Wyntoun’s Statement, p. 1, note 1.)
Footnote 61:
On the 2d April 1320 Bishop Audfinn writes to the Archbishop that on
the 1st February he had issued a prohibition against the bad custom of
making pilgrimages to Nordness, and offering invocations to the woman
who had been burnt many years ago for giving herself out as King
Eirik’s daughter. He also complains to the archbishop that opposition
had been offered to the reading out of the prohibition in the Church
of the Apostles of Bergen. (Munch, Det Norske Folks Historie, iv. part
2, p. 348.)
Footnote 62:
This noble document was signed by eight earls and thirty-one barons of
Scotland, at the abbey of Aberbrothock on the 6th April 1320. After
asserting the legitimate claims of King Robert the Bruce, and
narrating his struggles in the cause of Scottish independence, it goes
on to say that “If he were to desist from what he has begun, wishing
to subject us or our kingdom to the King of England or the English, we
would immediately endeavour to expel him as our enemy, and the
subverter of his own rights and ours, and make another king who should
be able to defend us. For so long as a hundred remain alive, we never
will in any degree be subject to the dominion of the English. Since
not for glory, riches, nor honour, we fight, but for liberty alone,
which no good man loses but with his life.” The duplicate, preserved
in the General Register House, is printed in facsimile in the National
Manuscripts of Scotland, published under the superintendence of the
Lord Clerk Register.
Footnote 63:
The lands are those of Stufum, Kuikobba, Klaet, Thordar, Borgh, Leika,
Lidh, Haughs-æth and Petland-Sker. (Diplom. Norvegicum, ii. 146.)
Footnote 64:
Munch, in his Genealogical Table of the Earls of Orkney, makes
Katharina to be the daughter of Earl John (following Douglas’ Peerage
of Scotland), and Magnus to be a son of Malcolm of Caithness, whom he
conjectures to have been a son of the first Magnus. But in a note on
this subject in the second series of his History, he acknowledges the
mistake, referring to this document in proof of Magnus’ descent from
Earl John. (Det Norske Folks Historie, Anden Afdeling, vol. i. p.
317.)
Footnote 65:
An entry in the Chamberlain Rolls for that year mentions the dues of
the fourth part of Caithness, which the Earl of Stratherne had. (Comp.
Camer. Scot. i. p. 235.)
Footnote 66:
This document is not now to be found, but Mr. Cosmo Innes says (Lib.
Insule Missarum, p. xliii) that he made a note of its purport as given
above in the Dunrobin charter-room. Sir Robert Gordon, in his
Genealogy of the Earls of Sutherland (p. 49), gives the purport of the
document in precisely similar terms, but says that it is dated 28th
May 1344. Sir James Balfour, in his Catalogue of the Scottish
Nobility, also gives 1344. The confirmation of this contract by David
II. is recorded as a “confirmation of a contract of marriage betwixt
Malisius, Earl of Stratherne, Caithness, and Orkney, and William, Earl
of Ross.” (Robertson’s Index of Missing Charters, p. 51.)
Footnote 67:
There is also on record a confirmation by Robert I. of a charter of
the lands of Kingkell, Brechin, to Maria (Marjorie?) de Stratherne,
spouse of Malise of Stratherne. (Robertson’s Index, p. 19.)
Footnote 68:
Chronicle of the Earls of Ross, Mis. Scot., vol. iv. p. 128.
Footnote 69:
There is an entry in the Chamberlain Rolls, in 1340, in regard to a
payment by Johannes More, “pro terris de Beridale in Cattania, de
quibus dicit se hereditarium infeodari per comitem de Strathern et per
Regem confirmari.” (Comp. Camerar. Scot. i. p. 265.)
Footnote 70:
Sir James Balfour (Catalogue of the Scottish Nobility) says:—“This
Earl Malisius was forfaulted by King David II. for alienating the
earldom of Stratherne to the Earl of Warrenne, an Englishman, the
king’s enemy, and all his possessions annexed to the crown.” Sir
Robert Gordon says that the charter by King David granting the earldom
of Stratherne to Maurice Moray is dated the last day of October 1345.
Footnote 71:
A dispensation granted by Pope Benedict XII. in July 1339 for the
marriage of Maurice de Moravia with Johanna, widow of John, Earl of
Athole, styles her Countess of Stratherne. (Theiner’s Monumenta, p.
275.) Maurice fell at the battle of Durham in 1346. Johanna, Countess
of Stratherne, in her widowhood executed a charter in favour of Robert
of Erskine and his wife, Christian of Keith, her cousin, which is
confirmed by Robert, Steward of Scotland and Earl of Stratherne in
1361. (Chartulary of Cambuskenneth, Grampian Club, p. 255.)
Footnote 72:
Third Report of Com. on Hist. MSS. p. 416.
Footnote 73:
Rymer’s Fœdera, Syllabus i. p. 272.
Footnote 74:
Robertson’s Index of Charters, pp. 18, 34.
Footnote 75:
Hist. Doc. Scot. i. p. 394.
Footnote 76:
Balnagown Charters, Orig. Paroch. ii. 487.
Footnote 77:
Robert Stewart, Seneschal of Scotland and Earl of Stratherne,
certifies that, in his court held at Crieff, 8th May 1358, he had seen
read and confirmed the charters granted to the abbot and convent of
Inchaffray of the annual of 42 marcs of the thanage of Dunyne, given
by the former earls of good memory—Malise the first and Malise the
second, his predecessors. (Liber Insula Missarum, p. 55.) Et nihil hic
de terris quondam Malesii infra comitatu Cathanie quia comes de Ross
se intromittit de eisdem. (Conqu. Camerar. Scot., _an._ 1357, i. p.
320.) That the second Malise of Robert Stewart’s deed is the last
Malise who was Earl of Stratherne seems to be shown by another deed of
Robert Stewart, dated in 1361, in which, as Seneschal of Scotland and
Earl of Stratherne, he grants to James Douglas the lands of Kellor in
Stratherne, “which the late Malise gave.” In the confirmation of this
grant by Eufamia, Countess of Moray and Stratherne, he is styled “the
late Malise of good memory.” (Regist. Honoris de Morton, ii. pp. 60,
86.)
Footnote 78:
See p. lvi.
Footnote 79:
Called in the Diploma “Here Ginsill de Swethrik,” for “Erengisle de
Suecia.” He was lawman of Tisherad in Sweden in 1337.
Footnote 80:
In the Diploma he is called “quodam Gothredo, nomine Gothormo le
Spere”—_Gothredo_ being a misreading for _Gothricio_, “a native of
Gothland.” (Munch, Symbolæ, p. 55.)
Footnote 81:
Munch, Norske Folks Historie, 2d series, i. p. 595.
Footnote 82:
In 1360 he grants certain lands to the monastery of Calmar for the
souls of his deceased wives, Meretta and Annot or Agneta, the latter
being probably Malise’s daughter, as the name is not a common one in
Sweden.
Footnote 83:
He styles himself “Comes Orchadensis” in a deed of 4th March 1388.
(Diplom. Norvegicum, v. 246.)
Footnote 84:
Diplom. Norvegicum, ii. 337-339.
Footnote 85:
See the document dated at Cullen, 4th August 1321, quoted on p. lv,
_supra_.
Footnote 86:
In a deed executed at Kirkwall, 20th January 1364, by which Bernard de
Rowle resigns to Hugh de Ross (brother of William, Earl of Ross) the
whole lands of Fouleroule in Aberdeenshire, the witnesses are John de
Gamery and Symon de Othyrles, canons of Caithness; Euphemia de
Stratherne, one of the heirs of the late Malise, Earl of Caithness;
Thomas de St. Clair, “ballivus regis Norvagie;” and Alexander St.
Clair. (Regist. Aberdonense, i. 106.)
Footnote 87:
Sir James Balfour calls her Lucia. She is also called Lucia by William
Drummond, author of the “Genealogie of the House of Drummond, 1681,”
but in neither case is any documentary authority cited. Camden says
the eldest daughter.
Footnote 88:
Barbour’s Bruce (Spald. Club), p. 482.
Footnote 89:
Munch’s Norske Folks Historie, 2d series, vol. ii. p. 96. See also the
deed of investiture, which is printed at length in the Diplomatarium
Norvegicum, vol. ii. pp. 353-358.
Footnote 90:
Balfour, Oppressions of Orkney (Maitland Club), p. xxvi. Such was not
the opinion of Father Hay, the panegyrist of the St. Clairs of Roslyn.
He says that “Henry, prince of Orknay, was more honoured than any of
his ancestres, for he had power to cause stamp coine within his
dominions, to make laws, to remitt crimes;—he had his sword of honour
carried before him wheresoever he went; he had a crowne in his armes,
bore a crowne on his head when he constituted laws; and, in a word,
was subject to none, save only he held his lands of the King of
Danemark, Sweden, and Noraway, and entred with them, to whom also it
did belong to crowne any of those three kings, so that in all those
parts he was esteemed a second person to the king.” (Genealogie of the
St. Clairs, p. 17.) Father Hay’s romances receive no countenance
whatever from the deed of investiture.
Footnote 91:
About £333 sterling.
Footnote 92:
Father Hay states (Genealogie of the St. Clairs, p. 17) that Henry St.
Clair “married Elisabeth Sparres, daughter of Malesius Sparres, Prince
of Orkney, Earl of Caithness and Stratherne, through which marriage he
became Prince of Orkney.” But Malise Sperra never had any connection
with the earldoms of Caithness or Stratherne. In another place, p. 33,
he says that Sir William Sinclair (who fell fighting with the Saracens
in Spain in 1330) “was married to Elizabeth Sparre, daughter to the
Earle of Orkney, and so by her became the first Earl of Orkney of the
Saintclairs. His name was Julius Sparre. He is also reputed Earl of
Stratherne and Caithness.” But this is manifestly a tissue of
impossibilities. He seems to have copied the last statement from the
Drummond MS. (1681), where the additional statement is made that
Elizabeth’s mother was Lucia, daughter of the Earl of Ross.
(Genealogie of the House of Drummond: Edinburgh, 1831, p. 237.) Both
writers seem to have confounded Malise, Earl of Stratherne, with his
daughter’s son, Malise Sperra.
Footnote 93:
Iceland Annals, _sub anno_. Munch, Det Norske Folks Historie, 2d
series, vol. ii. p. 106.
Footnote 94:
He seems to have held lands in Banffshire. In the Chamberlain Rolls,
1438, there is an entry of a receipt of £9 from James M’fersane for
the land formerly belonging to Malis Speir, knight in the Sheriffdom
of Banff, remaining in the king’s hands. (Diplom. Norvegicum, i. 366.)
Footnote 95:
The Iceland Annals, under the date 1389, have the following
entry:—“Malise Sperra slain in Hjaltland, with seven others, by the
Earl of Orkney. He had previously been taken captive by him. From that
conflict there escaped a man-servant who with six men in a six-oared
boat got away safely to Norway.”
Footnote 96:
Diplom. Norvegicum, ii. 401. Regist. Mag. Sigill. 196.
Footnote 97:
This deed is said by Robert Riddell to be in the Perth Charter-chest.
A copy of it is in one of his MS. note-books in the Advocates’
Library. See also Robertson’s Index of Charters, p. 128. The “double”
of this deed is said by William Drummond (1681) to have been given to
him by a friend, and the substance of it is given by him as
follows:—“Sir John Drummond and his lady Elisabeth Sinclair oblige
themselves to a noble and potent Lord, Henry, Earle of Orkney, Lord
Roslin, their father, that they nor their aires shall never claime any
interest or right of propertie to any lands or possessions belonging
to the said earle or his aires lying within the kingdome of Norroway,
so long as he or any air-male of his shall be on lyfe to inherit the
same; bot if it happen (which God forbid) the said earle to die
without any air-male to succeed to him, then it shall be lawful for
them to claim such a portion of the aforesaid lands as is known by the
Norwegian laws to appertain to a sister of the family. Sealled at
Rosline 13th May 1396.” (Genealogie of the House of Drummond, p. 91.)
Footnote 98:
Henry himself had married a daughter of Malise. See p. lxiii.
Footnote 99:
Father Hay says that he escaped through the instrumentality of one
John Robinsone, indweller at Pentland, one of his tenants, who went to
the place where his master was confined and played the fool so
cunningly that he was allowed access to the prison, and so found means
to convey the earl out in disguise. (Genealogie of the St. Clairs, p.
81.)
Footnote 100:
Balfour’s Annals, i. 148.
Footnote 101:
Diplom. Norvegicum, ii. 482.
Footnote 102:
Fordun, Scotichron. xv. chap. 32.
Footnote 103:
Douglas’ Peerage. The Diploma says nothing of his wife, but he is said
to have married Egidia Douglas, daughter of Lord William Douglas, and
Egidia, daughter of Robert II. (Extracta ex Cronicis Scocie, p. 200.)
Footnote 104:
Diplom. Norvegicum, ii. 489. This document is endorsed—“Biscop Thomes
breff af Orknoy, at han skal halde Orknoy til myn herres konnungens
hand, oc hans effterkommende, oc lade him with Noren lagh.”
Footnote 105:
Diplom. Norvegicum, ii. 498. This document is endorsed—“Item biscop
Thomes aff Orknoy bref um Kirkwaw slot i Orknoy, oc um landet oc
greveschapet ther samestads.”
Footnote 106:
This document is printed at length in Torfæus, pp. 179-182; in
Balfour’s Oppressions of Orkney (Maitland Club), pp. 105-110; and also
in the Norse language of the time in the Diplomatarium Norvegicum, ii.
514.
Footnote 107:
Torfæus, Hist. Orc. 182. The document of which Torfæus here gives a
copy, however, is that of the 31st year of the reign of King Eirik
(1420), previously noticed, and refers not to the bishop’s second
appointment but to his first.
Footnote 108:
Torfæus, p. 183.
Footnote 109:
Balfour’s Annals, i. 155.
Footnote 110:
Diplom. Norveg. vii. 430.
Footnote 111:
He had received a grant of the earldom of Caithness from King James
II. 28th August 1455, as formerly mentioned, p. lxi.
Footnote 112:
Diplom. Norvegicum, v. 599.
Footnote 113:
Ibid. v. 605.
Footnote 114:
These islands had been ceded by Norway to Scotland in 1266 on
condition of an annual payment of 100 marks, which at this time had
fallen into arrear for 26 years.
Footnote 115:
His words imply that it was by request of the Orkneymen themselves
that Adalbert sent them preachers “extremi venerant Islani, Gronlani,
et Orchadum legati petentes ut prædicatores illuc dirigeret, quod et
fecit.”
Footnote 116:
Keyser, Den Norske Kirkes Historie, i. 158; Torfæus, i. 160; Munch,
Det Norske Folks Historie, ii. p. 216; Grub’s Eccles. Hist. i. 252.
Footnote 117:
Twysden, Decem Scriptores, pp. 1709-13.
Footnote 118:
Printed in the Notes and Illustrations to the Scala Cronica (Maitland
Club), p. 234.
Footnote 119:
Monasticon Anglicanum, vi. p. 1186.
Footnote 120:
Flor. Wig. Chron. Monum. Hist. Britann. p. 644.
Footnote 121:
The name Christ’s Church, says Munch, was only given to a cathedral
church.
Footnote 122:
Sir Henry Dryden’s Notices of Ancient Churches in Orkney, in the
_Orcadian_, 1867.
Footnote 123:
Munch’s Catalogue of the Bishops of Orkney, Bannatyne Miscellany, iii.
181.
Footnote 124:
See the Saga, p. 126.
Footnote 125:
Fornmanna Sögur, vol. vi.
Footnote 126:
Diplom. Norvegicum, vii. p. 2.
Footnote 127:
See p. lxxx.
Footnote 128:
Hakonar Saga hins gamla, Flateyjarbók, iii. 52.
Footnote 129:
Diplom. Norvegicum, vii. p. 13.
Footnote 130:
Ibid. i. 32.
Footnote 131:
Keyser, Den Norske Kirkes Historie, ii. 210. Torfæus Hist. Orc., p.
172.
Footnote 132:
Diplom. Norvegicum. The Chron. de Lanercost, under the date 1275,
incidentally notices a Bishop of Orkney, named William, who related
many wonderful things of the islands under Norwegian rule, and
specially of Iceland. Munch supposes him to have been one of the
titular bishops consecrated at York, and suggests that he may have
been the author of the curious fragment of a Chronicon Norvegiæ
preserved in the Panmure transcript, along with the transcript of the
Diploma of the succession of the Earls of Orkney, printed at
Christiania, 1850. (Munch, Symbolæ, pp. 2, 18; Det Norske Folks
Historie, iv. part 1, p. 678; Chron. de Lanercost, p. 97.)
Footnote 133:
Keyser, Den Norske Kirkes Historie, ii. 216.
Footnote 134:
Diplom. Norvegicum, vii. p. 134.
Footnote 135:
Ibid. p. 134.
Footnote 136:
Printed from the Panmure transcript in the Miscellany of the Spalding
Club, vol. v. p. 257.
Footnote 137:
Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, p. 376.
Footnote 138:
Among the persons mentioned in this record are Sir Richard of Rollisey
(Rousay), Sir Christen of Sanday, John of Orkney, Sigurd of Pappley,
John of Dunray (Downreay in Caithness). The title “sir” is equivalent
to our “reverend.” (Diplom. Norvegicum, i. 308.)
Footnote 139:
See p. lxix. Both these documents are printed at length in the second
volume of the Diplomatarium Norvegicum, and are exceedingly curious
specimens of the language of the time.
Footnote 140:
Diplom. Norveg. v. 605.
Footnote 141:
There was a monastery at Dornoch before the death of Earl Rögnvald in
1158. King David of Scotland addressed a missive to Rögnvald, Earl of
Orkney, and to the Earl of Caithness (Harald Maddadson), and to all
good men in Caithness and Orkney, requesting them to protect the monks
living at Durnach in Caithness, their servants and their effects, and
to see that they sustained no loss or injury. (Regist. de Dunfermelyn,
p. 14.)
Footnote 142:
Regist. de Dunfermelyn, p. 14.
Footnote 143:
Ibid. p. 74.
Footnote 144:
Diplom. Norveg. vii. p. 2.
Footnote 145:
The Book of Deer (Spald. Club), p. 95.
Footnote 146:
Diplom. Norvegicum, vii. p. 2.
Footnote 147:
See p. xliii, and also the account of these transactions in the Saga,
chap. cxv.
Footnote 148:
Printed in Theiner’s Vetera Monumenta, p. 21.
Footnote 149:
Chron. de Mailros, pp. 139, 150.
Footnote 150:
Printed in the Miscellany of the Bannatyne Club, vol. iii.
Footnote 151:
The bones of St. Fergus, the patron saint of Caithness, were deposited
in the abbey of Scone. Harald Maddadson, Earl of Orkney and Caithness,
granted a mark of silver yearly to the canons of Scone for the souls
of himself and wife, and the souls of his predecessors. The grant is
witnessed by his son “Turphin.” The Abbot of Scone obtained a royal
precept from King Alexander II. addressed to the sheriffs and bailies
of Moray and Caithness, for the protection of the ship of the convent
when on its voyages within their jurisdiction. The Abbey of Scone was
proprietor of the church of Kildonan, which, with its chapels and
lands, was confirmed to the canons of Scone by Pope Honorius III. in
1226. (Liber Ecclesie de Scon, pp. 37, 45, and 67.)
Footnote 152:
Sir Robert Gordon mentions a tradition that he was the builder of the
noble castle of Kildrummy, in Mar.
Footnote 153:
Theiner, Vet. Mon. Hib. et Scot. p. 89.
Footnote 154:
Ibid. p. 104.
Footnote 155:
There was collected in the year 1274—From Olric (Olrig), 2 marcs;
Dinnosc (Dunnet), 32s. 4d.; Cranesby (Canisbay), 40s.; Ascend
(Skinnet), 5s. 4d.; Haukyrc (Halkirk), 14s. 2d.; Turishau (Thurso),
26s. 7d.; the chapel of Haludal (Halladale), 9s. 4d.; Lagheryn
(Latheron), 27s. 10d.; Durness, 14s. 8d. There was collected in the
year 1275—Laterne (Latheron), 32s.; Cananby, 32s.; Thorsau, 2 marcs;
the chapel of Helwedale (Halladale), 9s. 4d.; Ra (Reay), 9s. 4d.;
Haukyrc (Halkirk), 13s. 9d.; Olric (Olrig), 2 marcs; the church of
Scynand (Skinnet), 18s. 8d.; the church of Dunost (Dunnet), 2 marcs;
Keldoninave (Kildonan), 2 marcs. The personal contributions include
one from Magister H. de Notingham—doubtless the Notingham near Forse
which still bears the name unchanged. (Theiner, Vet. Monum. pp. 112,
115.)
Footnote 156:
Theiner, Vet. Monum. p. 124.
Footnote 157:
Henry of Nothingham was a canon of Caithness in 1272. (Lib. Eccles. de
Scon, p. 85.)
Footnote 158:
Rotuli Scotiæ, vol. i. p. 6.
Footnote 159:
Ibid. vol. i. p. 7.
Footnote 160:
Theiner, Vet. Monum, p. 161.
Footnote 161:
Ibid.
Footnote 162:
Ibid. p. 163.
Footnote 163:
Ibid.
Footnote 164:
Comp. Camerar. Scot. i. 25-26.
Footnote 165:
See a paper by Joseph Robertson, Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot. vol. ii. p.
31, _note_.
Footnote 166:
Theiner, Vet. Monum., p. 276.
Footnote 167:
Ibid.
Footnote 168:
Ibid. p. 277.
Footnote 169:
Origines Parochiales, ii. 485.
Footnote 170:
Regist. Morav. p. 368.
Footnote 171:
There is a writ of Pope Innocent VI., dated in May 1360, preferring
Thomas to be bishop of the “Ecclesia Cathayensis,” and ordering him to
repair to his diocese on being consecrated by the Bishop of Preneste.
It appears from subsequent documents, however, that he was obstructed
and interfered with by the bishops of Limerick, Ardfert, and
Clonmacnoise, who laid many charges of criminal and illegal
proceedings against him, asserting that the “Ecclesia Cathayensis” was
a parochial and not a cathedral church, and the Pope appointed George,
Archbishop of Cashel, to report on the matter. Owing to the death of
the archbishop the report was not made, and the remit was renewed by
the successor of Pope Innocent VI. to the Bishop of Lismore. It is not
clear whether this was a preferment to the see of Caithness following
on the death of Thomas de Fingask, or a series of mistakes. See
Theiner’s Vetera Monumenta, pp. 316, 318, 324.
Footnote 172:
Theiner, Vetera Monumenta, p. 333.
Footnote 173:
Diplom. Norvegicum, vii. p. 309.
Footnote 174:
Regist. Morav. p. 200.
Footnote 175:
Regist. Episc. Brechinensis, p. 39.
Footnote 176:
For the details of the structure by Sir H. Dryden, see the
Transactions of the Architectural Institute of Scotland, 1869-73. See
also Billings’ Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities, 1848; and
Worsaae’s Danes and Northmen, 1852.
Footnote 177:
Sir Henry Dryden recognises the following styles in the building:—1st
style, 1137 to 1160; 2d style, 1160 to 1200; 3d style, 1200 to 1250;
4th style, 1250 to 1350; 5th style, 1450 to 1500. (Guide to St.
Magnus’ Cathedral by Sir H. Dryden, Daventry, 1871.)
Footnote 178:
Magnus Helga Saga (edidit Jonæus: Hafniæ, 1780), pp. 536, 538.
Footnote 179:
The present church of St. Olaf’s, which is not older than the 16th
century, and is said by Wallace to have been built by Bishop Reid, in
all probability stands on the site of the older one. The veneration of
St. Olaf extended both to Scotland and England. There was a church
dedicated to him at Cruden, and among the articles enumerated in an
inventory of the treasury of the cathedral of Aberdeen in 1518, there
is “a small image of St. Olaf of silver decorated with precious
stones.”—(Regist. Episc. Aberdonense, ii. p. 172.)
Footnote 180:
Neale, in his Ecclesiological Notes (p. 116), states that Earl
Rögnvald’s remains were first interred in the church of Burwick, South
Ronaldsay, but gives no authority for the statement. The Saga, on the
other hand, states expressly that his remains were taken to Kirkwall,
and interred in the cathedral. It is not likely that the founder of
the cathedral would have been interred anywhere else.
Footnote 181:
See p. liii, _antea_.
Footnote 182:
In the engraving given of this church by Hibbert, the church and tower
are both represented as covered by a stone roof, that of the tower
being a conical cap resembling the usual termination of the Irish
Round Towers.
Footnote 183:
In Jo. Ben’s description of the islands (1529) it is said that the
church of Egilsey was dedicated to St. Magnus. But as he adds that St.
Magnus was born in Egilsey, and brought up there from his infancy, and
that he gave a piece of ground to his nurse, on which she made an
underground house with all its furniture of stone, it is plain that he
is merely repeating the absurd traditions of the time.
Footnote 184:
There were three towered churches in Shetland (see p. ci.)
Footnote 185:
“Its style of architecture,” says Sir Henry Dryden, “discarding
certain indications of an earlier date, prevents our assigning to it a
date later than the beginning of the 12th century. When we contrast it
with the Kirkwall Cathedral begun in 1137, we are forced to give an
earlier date than that to Egilsey, and this opinion is corroborated by
the churches at Orphir and Brough of Birsay.”—(Ruined Churches in
Orkney and Shetland, in the _Orcadian_ of 1867.)
Footnote 186:
Those in Britain are Cambridge, consecrated in 1101; Northampton,
about 1115; Maplestead, 1118; the Temple Church, London, 1185; the
small Norman church in Ludlow Castle, and the Earls’ Church at Orphir
in Orkney—the only example in Scotland. “The round churches at
Cambridge, Northampton, and London,” says Ferguson, “were certainly
sepulchral, or erected in imitation of the church at Jerusalem”
(History of Architecture, ii. p. 60). Wilson, on the other hand,
supposes that the early dry-built beehive houses of the Western
Islands may have served as a model for some of the earliest Christian
oratories, of which that at Orphir, he remarks, is an interesting
example (Prehistoric Annals, ii. p. 369). But there is no analogy
whatever between the architectural features of Orphir and those of the
beehive houses, nor has it any resemblance to the earlier oratories
and chapels of the Western Isles.
Footnote 187:
Pope’s Translation of Torfæus (Wick, 1866), p. 108.
Footnote 188:
Sir H. Dryden says this mode of putting on the arch was probably
resorted to in order to give a support to the centre on which the arch
was built. This seems highly probable, and in some cases it would seem
as if the original supports still remain in the shape of two long thin
slabs resting on the imposts on either side and meeting in the centre
of the arch. See the engraving of the doorway in St. Mary’s Church,
Kilbar, Barra, in Mr. Muir’s Characteristics of Old Church
Architecture, p. 230.
Footnote 189:
Caithness and Part of Orkney, an Ecclesiological Sketch, by T. S.
Muir, p. 25.
Footnote 190:
From an expression of Jo. Ben’s it would seem to have been dedicated
to St. Peter:—“Weir, insula est parva, Petro Apostolo dicata.”
Footnote 191:
This church, which was called St. Peter’s in 1726, is called St.
Mary’s by Mr. Muir.
Footnote 192:
Sir Henry Dryden remarks that the same mode of making doorways is to
be seen in the chapels at Lybster in Caithness, at Weir, at Linton in
Shapinsay, Uyea in Shetland, and in some of the early oratories in
Ireland, and suggests the question—Were there doors in these churches,
and if so, where were they placed and how were they hung? “It is
known,” he adds, “that in many cottages in old time the door was an
animal’s hide hung across the opening, and probably this may have been
the case in these unrebated church entrances.” The custom of closing
the entrances to the places of worship by a skin or heavy curtain
survives in the East to the present day. The “veil of the Temple,”
covering the entrance to the Holy of Holies, is a familiar
illustration of this ancient custom among the Jews.
Footnote 193:
The minister of Birsay in 1627 says:—“There is likewise ane litill
holm within the sea callit the Brughe of Birsay, quhilk is thocht be
the elder sort to have belongit to the reid friaris, for there is the
foundation of ane kirk and kirkyard there as yet to be
seen.”—Peterkin’s Rentals, No. III., p. 98.
Footnote 194:
Low’s Tour through Orkney and Zetland, MS. in the possession of David
Laing, Esq.
Footnote 195:
See the article on “The Twin-towered Churches of Denmark,” by J.
Kornerup, in the Aarboger for Nordisk Oldkindighed for 1869, p. 13.
Footnote 196:
Detailed accounts of the excavation, with translations and facsimiles
of the inscriptions of Maeshow, have been given in a privately-printed
work by Mr. Farrer, and in a work published by the late Mr. John
Mitchell. An account of the structure of Maeshow, with notices of the
inscriptions, is given by Dr. John Stuart, secretary to the Society of
Antiquaries of Scotland, in their Proceedings, vol. v. p. 247. A
notice, with readings of the inscriptions, by Dr. Charlton, is given
in Archæologia Æliana, vol. vi. p. 127 (1865). See also the splendid
work on The Runic Monuments of Scandinavia and England, by Professor
George Stephens, Copenhagen, 1866-68.
Footnote 197:
Hogboy is the Norse word _Haug-bui_, the tenant of the _haug_, how, or
tomb—a hoy-laid dead man, or the goblin that guards the treasures
buried in the how. (Ordbog det Norske Gamle Sprog, _sub voce_.)
Footnote 198:
The leading specific feature of the Orkney group of chambered cairns
is the formation of small cells or loculi off the principal chamber.
The Caithness group is distinguished by the tricameration of the
chamber, and the Clava group by having a circular or oval chamber
undivided and unfurnished with _loculi_.
Footnote 199:
See Chap. xci.
Footnote 200:
The first par of the word seems analogous to the last part of our own
Carling-wark, indicating astonishment at the amount of labour required
for the rearing of such a structure.
Footnote 201:
In his recent work on Rude Stone Monuments of all Countries (London:
John Murray, 1872), Mr. Ferguson suggests that Maeshow may have been
erected for Earl Havard, who fell at Stennis about A.D. 970. But apart
from its Celtic structural character, if it had been Earl Havard’s
tomb his countrymen could scarcely have so completely forgotten the
fact in the short space of 200 years.
Footnote 202:
The most detailed account of these is to be found in an elaborate
paper on the Celtic Antiquities of Orkney, by Captain F. W. L. Thomas,
R.N., in the Archæologia, vol. xxxiv.
Footnote 203:
Flateyjarbók (Christiania, 1860-68), vol. i. p. 225. See the
translation in the Appendix, p. 208.
Footnote 204:
The following enumeration of the known sites of the “Pictish Towers,”
Borgs, or Brochs, will give some idea of their number and
distribution. In Shetland there are, in the island of Unst, 7; in
Whalsay, 3; in Yell, 9; in Fetlar, 4; in Mainland and its outlying
islets, 51; in Foula, 1—total, 75. In Orkney, in the island of North
Ronaldsay, 2; in Papa Westray, 2; in Westray, 5; in Sanday, 9; in
Eday, 1; in Stronsay, 3; in Shapinsay, 1; in Gairsay, 1; in Rousay, 3;
in Mainland, 35; in South Ronaldsay, 4; in Hoy, 1; in Hunday, 1; in
Burray, 2—total, 70. In Caithness, 79. In Sutherland, 60. In Lewis and
Harris, 38. In Skye, 30. (For detailed descriptions of Mousa, and many
others of these Towers, and lists of their sites, so far as known, see
the Archæologia Scotica, “Transactions of the Scottish Society of
Antiquaries,” vol. v.)
Footnote 205:
Detailed accounts of these are printed in the Proceedings and
Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
Footnote 206:
No instance of a flint arrow-point, a flint celt, a polished stone
axe, or perforated stone hammer, has yet been found in a Broch or
“Pictish Tower.”
Footnote 207:
As the people of the islands did universally to a comparatively recent
period, and as in some of the islands they do to this day.
Footnote 208:
See the Saga, p. 161.
Footnote 209:
_Scat_ still remains _the_ Orkney grievance. “Scalds” were got rid of
in the 17th century, having been then solemnly abolished by the
kirk-session of Kirkwall, on pain of 40s. penalty and four hours in
the cuckstool, as slanderers and persons offensive to their
neighbours.
Footnote 210:
Fasti Eccles. Scot. v. p. 441. This statement must be taken _cum grano
salis_. There can be no doubt, however, that the old language was in
use in Shetland at that date. The latest known document in the Norse
language, written in Shetland, is dated 1586, and among those
mentioned in it is “Mons Norsko minister i Jella”—Magnus Norsk,
minister in Yell. (Mem. de Soc. Antiq. du Nord, 1850-60, p. 96.)
Footnote 211:
See Lyngbye’s Faeroiske Qvæder, with Muller’s Introduction: Randers,
1822. The old man, William Henry, of Guttorm, in Foula, from whom Low
took down the Shetland ballad, spoke to him of “three kinds of poetry
used in Norn and recited or sung by the old men—viz., the Ballad, the
Vysie or Vyse, now commonly sung to dancers, and the simple song. By
the account he gave of the matter, the first seems to have been valued
chiefly for its subject, and was commonly repeated in winter by the
fireside; the second seems to have been used in public gatherings, now
only sung to the dance; and the third at both.” (Low’s MS.)
Footnote 212:
In the Stockholm edition of Snorro’s Edda, it was Hilda, by her
enchantments, who raised the slain, as fast as they fell, to renew the
combat, and the episode of Ivar Liomi and the Christian additions do
not occur. Allusions to Hogni’s daughter Hilda occur in the stanzas of
Eyvind Skaldaspiller (Saga of Harald Harfagri, chap. 13), and in those
of Einar Skalaglum (Harald Grafeld’s Saga, chap. 6, and Olaf
Tryggvason’s Saga, chap. 18).
Footnote 213:
For descriptions and readings of these see Munch’s Chronicon Manniæ,
Christiania, 1860; Cumming’s Runic and other Monumental Remains in the
Isle of Man, London, 1857; and Worsaae’s Danes and Northmen, London,
1852.
Footnote 214:
It is no less singular to find a Rune-inscribed stone so far up the
valley of the Spey as Knockando in Morayshire. See Sculpt. Stones of
Scotland, i. p. 61.
Footnote 215:
This fragment, which is now in the museum of the Society of
Antiquaries of Scotland, is figured and described by Professor George
Stephens of Copenhagen, in the “Illustreret Tidende” for 20th July
1873, and will be included in the third volume of his great work on
the Runic monuments of Scandinavia and England, now preparing for the
press.
Footnote 216:
See the note at p. 107 of the Saga.
Footnote 217:
“Description by Ahmed Ibn Fozlan (an eye-witness) of the ceremonies
attending the incremation of the dead body of a Norse chief, written
in the early part of the 10th century. Translated from Holmboe’s
Danish version of the Arabic original, with notes on the origin of
cremation and its continuance, by Joseph Anderson, Keeper of the
Museum.” Printed in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland, vol. ix.
Footnote 218:
A large number of these stone kettles, made of steatite, and furnished
with iron “bows,” exactly like those of our modern cast-iron pots, are
preserved in the Christiania Museum, filled, as they were found, with
the burned bones of the former owners. Sometimes the sword of the
owner is found twisted and broken, and laid on the top of the bones.
Footnote 219:
There are upwards of 400 of these brooches in the museum at Stockholm,
nearly half as many in Christiania, and a large number in Copenhagen.
Footnote 220:
The other one is in the museum at Copenhagen, and is figured in
Worsaae’s Danes and Northmen, p. 255.
Footnote 221:
Mem. de la Soc. Antiq. du Nord, 1840-44, p. 79.
Footnote 222:
For full details of this remarkable group of interments, see Wilson’s
Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 303, and Journal of the
British Archæological Association, vol. ii. p. 329.
Footnote 223:
The events narrated in this chapter are told with greater fulness of
detail in the extracts from the Flateyjarbók given in the Appendix.
Footnote 224:
_Vikinga-boeli_, a vik-ing station, or haunt of the sea-rovers, who
harried the coasts wherever they could find plunder. From _vik_, a bay
or creek, are formed the nouns _viking_, denoting the species of
plundering, and _vikingr_, denoting a person engaged in it.
Footnote 225:
Moeri, a province of Norway, lying southwards of Drontheim (Saga of
Harald Harfagri, chap. x). The word signifies a plain bordering on the
sea.
Footnote 226:
“He was called Torf-Einar because he cut peat for fuel.” (See
Appendix).
Footnote 227:
A son of Harald Harfagri.
Footnote 228:
Rinansey, North Ronaldsay. Munch suggests that the form Ronansey
implies its derivation from St. Ronan or Ninian, and that the name is
therefore older than the Norse colonisation. St. Ninian is often
called St. Ringan, and Ringansey seems quite a probable derivation of
Rinansey.
Footnote 229:
This is represented in the Saga of King Harald as a fine exacted by
Harald for the death of his son, and paid by the Earl for the _bœndr_
or freeholders who surrendered their odal lands to him in
consideration of being freed from this payment (see Appendix).
Footnote 230:
A poem by Thorbiörn Hornklofe, quoted in the Saga of Harald Harfagri.
Footnote 231:
Son and successor of Harald Harfagri.
Footnote 232:
They fell in battle in England, with King Eric Bloodyaxe, and “five
kings,” as told in the Saga of Hakon the Good. The place where this
battle was fought has not been satisfactorily identified.
Footnote 233:
Dungad, called also Dungal, was a native chieftain, Maormor, or
“Jarl,” in the north-east corner of Caithness, who seems to have
considered the policy of conciliation preferable to that of
resistance, judging from the intimate relations he formed with the
foreigners, marrying the daughter of one, and giving his daughter in
marriage to another, of the chiefs of the invaders. His _bœ_ or hamlet
of residence became on this account so well known to the Norsemen,
that they named the district of Dungalsbae (now Duncansbay) by it, and
spoke of the headland (now Duncansbay Head) on which it was situated,
as Dungalsness, or Duncan’s cape. The supposed remains of his castle
were seen by Pennant in 1796, and are described by him as the ruins of
a circular building, in all probability one of the “burghs” or
circular towers so common in the north of Scotland, which seem to have
been the defensive habitations of the native Celtic or Pictish
population of the period between the 6th and 9th or 10th centuries. It
is now a green mound. From the Session Records of the parish it
appears that the district retained its ancient name of “Dungasby” down
to the beginning of the last century, when it first appears as
Duncansbay, and to this day it is called “Dungsby” by the older
inhabitants. The name of the adjacent district of Canisbay, now
applied to the whole parish, is similarly derived from _Conan’s bæ_.
It appears between 1223 and 1245 as Canenesbi (Sutherland Charters),
and in Blaeu’s Atlas, the MS. maps of which were drawn (_circa_ 1620),
by Mr. Timothy Pont, the minister of the adjacent parish of Dunnet, it
is marked Conansbay. These two, Duncan and Conan, are the only native
chieftains of Caithness at the time of the Norse invasion whose names
have come down to us, probably because they were the only ones who
held friendly relations with the invaders.
Footnote 234:
In the Saga of Olaf, Tryggvi’s son, it is said that Earl Sigurd lay at
Asmundarvag, now Osmundwall, in the south end of the island of Hoy.
There is a place called Roray on the west side of the island, which
might be the ancient Rörvag.
Footnote 235:
Munch (Chronicon Manniæ, p. 46) alludes to the mistake so common among
the historians of Scotland to confound the _two_ Malcolms, and to make
one of them, as if one Malcolm only (Malcolm II.) reigned from 1004 to
1034. Though this theory has been ingeniously supported from a Norse
point of view, it is at variance with the concurrent testimony of the
early Scottish Chronicles. The Saga is the only authority for this
marriage; but admitting its testimony on this point to be unassailable
scarcely necessitates the repudiation of the authority of the Scottish
Chronicles on the question of the succession. (Compare Skene’s
Highlanders, chap. 5; Robertson’s Scotland under her Early Kings, vol.
ii. p. 447; and Fordun (Skene’s edition), text and notes.)
Footnote 236:
Olaf, Tryggvi’s son, fell at the battle of Svöldr, A.D. 1000.
Footnote 237:
The battle of Clontarf, A.D. 1014 (see the Introduction). The Iceland
Annals say that he held the earldom for sixty-two years, so that he
must have become Earl in A.D. 952; but Munch makes his true period to
be 980-1014.
Footnote 238:
The word _Bóndi_ (pl. _Bœndr_), literally “a resident” or “dweller,”
has no English equivalent, although the form remains in the words
“husband” and “husbandman,” (hus-bondi, house-dweller or
house-master). The Bœndr were freeholders by odal tenure, proprietors
of the lands which they had inherited by succession from the original
“land-takers.” “In the primitive form of Scandinavian society,” says
Balfour, in his Odal Rights and Feudal Wrongs, “land was the only
wealth, its ownership the sole foundation of power, privilege, or
dignity. As no man could win or hold possession without the strong arm
to defend it, every landowner was a warrior, every warrior a
husbandman. King Sigurd Syr tended his own hay harvest, and Sweyn of
Gairsay and Thorkel Fóstri swept the coasts of Britain or Ireland
while the crops which they and their rovers had sown grew ready for
their reaping.” The use of the ancient term survived in Orkney till
1529, as we learn from the description by Jo. Ben, that in the parish
of Rendale the people saluted each other with “Goand da boundæ” (i.e.
_godan dag bondi!_) instead of the “Guid day, gudeman,” of the
Scottish vernacular. Among the documents found in the king’s treasury
at Edinburgh in 1282, was one entitled “A quit-claiming of the lands
of the _bondi_ of Caithness for the slaughter of the Bishop,”—viz.
Bishop Adam, who was burned at Halkirk in 1222 by the “_bondi_,”
exasperated by his exactions. Although the word is Icelandic, it has
been retained in the translation as a convenient term to designate the
class, in preference to such periphrastic renderings as
“farmer-lairds,” “peasant proprietors,” or “peasant nobles,” as are
usually employed.
Footnote 239:
Hrossey (Horse Isle) was the name given by the Norsemen to the
mainland of the Orkney group. The Sandvik here mentioned as the
residence of Amundi and Thorkel can only be the Sandvik (now Sandwick)
on Deerness. When Thorfinn drew his vessels in under Deerness before
he was attacked by Kali Hundason (chap. v.), he sent to Thorkel asking
him to collect men and come to his assistance. Thorkel’s residence
could not therefore have been far from Deerness, although the mention
of Laufandaness is somewhat suggestive of Lopness in Sanday.
Footnote 240:
The Things were local or general assemblies for determining by public
agreement the course that should be pursued with reference to matters
affecting the common weal or the public peace. All odal-born freemen
(not under outlawry) had an equal voice, and king, earl, or common
bondi, met on the thingstead on equal terms, as thingmen.
Footnote 241:
Ulfreksfiord seems to have been the Norse name of Lough Larne, which
in a document of the reign of the Irish King John (A.D. 1210) is
styled _Wulvricheford_ (Worsaae’s Danes and Northmen, p. 311). It is
suggestive of the identification of this Lough as the scene of Earl
Einar’s defeat, that Norse burials have been discovered at Larne. One
of these is described in the Crania Britannica, pl. 56. The form of
the iron sword found buried with the skeleton, having a short guard
and triangular pommel, establishes its Norwegian character.
Footnote 242:
Konufögr is plainly the Norse form of the Irish Conchobhar. Several
Irish kings of this name are mentioned in the Annals.
Footnote 243:
Eyvind Urarhorn was a Lenderman (or Baron) of King Olaf Haraldson. He
had gone to Ireland to King Conchobhar previous to Einar’s expedition,
and had assisted the Irish against the Orkneymen. The Saga of Olaf
Haraldson says that Earl Einar was much displeased with the Northmen
who had been in the battle on the side of the Irish king, and seized
this opportunity of wreaking his vengeance on Eyvind, their leader.
Footnote 244:
Asmundarvag, now Osmundwall, in the south end of the island of Hoy.
The termination _vágr_ usually becomes _wall_, as Kirkiuvagr, which in
the modern form is Kirkwall.
Footnote 245:
Olaf Haraldson, surnamed “the Holy,” and afterwards known as St. Olaf,
who became king in the year 1015.
Footnote 246:
Now Sandwick, in Deerness.
Footnote 247:
In the Saga of Harald Harfagri it is stated (chap. vi.) that “King
Harald made this law over all the lands he conquered, that all the
odal possessions should be his, and that the Bœndr, both great and
small, should pay him land-dues for their possessions.” Thus he put an
end to odal right, in its pure and simple form at least, wherever he
extended his authority; and the Bœndr, thus taxed and deprived of
their odal rights, complained, with justice, that they were changed
from a class of proprietary nobles into a class of tributary tenantry.
Having assumed the ownership of the earldom of Orkney as his own by
conquest, his heirs became the odal-born lords of Orkney, while the
Earls were theoretically the liegemen of the Kings of Norway, though
having also an odal right to the earldom which the royal prerogative
could not set aside.
Footnote 248:
If like meets like, or if you be met in the same spirit as you come.
Footnote 249:
The word is _hirdman_. The hirdmen were the King’s body-guard.
Footnote 250:
The _manbote_ (or fine for manslaughter) for every Norwegian Lenderman
or Baron was fixed at 6 marks of silver, by the Older Gula-thing.
Footnote 251:
Malcolm II., King of Scotland.
Footnote 252:
The identity of Karl or Kali Hundason is one of the historical puzzles
which exercise the ingenuity of modern historians. Supposing the Saga
name of this individual to be a Norse corruption of the name of a
Scottish king, it resembles none more nearly than that of Culen
Induffson, the Culen Mac Induff of the _Chronica Pictorum_. But if
Kali Hundason be intended for Culen Induffson, the dates do not agree
by more than sixty years. On the other hand, supposing the events here
narrated to be of the period assigned to them by the Saga, Kali
Hundason ought to be Duncan, son of Crinan, Abbot of Dunkeld, who was
the grandson and successor of King Malcolm Mac Kenneth. But Fordun
states that Duncan’s succession was a peaceful one. It is not to be
overlooked, however, that Earl Thorfinn was also a grandson of Malcolm
Mac Kenneth; and if we could account for the discrepancy as to the
name given by the Saga, the war between the two grandsons of the
deceased monarch might readily be accounted for. For full details of
the speculations regarding the identity of Kali Hundason, see Skene’s
Highlanders of Scotland, chap. v.; the Irish version of “Nennius”
(Irish Archæological Society), Appendix, p. 78; Robertson’s Scotland
under her Early Kings, vol. ii. p. 477; and Munch’s Norske Folks
Historie, vol. i. pt. 2, p. 854.
Footnote 253:
The words “at Beruvik” in Jonæus’s edition are not in the
Flateyjarbók. Two places of this name are mentioned in the Saga. One
of these is plainly Berwick-on-Tweed (chap. xcii.) The locality of the
other (which must be the “Beruvik” of this passage) is fixed by the
statement in chap. xciv., where it is said that Earl Rögnvald was then
in Sutherland celebrating the marriage of his daughter with Eirik
Slagbrellir; and when word was brought to him that Harald had come to
Thurso, he rode with a number of his followers “from Beruvik to
Thurso.” It has been conjectured that the place here indicated was
_Caistal a Bharruick_, an old square tower situated on an eminence
near Kirkiboll, on the east side of the shore of the Kyle of Tongue
(_Orig. Parochiales_, vol. ii. p. 717). Judging from the context,
however, it seems more likely that it may have been the _vik_ or inlet
at the mouth of the water of Berriedale (Berudal), on the southern
border of Caithness, where there are also the ruins of an old square
tower—the Castle of Berriedale. This agrees with the statement that
King Kali, sailing _northward_ from Beruvik, saw the sails of
Thorfinn’s ships going towards Deerness, as he sailed into the mouth
of the Firth from the east. Had Kali come from the Kyle of Tongue, he
would have sailed _east_, and Thorfinn would have seen and intercepted
him from Duncansbay.
Footnote 254:
Now Sandwick, in Deerness, Orkney.
Footnote 255:
Broad Firth—the Moray Firth.
Footnote 256:
Torfness, the scene of the final conflict between Earl Thorfinn and
Kali Hundason, is here described as on the south side of Bæfiord, and
by Arnor, the Earls’ skald, as south of Ekkial, the river Oikel, which
gave its name to Ekkiálsbakká, or the district along the banks of the
Oikel and its estuary—the Kyle of Sutherland—which formed the march
between the territory of the Norse earls and Scotland. Torfness may
thus be conjectured to be Tarbatness, although we have nothing to fix
the locality more definitely. Bæfiord, in this case, would be the
wider portion of the Dornoch Firth. Munch suggests that the seemingly
French name of Beaufort Castle may be a corruption of Bæfiord (which
in that case would be the Beauly Frith); but in all probability the
name Beaufort is what it seems to be, and much more modern.
Footnote 257:
In which King Olaf Haraldson (the Holy) was killed, A.D. 1030.
Footnote 258:
The Kjölen mountains, part of the range separating Norway from Sweden.
Footnote 259:
Hólmgard, now Novgorod, formerly Cholmogori, in Russia, which the
Northmen called Gardariki.
Footnote 260:
The town of Ladoga, which Rurik, the first King of Russia, made his
capital in the 9th century. It is now a mere hamlet.
Footnote 261:
Alfifa, queen of Canute the Great.
Footnote 262:
Ingigerd, daughter of King Olaf of Sweden, was married to King
Jarizleif. She stipulated that Rögnvald should accompany her to
Russia, and he received the town and earldom of Ladoga (Aldeigiuborg).
Footnote 263:
Nídarós, now the town of Drontheim, so called from its being situated
at the mouth of the river Nid.
Footnote 264:
King Olaf adjudged Earl Einar’s third of the islands to be forfeited
for the slaying of Eyvind Urarhorn. (See chap. v.)
Footnote 265:
_Skotlandsfiord_, Scotland’s Firth, was the name given to the channel
between the Hebrides and the mainland of Scotland. (See chap. xxx.)
Footnote 266:
Vatnsfiord, probably Loch Vattin, an arm of the sea branching off Loch
Bracadale, in Skye.
Footnote 267:
Gaddgedlar.—This passage has given rise to a variety of conjectures.
None of the explanations which have yet been offered are free from
difficulties. Munch (_Chronicon Manniæ_, p. 46) says that, considering
the situation of Caithness, and how well the author of the saga must
have known it, it becomes evident that between “Caithness” and “at the
place” an _and_ must have been dropped by the subsequent writer, who,
living about A.D. 1380, and in Iceland (this part of the saga existing
only in the _Codex Flateyensis_), might easily have dropped an _ok_
(or the abbreviation thereof), not conscious of the great blunder he
committed. He further adds that Gaddgedlar is evidently the Norse
corruption of “Galwydia,” Galloway. This explanation is open to the
objections that, besides the improbability of Thorfinn having dwelt
for the most part in Caithness and in Galloway, the latter place does
not fit the description that there Scotland and England meet. The word
_eingland_, signifying meadow, or strath land, may possibly have been
used as a general term for “The Dales of Caithness,” if it may not be
supposed to be a mis-transcription of the word _eignarland_, meaning
Thorfinn’s own territory. Gaddgedlar might be the Norse pronunciation
of the native word Gall-gael, applied to the mixed population of the
districts where the Norse element had not entirely displaced the
Celtic, or the border districts between the Norse earldom and the
purely Celtic territory “where Scotland and his (Thorfinn’s) own land
meet.”
Footnote 268:
Raudabiorg, or Red Headland, must be looked for in the neighbourhood
of Dunnet Head, where the red beds of the Old Red Sandstone form the
distinctive feature of the coast. A little to the east of Dunnet Head
there is an outlying crag named Brough of Rattar, or Rattar Brough—in
all probability a corrupted form of the old name Raudabiorg. Still
farther to the eastward, where the burn of Rattar enters the Firth,
are the ruins of an old “Pictish tower,” or broch—in old Norse,
_borg_. In its immediate vicinity is a little promontory called Kirk
o’ Taing (_Kirkiu Tunga_, the Tongue, or Ness of the Kirk), on which
are the ruins of one of the small rudely-built chapels of the early
Christian time. On the north side of the chapel the edges of a number
of stone cists are visible through the turf; and from two of these,
which were dug up in cutting a drain in the spring of 1872, eight
silver armlets of the ancient penannular form were obtained. These
correspond exactly with the armlets which formed part of the great
hoard exhumed at Skaill, in Orkney, on the opposite side of the Firth,
with Cufic and Anglo-Saxon coins of the tenth century—in all
probability a hoard deposited by some of the vikings on their return
from a plundering expedition. As Earl Thorfinn and his men were
Christians, it seems probable that, if the chapel was then in
existence, the bodies of the seventy slain in the fight off
Raudabiorg, which were landed here, would be buried in the consecrated
ground attached to this chapel.
Footnote 269:
The Mainland of Orkney.
Footnote 270:
The two Papeys, the great and the little (anciently Papey meiri and
Papey minni), now Papa Westray and Papa Stronsay, are both mentioned
in the Saga. Fordun, in his enumeration of the islands, has a “Papeay
tertia,” which is not now known. There are three islands in Shetland
called Papey, and both in Orkney and Shetland there are several
districts named Paplay or Papplay, doubtless the same as the Papyli of
Iceland. Munch considers that these names betray a Kelto-Christian
origin. They probably indicate the settlements of Irish ecclesiastics
in the islands previous to the arrival of the Northmen. The recent
discoveries in Orkney of ecclesiastical bells of the early square
form, and of stone monuments with Ogham inscriptions (in one case
associated with a figure of the cross of an early form), seem to point
to the settlement of ecclesiastical communities in the islands at a
very early period. (See Introduction.)
Footnote 271:
Now Papa Westray.
Footnote 272:
King of Denmark.
Footnote 273:
Harald Sigurdson is the famous Harald Hardradi who afterwards fell at
the battle of Stamford Bridge, near York, fighting against Harald
Godwinson the Saxon King of England, in 1066.
Footnote 274:
A small island off Lindesnes, in the south of Norway.
Footnote 275:
The district round the head of the Christiania Fiord.
Footnote 276:
Scania, the southern part of Sweden.
Footnote 277:
Aalborg, in Jutland.
Footnote 278:
Earl Thorfinn’s pilgrimage to Rome took place most probably about the
year 1050. King Magnus died in A.D. 1047, and some time must have
elapsed before Thorfinn heard of his death. Then his messengers went
to Norway, and returned; and his own expedition was thereafter
prepared. After visiting King Harald Hardradi in Norway, he stayed
some time with Svend Estridson, the King of Denmark. Then he visited
Henry III., Emperor of Germany, and would probably reach Rome soon
after the accession of Pope Leo IX., who occupied the Papal throne
from 1049 to 1055. As Macbeth, the only Scottish sovereign who ever
visited the city of Rome, made his pilgrimage thither in the year
1050, and Thorfinn and he were close friends and allies, it is
probable that they went together. (Compare Saga of King Harald
Hardradi; Wyntoun, vol. ii. pp. 468, 469; Marianus Scotus, in Mon.
Hist. Brit., p. 604; Florence of Worcester; Chron. de Mailros;
Ritson’s Annals, vol. ii. p. 116; Skene’s Highlanders, chap. v.;
Grub’s Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, chap. xiii.)
Footnote 279:
This quotation from Arnór seems to have reference only to Thorfinn’s
conquests in Ireland. Doubtless the extent of these is considerably
exaggerated. The Thussasker appear to be the outlying skerries off the
S.E. of Ireland, still known as the Tuscar Rocks.
Footnote 280:
Malcolm II., Mac Kenneth.
Footnote 281:
Harald Sigurdson (Hardradi) was slain at Stamford Bridge in 1066, and
Earl Thorfinn died in 1064.
Footnote 282:
Transferred their allegiance to the native chieftains, to whom they
belonged by hereditary right.
Footnote 283:
This marriage is unknown in Scottish history, and rests on the
authority of the Sagas alone. Duncan is said by the Scottish
historians to have been a bastard, while the Sagas make him the
legitimate offspring of Malcolm and Ingibiorg, who must by this time
have been old enough to be Malcolm’s mother. She was married to Earl
Thorfinn before Kálf Arnason was banished by King Magnus (chap. xiv.),
which was some time between 1036 and 1041. Earl Thorfinn died in 1064,
seven years after King Malcolm was crowned at Scone, in 1057.
Malcolm’s marriage with the Princess Margaret of England took place in
1067, or less than three years after Ingibiorg became a widow. Munch
supposes that Ingibiorg must have died in childbed with Duncan, and
suggests that the fact that Duncan claimed the crown before Edgar, the
son of Malcolm by Margaret, may be taken as showing that he must have
been the offspring of a previous marriage. Macpherson (Wyntoun, vol.
ii. p. 472), while accepting the statement of the Saga, accounts for
Duncan being called a bastard from the circumstance that Malcolm’s
marriage with Ingibiorg was within the degrees of propinquity
forbidden by the canon law.
Footnote 284:
This William Odling (the Noble) is William of Egremont (the boy of
Egremont), son of William Fitz Duncan, and consequently grandson of
Duncan. The reference here to him as the person whom all the Scots
wished to have for their king is explained by the fact that, on the
death of David I., by the old Celtic law of succession, he became in
the eyes of the Celtic population the rightful heir to the throne; and
his claims were supported by no fewer than seven Earls, among whom
were those of Strathern, Ross, and Orkney. The insurrection was
speedily put down, but the claim was subsequently revived by Donald
Bane Macwilliam, who, on the same principle, obtained the support of
the northern chiefs. (See Skene’s Highlanders of Scotland for a full
account of the conflict between the feudal and the Celtic systems of
succession.)
Footnote 285:
This is a mistake. Morkere was present at the battle of Hastings, and
he and Waltheof went afterwards to Normandy with William the
Conqueror.
Footnote 286:
Fordun (v. chap. i.) records the landing of Macduff “at Ravynsore in
England.” Camden mentions a place on Holderness, at the mouth of the
Humber, formerly called Ravensere. It no longer exists, having been
destroyed by the encroachments of the sea.
Footnote 287:
Now called the Mainland of Orkney.
Footnote 288:
The reference here must be supposed to be to the murder of St. Magnus.
Footnote 289:
“Hugh the Stout” was Hugh, Earl of Chester; and “Hugh the Bold,” Hugh
of Montgomery, Earl of Salop. According to Odericus Vitalis, King
Magnus came into the Menai Straits with only six ships, carrying a red
shield on the mast as a sign of peace and commercial intercourse. The
Welsh King Griffith was at that time engaged in war with the Norman
Earls above mentioned, who had invaded his territories, and advanced
as far as the Straits, when the arrival of King Magnus gave an
unexpected turn to the course of events, in the death of the Earl of
Montgomery, as here narrated.
Footnote 290:
Hálogaland, the most northern part of Norway.
Footnote 291:
The Saga writer (says Munch) has been here misled by the Scottish
denomination of the reigning monarch, Edgar MacMalcolm. Malcolm
Canmore died in 1093, the year of King Magnus’s first expedition to
the west. The second expedition, which was in 1098, was the one in
which he fought with the two Norman Earls in Anglesea Sound. The
events of the two expeditions are here mixed up together, and the
references to Malcolm Canmore do not synchronise with either. It is
possible that the offer of the islands (as here mentioned) may have
come to King Magnus from Donald Bane, the brother of King Malcolm, to
secure the support of King Magnus in his attempt to retain the throne
against Edgar, although the incident of the drawing of the boat across
the isthmus may have taken place in the reign of Edgar. The
“Fagrskinna” (p. 156) adds that King Malcolm of Scotland, sent his
daughter out to the Orkneys to be married to Magnus’s son Sigurd, he
being then nine and she five years of age, and that he left her in the
Orkneys when he went to Norway. The author has confounded Malcolm with
Mýrkiartan.
Footnote 292:
Pennant mentions (1772) that not long previously it was customary for
vessels of nine or ten tons to be drawn across the isthmus by horses,
in order to avoid the dangerous and circuitous passage round the Mull.
Footnote 293:
Scotland’s Firth—the channel between the west coast of Scotland and
the Hebrides.
Footnote 294:
Muircearteach, grandson of Brian Boroimhe, King of Munster.
Footnote 295:
Now Drontheim, so called because situated at the mouth of the Nid.
Footnote 296:
See note at p. 38.
Footnote 297:
Ulster, in Ireland.
Footnote 298:
King Sigurd, the Jorsala-farer, set out on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem
in 1107.
Footnote 299:
Borgarfiord, the “fiord of the Borg,” now Burra Firth, on the west
side of the Mainland of Shetland, so named by the Norsemen on account
of the “borg,” or “Pictish tower,” which still stands on the little
holm of Hebrista, though greatly ruined. It is probable that the
reason of Thorbiörn’s connection with Borgarfiord was its affording
him and his followers a shelter and defensive position in the borg.
The old name Borgarfiord occurs in a document in the Norse language
dated 1299. It is a record drawn up in the Lagthing of certain charges
made against Herr Thorvald Thoresson, by a woman named Ragnhild
Simonsdatter, who accuses him of malversation of the land-rents of
Brekasettr. (_Diplom. Norvegicum_, vol. i. p. 81.) Harald of
Borgarfiord in Shetland witnesses a document in 1498.
Footnote 300:
The place where the Orkney Things were held is nowhere more
particularly indicated. Stennis has been suggested, on the supposition
that the great stone circle there would have been thus utilised by the
Northmen. It does not appear, however, that the occasion on which
Havard, son of Thorfinn Hausakliuf, was killed at “Steinsness” was a
Thing meeting there, and this is the only occasion on which Stennis is
mentioned in the whole of the Flateyjarbók. “Tingwale,” in the parish
of Rendale, occurs in the Orkney Land List of 1502. This seems to be
the only trace of the old Thing-völl in Hrossey.
Footnote 301:
Egilsey, in Jo. Ben’s description of the Orkneys (1529) called
“Insularum Ecclesia,” is regarded by Munch as deriving its name not
from the Norse proper name _Egil_, but from the Irish _Eaglais_, a
church. “To this day,” he says, “Egilsey contains a church shown by
its construction to have been built before the Northmen arrived in
Orkney, or at all events to belong to the more ancient Christian
Celtic population. (See under “Egilsey” in the Introduction).
Footnote 302:
These dates are self-contradictory, and utterly irreconcilable. King
Magnus Barelegs fell in Ireland in the year 1103; and it is stated in
the Saga of Sigurd, the Jorsala-farer, that Hákon, Paul’s son, came to
Norway to King Sigurd “a year or two after King Magnus’s fall.” The
King gave him the earldom and government of the Orkneys, and he went
back immediately to Orkney. Then it is added that four years after the
fall of King Magnus—that is, in 1107—King Sigurd set out on his
pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Now, it is mentioned in this Saga (chap.
xxxiii.) that Earl Magnus went to Norway to see King Eystein, “for
King Sigurd had then gone to Jerusalem.” This must have been after
1107. King Eystein gave him his patrimony, one-half of the Orkneys. If
his visit to Norway was in the year after King Sigurd’s departure, as
seems likely from the narrative, or in 1108, and “he had been seven
winters Earl in the Orkneys along with Earl Hákon,” this would bring
the date of his death exactly to the year assigned in the Iceland
Annals appended to the Flateyjarbók, or to 1115. The entry in the
“Annalar” for that year is: “Pindr enn heilagi Magnus jarl i
Orkneyium.” Torfæus dates this event in 1110. The Saga of St. Magnus
says he had been twelve winters Earl of the Orkneys jointly with
Hákon, counting evidently from the vacancy of earldom in 1103 by the
accession of Sigurd, Magnus’ son, then Earl of the Orkneys, to the
throne of Norway. This also gives the date 1115.
Footnote 303:
A curious catalogue of cases in which diseased and infirm people were
miraculously restored to health and vigour, after paying their vows at
the shrine of St. Magnus, is given in the Magnus Saga. These pilgrims
mostly came from Shetland. Two of the cases are interesting as
affording the earliest notices of leprosy (_líkthrá_) in Shetland—a
disease which seems to have continued in the Islands till towards the
close of the last century.—(Sir James Simpson’s Archæological
Essays—Leprosy and Leper Hospitals in Britain.) These cases appear to
have been overlooked by Sir James. Schröder has published a curious
Swedish version of the story of St. Magnus, in which the account of
his miracles is considerably varied.
Footnote 304:
That is for sixty-six years. As William died, according to the
Icelandic Annals, in 1168, and was bishop in the year of St. Magnus’s
death, 1115, he was undoubtedly bishop for fifty-three years. That he
was bishop for the long period of sixty-six years, as this passage
seems to imply, may be open to some doubt. Munch supposes that the
“seventh decade” may be an error for “sixth.” This would place his
consecration to the see of Orkney in 1112; but the Saga of St. Magnus
says he was bishop sixty-six years.
Footnote 305:
Rekavík is either the modern Rackwick, on the northern point of the
Island of Westray, in Orkney, or Rackwick, in the Island of Hoy; more
probably the latter.
Footnote 306:
Sigurd Slembir or Slembidiakn had a most romantic history. In his
youth he was considered the son of a priest, Adalbrekt by name, and
was brought up for the church. His tastes appear to have lain in quite
another direction, however; and he soon broke loose from the
restraints of ecclesiastical life. He gave himself out as an
illegitimate son of King Magnus Barelegs, and commenced a life of
roving and adventure, visiting the Holy Land, and turning an honest
penny occasionally by trading expeditions to Scotland, the Orkneys,
Ireland, and Denmark. In the latter country he proved his paternity by
the ordeal of hot iron, as King Harald Gilli had done. He then went to
King Harald, and asked him to recognise him; but instead of this he
was placed on his trial for the slaying of Thorkel Fóstri, Sumarlidi’s
son. He managed to make his escape by jumping overboard with two of
his guards in his arms, and soon after returned and killed King Harald
Gilli in his bed in Bergen. Then he tried to place Magnus the Blind on
the throne by assistance from Denmark; but the expedition was met on
the south coast of Norway by the sons of King Harald, and totally
defeated. Magnus was slain, and Sigurd Slembir was taken, and put to
death with almost incredible tortures. (See the account of him in the
Sagas of Magnus the Blind and the sons of Harald in the Heimskringla.)
Footnote 307:
Westness, in Rousay (Hrólfsey), see p. 73.
Footnote 308:
Thorkel Fóstri Sumarlidi’s son, foster-father to Earl Paul, not to be
confounded with Thorkel Fóstri, Amundi’s son, previously noticed as
foster-father to Earl Thorfinn Sigurdson.
Footnote 309:
Stofa. In the twelfth century men began to live more comfortably, and
broke up their large halls into separate compartments. Thus, a portion
of the Skáli at the upper end, where the pall or dais was, was shut
off, and called _stofa_.—(Dasent’s preface to the Njals Saga.)
Footnote 310:
Gefsisness. No place answering to this name can now be traced in
Westray, but a various reading of the passage has Reppisness; and
there is a place on the south-east side of the island still called
Rapness, probably the place here indicated.
Footnote 311:
Fluguness does not again occur in the saga, and has not been
identified. It is the same as the Flydruness of p. 92.
Footnote 312:
Knarrarstadir seems to signify the district at the head of Scapa Bay,
south of Kirkwall. Munch derives the name from _knörr_, a
merchant-ship. It is said at p. 110 that Játvör and her son Borgar
lived at Geitaberg, which seems to be the place now called Gatnip, on
the east side of Scapa, anciently Scalpeid.
Footnote 313:
Brekkur in Straumsey may have been the name of a homestead in the
island of Stroma. There is some confusion as to the locality, however.
It is said in chap. lxvii. to have been in Stronsay. The name is not
now recognisable in either of the islands.
Footnote 314:
Glaitness, near Kirkwall, is probably the modern representative of the
ancient Glettuness. In the testament of Sir David Synclair of
Swynbrocht (Sumburgh, in Shetland), in the year 1506, there is a
bequest “to Thorrald of Brucht, and to his wife and his airis, ten
merks land in Glaitness, and fifteen merks land in Linggo, with all
guids there contenit, and twenty-two merks in Pappale, ten merks in
Brucht.”
Footnote 315:
Harald Gillichrist, who subsequently became King of Norway, under the
name of King Harald Gilli. See p. 84, note.
Footnote 316:
Comparing men. This was a favourite occupation of their leisure hours
among the Northmen. A curious instance of it occurs in the Saga of
King Sigurd, the Jorsala-farer, in the Heimskringla, where the
narrative states that as the ale was not good the guests were very
quiet and still, until King Eystein said, “It is a common custom over
the ale-table to compare one person with another, and now let us do
so.” As in this case, a quarrel was the usual result.
Footnote 317:
Osló, or Opslo, was the old capital of Norway. Its site is now
included in that of Christiania.
Footnote 318:
Hauga-Thing, so called apparently because the place of meeting was a
_haug_, or barrow. Whether this was a local name at Túnsberg, or
whether it refers to a special assembly held at the burial-place of
the King, is not clear.
Footnote 319:
Harald Gillichrist, illegitimate son of King Magnus Barelegs, was of
Celtic extraction, his mother being a native of the Hebrides. He and
his mother were brought over to Norway from the Southern Hebrides in a
ship belonging to a Norwegian merchant named Halkel Húk. When the
story of Harald’s parentage was told to King Sigurd, he consented to
allow Harald to prove his paternity by the ordeal of hot iron, but on
condition, that if he succeeded in proving his descent according to
his claim, he should not desire the kingdom in the lifetime either of
King Sigurd or of his son, King Magnus, and to this Harald bound
himself by oath. This seems to be the oath referred to as given under
compulsion. “The ordeal,” it is added in the Saga of King Sigurd, “was
the greatest ever made in Norway, for nine glowing ploughshares were
laid down, and Harald walked over them with bare feet, attended by two
bishops, and invoking the holy St. Columba”—another testimony to his
Celtic birth. His feet were then bound up, and he was laid in bed.
After the customary three days had elapsed, his feet were examined,
or, as the Saga has it, “the ordeal was taken to proof, and his feet
were found unburnt.” His claims were therefore held to have been
proven, and made good. It is curious to find that among the privileges
granted by the Scottish King David to the monks of Holyrood, they were
specially empowered to make trials by the ordeal of hot iron.
Footnote 320:
In Vík, in the south of Norway.
Footnote 321:
Now Ferlof, in Sogn, Norway.
Footnote 322:
Vík meant properly the bay of Oslo, the upper part of which is now
called the Christiania Fiord, but it was also applied to the district
bordering on the bay.
Footnote 323:
Harald and Eric, Kings of Denmark, had sworn mutual brotherhood.
Footnote 324:
Alasund is now Yell Sound, the ancient name for the island of Yell
being Jala. In the latest known Hjaltland document, written in Norse,
and dated in 1586, the name of the island appears as “Yella.”
Footnote 325:
Outsittings, a peculiar kind of sorcery resorted to in order to obtain
foreknowledge of the future, in which the person sat out at night
under the open sky, and by certain magical rites or incantations
summoned the dead from their graves to consult them. A curious
instance is given in the 40th chapter of the Færeyinga Saga, in which
Sigmund Brestisson is brought from the dead, with his head in his
hand, to show who was his murderer.
Footnote 326:
The Moul Head of Deerness.
Footnote 327:
The Norsemen were in the habit of carrying stones on board their
warships to be used as missiles. It is told in the Færeyinga Saga of
Sigmund Brestisson that when about to attack the ships of another
Viking lying on the opposite side of an island on the coast of Sweden,
he spent the whole night in landing the goods and plunder from his
vessels, and breaking up stones, and loading his vessel with them to
serve as missiles in the attack. The same thing had been done by the
Earl’s men in this case before the commencement of the fight.
Footnote 328:
Probably at the place now called Swiney, in Caithness, near Lybster.
Though the context here seems to imply that Swiney, in Caithness, is
meant, it seems that Grim was in the island of Swona (the small island
between Hoy and South Ronaldsay), when Swein, Asleif’s son, visited
him (see p. 92). Perhaps Swiney, in Caithness, was so named from its
being the property of Grim of Swona.
Footnote 329:
Aurrida Firth, or Salmon-trout Firth, now the Bay of Firth.
Footnote 330:
Flydruness seems to be the same as Fluguness, in Hrossey (Mainland),
mentioned as the residence of Blan and his father Thorstein, at p. 74.
Footnote 331:
The Earl’s seat at Orphir appears to have consisted of a cluster of
buildings, of which the main hall or skáli answered to the public room
of the residence. The descriptions given of the Orkney skális are
wanting in that minuteness which is necessary to enable us to
understand the details of their construction. No doubt they were
similar to those of Iceland, the larger of which were constructed
partly of stone and partly of timber, the middle division of the hall
being higher in the roof than the “aisles” on either side of it, and
separated from them by a row of pillars running parallel to each of
the side walls. The walls of the aisles and the spaces between the
pillars were covered with wainscoting, sometimes with carved work, and
on high days hung with tapestry. Shields and weapons were hung along
the sides of the hall, above the benches, and the fires were lit on
hearths in the middle of the floor. The benches were ranged along both
sides of the hall; the “high seat” of the Earl, or owner of the skáli,
was in the centre of the south side, and the seats of highest honour
were those next to him on either side.
Footnote 332:
Probably a large flagstone set on end to serve as a partition-wall.
This is a common feature of the ancient structures in Caithness and
Orkney. It was in the shadow of this flagstone that Swein, Asleif’s
son, stood when he killed Swein Brióstreip (see p. 95).
Footnote 333:
Serving the table, and holding lights. The light-bearers or
candle-holders were a distinct class of servants at the King’s court.
This custom is said to have been first introduced by King Olaf Kyrre
in the latter half of the eleventh century.
Footnote 334:
The emptying of horns of ale to the memory of departed heroes and
comrades, with the accompaniment of speeches setting forth their
famous deeds, was a recognised custom at the festivals of the
Northmen.
Footnote 335:
Besides his evil repute as a turbulent fellow, Swein was suspected of
sorcery, and thus obnoxious to the church (see p. 88).
Footnote 336:
This must either he Paplay in South Ronaldsay, or Paplay on the
Mainland. Munch says that the circumstance that the name of the island
is always carefully added in the Saga when a Mainland district is not
the one alluded to favours the supposition that it is the latter which
is here meant.
Footnote 337:
Gói, the fourth month of the year, corresponding to our February and
part of March. The ancient mode of reckoning among the Northmen was by
“winters,” the year commencing on the 23d November. Gói was sometimes
called “horning-month”—the month in which the deer shed their horns;
and it was also the month in which, in heathen times, the great annual
sacrifice took place at Upsala, as mentioned in the Saga of King Olaf
the Holy.
Footnote 338:
_Höfn_, the haven, in Westray, is probably the modern Pierowall, the
only safe natural harbour in the island, and the only place entitled
to the name of “the haven.”
Footnote 339:
The _thorp_ or village of Höfn here mentioned most likely stood on the
shore by the landing-place at Pierowall. The fact that there are a
number of graves on the links here, in which have been found the
swords peculiar to the Norse viking period, shield-bosses, bronze
tortoise brooches (a distinctively Scandinavian form), and other
relics unquestionably of Norse origin, shows that the neighbourhood
must have been largely frequented by the Northmen, and perhaps made a
permanent settlement long before this time. The Church of Westray is
mentioned among those vacant in 1327-28 by the Papal Nuncio, who
collected the tithes for these years.
Footnote 340:
Although there is a curious similarity between this incident and that
related in chap. lxxi. on the occasion of the visit of Bishop John to
the Orkneys, yet the fact of Earl Rögnvald turning the procession into
ridicule, whereas Bishop John’s party appear to have been received
with all due respect, suggests that the two narratives can scarcely
refer to the same incident. The reference here to the “isle Elon,”
taken in connection with the statement in chap. xcix. that there were
monks on Eller Holm (named “Helene-holm” by Fordun), may mean that
there was a colony of clerics on the little island, whose dress and
tonsure may thus have tickled the fancy of the rhyming Earl. In the
rental of Shapinsay (1642), Elgin-holme is set in feu to Sir John
Buchanan for payment of 12s. annually. In 1529 Jo. Ben mentions that
there were foundations of houses and even of a chapel on Eloerholme,
though it was then waste and uninhabited (see chap. xcix). Neale
notices “the ruins of a very small chapel” on Ellerholm
(Ecclesiological Notes, p. 111).
Footnote 341:
The Iceland Annals place Earl Rögnvald’s winning the Orkneys in the
year 1136.
Footnote 342:
Evie Sound; from _Efja_, now Evie.
Footnote 343:
_Húdfat_—skin-bags, or sleeping haps, made of hides sewed together, so
as to envelope the sleeper as in a sack.
Footnote 344:
Still known as the Swelkie, a dangerous whirlpool in certain states of
the tide, off the island of Stroma, fabled to be caused by the waters
being sucked down through the eye of the quern “Grotti,” which once
belonged to King Fródi. Grotti was found in Denmark, and was the
largest quern that had ever been known. It would grind for King Fródi
gold or peace, which he pleased. But the sea-king M['y]sing took
Grotti, and caused white salt to be ground in his ships till they sank
in Pentland’s Firth. This is why the Swelkie has been there ever
since. As the waters fall through the eye of the quern, the sea roars
as the quern grinds; and, moreover, this is how the sea first became
salt.—(Elder Edda, Grottasöng.) Traces of this legend still linger in
the locality.
Footnote 345:
Ekkialsbakki is three times mentioned in the Flateyjarbók, and Ekkial
once by Arnór Jarlaskáld (see p. 22). Earl Sigurd, Eystein’s son, who
killed Malbrigd (Maormor of Mar according to Skene), was “hoy-laid”
(buried in a how or barrow, _haugr_), on Ekkialsbakki. “There cannot
be the least doubt,” says Worsaae, in his ‘Danes and Northmen,’ “that
Ekkial is the river Oykill (Oykel), which still forms the southern
boundary of Sutherland. But nobody is able to point out the barrow of
Sigurd Jarl. The tradition relating to it has vanished with the
Norwegian population.” But, fortunately, there are records more
permanent and reliable than popular tradition, by which the truth of
the Saga narrative may be verified, and the locality of Sigurd’s
grave-mound indisputably fixed. There is a place near the Ferry on the
north bank of the Dornoch Firth (into which the Oykel runs) which is
now somewhat inappropriately called Cyder Hall. In Blaeu’s Atlas
(1640) it appears as Siddera. In older charters it is conjoined with
Skebo, and called Sythera. In a deed of the year 1275 the Bishop of
Caithness claims right to “six davochs of Schythebolle and Sytheraw,
with the ferry.” In the deed of constitution of the Cathedral Chapter
of Caithness, executed between 1223 and 1245, there are assigned to
the treasurer the rectorial tithes of Scytheboll and _Siwardhoch_, its
conjunction with Scytheboll showing it to be the same place which is
called at subsequent periods Sytheraw, Siddera, and Cyder Hall. This
place, named Siward’s Hoch (_Sigurd’s haug_) at that early date, could
be no other than the traditional site of Earl Sigurd’s grave-mound,
and the Ekkialsbakki on which he was buried must thus have been the
north bank of the Oykel’s estuary. But the Ekkialsbakki twice
mentioned in connection with Swein Asleifson’s journey to Athole can
scarcely be the same with that of the earlier narrative. It seems
probable that in Swein Asleifson’s narrative the word may have been
originally Atjoklsbakki—the coast on the side of the Breidafiord
(Moray Firth) next to Atjöklar (Athole). The word _bakki_ is sometimes
used for a “coast.” The Saga writer may have been misled by the
similarity of sound to substitute Ekkialsbakki for Atjoklsbakki. (See
p. 115.)
Footnote 346:
The name of Maddad, Earl of Athole, appears in contemporary documents
as Maddoc, Madach, and Madeth. In the foundation-charter of Scone by
King Alexander I. and his queen Sibilla, “Madach Comes” is a witness.
“Maddoc” and “Madeth Comes” also witness charters of King David I.
From a charter by King Malcolm the Maiden, granting aid for the
restoration of the Abbey of Scone, we learn that the style of the
Earls of Athole was “Comes de Ethocl,” the Atjokl of the
Saga.—(Regist. de Dunferm. Regist. de Scone.)
Footnote 347:
Geitaberg is probably the place now known as Gatnip, on the east side
of Scapa Bay, near Kirkwall. It is formerly stated that Játvör and her
son Borgar lived at Knarrarstad, which is evidently the name for the
district, while Geitaberg was the name of Borgar’s homestead. Gatnip
is the highest point on that side of the bay, and thus Borgar was able
to notice the barge rowed by Swein’s men as it passed up and down the
Firth.
Footnote 348:
Magnus, in the text here, is clearly a mistake for Hákon.
Footnote 349:
The erection of St. Magnus’ Church was commenced apparently between
the years 1136 and 1138. The remains of St. Magnus appear to have been
transferred to it from Christ’s Church, in Birsay, previous to the
departure of Earl Rögnvald to the Holy Land in 1152. After Earl
Rögnvald’s death, in 1158, the building of the cathedral was carried
on by Bishop William, until his death in 1168, after which we have no
record of its progress.
Footnote 350:
The odal tenure of the lands in the islands was first modified by
Harald Harfagri in the time of the Earl Torf Einar. Earl Sigurd
Hlödverson restored the odal rights in return for the assistance of
the Bœndr at the battle of Skida Myre (see Appendix). This arrangement
subsisted till the imposition of the succession-dues by Earl Rögnvald,
which were subsequently bought up, as here narrated.
Footnote 351:
Knarrarstad, as has been formerly explained, was applied to the
district at the head of the Bay of Scapa. It was so called because it
was the place where the merchant-ships lay—from _Knarrar_, genitive of
_knörr_, a merchant-ship; and _stadr_, a stance or stead. The name is
preserved in old estate-lists as _Knarstane_. In the near
neighbourhood there is an ancient “broch” or “Pictish tower,” recently
excavated by Mr. George Petrie. Remains of very extensive buildings
have been found within and around it, evidently belonging to a
secondary occupation of the tower, of later date than that of its
original construction. Among the relics found in these secondary
buildings there are some which correspond with relics of the later
Viking period found in Scandinavia. This gives a certain amount of
probability to the supposition that the ruins of this “Pictish tower”
may have been occupied and utilised by Earl Rögnvald’s men, as we know
that the similar tower of Mousa, in Shetland, was on different
occasions, one of which is narrated in chap. xcii. of this same Saga.
Footnote 352:
This incident bears a remarkable similarity to that related in chap.
lxvi.
Footnote 353:
It is curious that Cæsar has described the ancient Britons as
observing in his time the same custom of shaving the lower part of the
chin, and wearing the hair long on the upper lip.
Footnote 354:
Borgarfiord seems here to be a misreading for Breidafiord (the Moray
Firth), unless we suppose that there was another Borgarfiord besides
the one in Shetland. Jonæus has _nordr_ instead of _sudr_, thus making
Swein sail north to Borgarfiord, which in this case would be in
Shetland. But it is hardly probable that he would have taken Shetland
in his route from Orkney to the coast of Moray.
Footnote 355:
Dúfeyrar must have been situated on the sandy shore of the parish of
Duffus, on the Moray coast, _eyri_ signifying a spit of sand. It has
been supposed, with some degree of probability, that Burghead is the
place here meant.
Footnote 356:
Ekkialsbakki, probably for Atjoklsbakki. (See note on p. 107.)
Footnote 357:
Hjalmundal, Strath Helmsdale, or Strath Ulli, which runs up along the
south side of the Ord, the mountain chain separating Caithness from
Sutherland. The expression “near the middle of Sutherland” must mean
that Swein came up through the central or inland region of the
country, and thus came down into Strath Helmsdale, a long way from the
coast, or “near the middle of the land.”
Footnote 358:
_Ines_ in Jonæus; it has not been identified.
Footnote 359:
Probably Lundy Island, in the Bristol Channel.
Footnote 360:
Syllingar, the Scilly Islands. There was an ecclesiastical settlement
there in Olaf Tryggvason’s time. It was in the Scilly Islands that he
was baptized, and embraced the faith which he afterwards propagated
with the strong hand both in his own kingdom and in Orkney.
Footnote 361:
_Lúdr._—This same signal was used by the army of the Bœndr at the
battle of Stiklestad (Flateyjarbók, ii. 352). The signal-horn used at
the present day by the Shetland fishermen still retains the ancient
name, “the ludr-horn.”
Footnote 362:
_Clavis Rhythmica_, apparently a kind of rhyming dictionary or
repertory of versification. Torfæus states that this joint production
of Earl Rögnvald and Hall, Ragna’s son, is still extant in the library
at Upsala.
Footnote 363:
From the description of Lambaborg, and its situation with regard to
the coast and the river at Freswick, it seems to have been the
fortalice now called Bucholly Castle, from a Mowat of Bucholly who
possessed it in the 17th century, and by whom it was partially
rebuilt.
Footnote 364:
Probably now represented by Duffus in Moray.
Footnote 365:
This passage supplies the name of a prior of the monastery of May, not
otherwise on record. (See records of the Priory of the Isle of May,
issued by the Soc. Antiq. Scot. 1868).
Footnote 366: