Chapter VI
Reading edition
The Moddan Family—Jarls Harald and Paul and Ragnvald.
From the short forecast of the future given above, let us turn back to the point whence we digressed, namely the year 1123, when Jarl Hakon Paulson died at the close of the reign of Alexander I of Scotland.
Of the line of Thorfinn we already know the royal origin and descent from Malcolm II's third daughter.
With Jarl Ragnvald, Jarl St. Magnus' sequel in estate, and himself afterwards St. Ragnvald, who was much in Caithness and Sutherland, and seems to have held and acquired considerable estates there, begins what is practically a new Saga, which may be styled "The Story of Ragnvald, and of Sweyn" the great Viking. Of these two we have perhaps the finest and most vividly painted pictures of the Orkneyinga Saga, full of dramatic touches, full, too, of interesting historical detail.
At the age of fifteen, he traded to Grimsby, where many Norwegians and Orkneymen came, and many from the Hebrides; and here he met Harald Gillikrist, who became his firm friend, and confided in him alone that he, Harald, was the son of King Magnus Barelegs, asking how he would be received by King Sigurd of Norway, and obtaining the diplomatic reply that he would be well received by the king, if others did not spoil his welcome. Then Kali returns to Bergen in 1116, about the time of Jarl Magnus' murder by his cousin Jarl Hakon, and after a friendship and a feud with Jon Peterson, which is amicably settled by the marriage of Jon with Kali's sister Ingirid, and of which the description well illustrates the manners and law of the times, is made Jarl Ragnvald of Orkney by King Sigurd; and on that king's death in 1126 he is confirmed in the title by his friend King Harald, for whom he fought in the battle for the throne at Floruvoe near Bergen, when King Magnus was captured, maimed, and deposed by Harald in 1135.
Jarl Paul, however, refused to part with half the isles; and, acting on Kol's advice, Jarl Ragnvald's messengers apply for aid in obtaining it to Frakark and her grandson Olvir Rosta in Kildonan, and offer them Paul's half share if they will help Ragnvald to secure his half. Frakark, having previously arranged that her niece Margret, the daughter of Earl Hakon and Helga, should marry Earl Maddad of Athole, second cousin to David I, as his second wife, thought that Orkney might be had, with half the jarldom and all Caithness, for Margret's son Harold Maddadson, then an infant in arms.
Sweyn then returns to Orkney and tells his version of the affair to the bishop, the bishop to Ragnvald, and Ragnvald to the "good men" or lendirmen of Orkney, who express themselves satisfied, and Ragnvald builds the Cathedral he had vowed to St. Magnus in Kirkwall—a strange medley of craftiness, murder, and piety.
Such is this Sutherland tale of Sweyn. According to the current notions of blood feud, he merely discharged the solemn duty of avenging his father's burning and death by a like burning and slaying of the household of his father's murderers. But his acts were wholly unjustifiable by the law of the time, as he had already accepted an atonement by were-geld from Earl Ottar.
After a round of harrying and piracy, especially in Sutherland, no doubt among the Moddan clan, Sweyn was heartily welcomed home by Jarl Ragnvald, from whom he immediately obtained another fleet for another set of raids on Wales, the coasts of the Bristol Channel and the Scilly Isles. His murder of Sweyn Breast-rope was committed just after an adjournment of the feast at Orphir for Nones in the Templar Church there, and Jarl Ragnvald's gift of the ships for Frakark's punishment was made while the jarl was piously engaged in completing and adorning St. Magnus' Cathedral at Kirkwall.
The strategy leading up to the Burning is characteristic of Sweyn and his stratagems. He openly asks for ships and sails in them, and thus is expected to land on the coast. But after a purposely devious course, which has puzzled inquirers into the locality of Ekkjals-bakki, he came overland by Oykel and Lairg and Strathnaver or Strathskinsdale, whence he was not looked for.
Harold had then to fight for his own hand; and, finding that Earl Erlend and Sweyn were in Shetland, he sought them out but missed them, and afterwards, though he hated Jarl Ragnvald, tried to get him on his side.
All Erlend's success, if we are to believe the Saga, this portion of which is written largely to glorify Sweyn, probably by his relative Bishop Bjarni, had been arranged by Sweyn's really marvellous cunning; and Ragnvald, no doubt feeling how dangerous an enemy Sweyn was, and that he was backed by the Scottish king, immediately sent for him in order to reconcile him to Harold. But Harold, soon afterwards, robbed Sweyn's house in Gairsay; and Sweyn, in his turn, attacked the house where Harold was, and nearly succeeded in burning him alive. Later on Harold all but caught Sweyn off Kirkwall, but Sweyn gave him the slip, by running his ship into a tidal cave in Ellarholm, off Elwick in Shapinsay, in 1155, and disappearing till the coast was clear, when he got away in a small boat.
"Jarl Ragnvald's death was a very great grief, for he was very much beloved there in the Isles, and far and wide elsewhere." It took place on the 20th August 1158.
After Thorbiorn Klerk's death, Olvir Rosta being "out of the story," Eric's children, who were mainly Norse in blood, were the only heirs left in Caithness not only for Jarl Ragnvald's lands, but also for the upper parts of the river valleys of Strathnavern and Ness, which the Moddan family had held through the whole Norse occupation of Caithness and Sutherland, along with the hill country in Halkirk and Latheron and Strathnavern and probably also in Sutherland, lands on which few Norse place-names are found, and which came to Eric through Audhild his mother on the deaths of Earls Ottar and Erlend Haraldson without issue. These lands would of right descend to Eric's eldest son, Harald Ungi, and on his death without issue, to his brothers if alive, and, failing them, to his sisters and their heirs, as happened in the case of Ragnhild and her son Snaekoll Gunni's son, neither Ingibiorg nor Elin receiving any share of this property, for reasons now undiscoverable, but which we shall endeavour to explain later, by presuming that one of them had died unmarried, or had married abroad, while the other and her descendants were amply provided for otherwise by marriage with Gilchrist, Earl of Angus.