Note (return) — Chapter V

Meantime King Magnus Barelegs9 of Norway, instigated by Hakon, and taking advantage of the contentions between 1093 and 1098 of the various claimants of the Scottish crown, Donald Bane (whom he supported), Duncan II, and Edgar, had made his several expeditions, in the closing years of the eleventh century, against the western islands and coasts of Scotland and Wales. In the battle of the Menai Straits in 1098 we find that he had with him young Hakon Paulson, and also Erling and Magnus, Jarl Erlend's sons, though Magnus, who had repented of his early Viking ways, after declining to take part in the fight against an enemy with whom he had no quarrel, escaped to the Scottish court.10 In 1098 King Magnus had deposed and carried off Jarls Paul and Erlend to Norway, where they died soon after; and in the meantime he had appointed his own son, Sigurd, to be ruler of Orkney and Shetland in their place.11 But on King Magnus' death, during his later expedition to Ireland, where Erling Erlendson probably also fell, Prince Sigurd had to quit Orkney in order to ascend the Norwegian throne, leaving the jarldom vacant for the two cousins, Hakon Paulson and Magnus Erlendson. The latter appears to have stayed for some years at the Scottish Court and afterwards with a bishop in Wales, and again in Scotland, but on hearing of his father's death, went to Caithness, where he was well received and was chosen and honoured with the title of "earl" about 1103. A winter or two after King Magnus' death, or about 1105, Hakon came back from Norway with the title of Jarl, seized Orkney, and slew the king of Norway's steward, who was protecting Magnus' share, which after a time Magnus claimed, only to find that Hakon had prepared a force to dispute his rights. Hakon agreed, however, to give up his claims to Magnus' half share if Magnus should obtain a grant of it from the Norwegian king.12 King Eystein about 1106 gave him this moiety and the title of Jarl; and the two cousins lived in amity for "many winters," joining their forces and fighting and killing Dufnjal,13 who was one degree further off than their first cousin, and killing Thorbjorn at Burrafirth in Unst in Shetland "for good cause." Magnus then married, probably about 1107, "a high-born lady, and the purest maid of the noblest stock of Scotland's chiefs, living with her ten winters" as a maiden. After "some winters" evil-minded men set about spoiling the friendship of the jarls, and Hakon again seized Magnus' share; whereupon the latter went to the court of Henry I of England, where he appears to have charmed everyone, and to have spent a year, probably 1111, in which Hakon seized all Orkney, and also Caithness, which then included Sutherland, and laid them under his rule with robbery and wantonness. Leaving Caithness, Hakon at once went to attack Magnus in Orkney where he had landed; but the "good men" intervened, and an equal division of Orkney and Shetland and Caithness was made between the jarls. After some winters, however, they met in battle array in Mainland, and the fight was again stopped by the principal men on either side in their own interest, the final settlement being postponed until a meeting, which was to take place in Egilsay in the next spring, Magnus arrived first at the meeting-place with the small following of two ships agreed upon, but Hakon came later in seven or eight ships with a great force, and, after those present had refused to let both come away alive, Magnus was treacherously murdered under Hakon's orders by Hakon's cook on the 16th of April 1116. The dead jarl's mother, Thora, had prepared a feast in Paplay to celebrate the reconciliation of the two cousins, which, notwithstanding the murder, Hakon attended. After the banquet the bereaved mother begged her son's corpse for burial in holy ground, and obtained it from the drunken earl after some difficulty and buried it in Christ's Kirk at Birsay. Twenty-one years after, on the 13th December 1137, Jarl Magnus' relics were brought14 to St. Magnus' Cathedral at Kirkwall.