Note (return) — Chapter VII

After the death of Jarl Ragnvald in 1158, Harold Maddadson at the age of twenty-five "took all the isles under his rule, and became sole chief over them."1 Ever since 1139 he had been sole Earl of Cat save for Erlend Haraldson's grant,2 though Jarl Ragnvald seems to have had a share of its lands and managed the Earldom of Caithness for Harold during his minority, bearing the title of his ward till the latter attained his majority in 1154. Harold had married Afreka, daughter of Duncan, Earl of Fife, one of the most loyal supporters of the Scottish kings, and their children were two sons, Henry, who afterwards claimed Ross, and of whom we hear no more, and Hakon, Sweyn Asleifarson's foster-child, and two daughters, Helena and Margret, of whom we hear nothing save their names. Hakon, from boyhood, went with Sweyn on all his spring and autumn "vikings" or piratical cruises, undertaken every year to the Hebrides, Man, and Ireland, in one of which Sweyn took two English ships near Dublin, and returned to Orkney laden with broadcloth, wine, and English mead.3 Sweyn's life is thus described in c. 114 of the Orkneyinga Saga. "He sat through the winter at home in Gairsay, and there he kept always about him eighty men at his beck. He had so great a drinking-hall that there was not another as great in all the Orkneys. Sweyn had in the spring hard work, and made them lay down very much seed, and looked much after it himself. But when that toil was ended, he fared away every spring on a Viking-voyage, and harried about among the southern isles and Ireland, and came home after midsummer. That he called spring-viking. Then he was at home until the cornfields were reaped down, and the grain seen to and stored. Then he fared away on a viking-voyage, and then he did not come home till the winter was one month spent, and that he called his autumn-viking." At last, in a cruise to Dublin, which he captured, Sweyn was killed by stratagem on landing to receive payment of its ransom from the town, and the boy Hakon probably fell there with him in 1171. "And," the Saga adds, "it is the common saying of Sweyn that he was the most masterful man in the western lands, both of yore and now-a-days, among those men who had no higher rank than himself." Sweyn was, in fact the greatest man of his time. For he robbed whom he pleased, made and undid jarls and earls as he chose, and was the friend or tool of more than one Scottish king.