Note 267 — Chapter XI · THE BATTLE OF THE KINSMEN THORFINN AND ROGNVALD.

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.”