Note 302 — Chapter XL · THE SAINTSHIP OF EARL MAGNUS MADE MANIFEST.

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.