Note 256 — Chapter VI · OF THE ORKNEYMEN.

Torfness, the scene of the final conflict between Earl Thorfinn and Kali Hundason, is here described as on the south side of Bæfiord, and by Arnor, the Earls’ skald, as south of Ekkial, the river Oikel, which gave its name to Ekkiálsbakká, or the district along the banks of the Oikel and its estuary—the Kyle of Sutherland—which formed the march between the territory of the Norse earls and Scotland. Torfness may thus be conjectured to be Tarbatness, although we have nothing to fix the locality more definitely. Bæfiord, in this case, would be the wider portion of the Dornoch Firth. Munch suggests that the seemingly French name of Beaufort Castle may be a corruption of Bæfiord (which in that case would be the Beauly Frith); but in all probability the name Beaufort is what it seems to be, and much more modern.