Note Footnote 1 on p. 192 — Footnotes

449. After the divorce of his first wife Afreka. (See chap. cix.)

450. The Celtic form of her name is Gormlath.

451. This “Malcolm, Earl of Moray,” has a curious history. He appears first as Wimund, a monk of Savigny, and priest in the Isle of Skye. Afterwards he became Bishop of Man, and subsequently appeared in the character of a pretender to the Scottish crown, giving himself out to be Malcolm MacHeth, son of that Angus MacHeth who was defeated by King David, and slain at Strickathro A.D. 1130. Assisted by Somerled of Argyle and by this alliance with the Earl of Orkney, he ravaged the western coasts of Scotland, until he was captured by King David, and confined in the Castle of Roxburgh in 1134. He was released by Malcolm the Maiden after the death of King David, and received from the young king the sovereignty of a portion of the ancient kingdom of Cumbria. His tyranny was such that his subjects revolted, took him prisoner, put out his eyes, and confined him in the monastery of Bellaland (Byland), in Yorkshire. (Munch, Chron. Man. p. 80.)

452. Thorfinn, the son of Earl Harald, appears on record about the year A.D. 1165. In the Chartulary of Scone there is a document by “Harald, Earl of Orkney, Hetland, and Cataness,” granting to the monks of Scone a mark of silver to be paid annually by himself, his son Turphin, and their heirs.—Lib. Eccles. de Scone, p. 37. Thorfinn died in prison in Roxburgh Castle, after being mutilated by King William the Lion, to whom he had been given as a hostage for his father.

453. William the Lion.

454. The “Fagrskinna” has (p. 148) “er fell i Vik”—he fell at Wick; but there is nothing to fix the locality of this battle more definitely. The tradition of the district points to Clairdon Hill, between Murkle and Thurso, as the scene of the encounter. The church which is here said to have been erected on the spot where Harald fell, and which is spoken of as standing there when the Saga was written, is not now in existence. The ruins of a chapel, which was traditionally believed to mark the spot, were removed when the ground was brought under cultivation by the late Sir John Sinclair. A remonstrance by the late Rev. Mr. Pope, of Reay, seems to have had the effect of causing the erection of an edifice (now used as the tomb of the Sinclair family) over the place where an old chapel stood. It is now known locally as “Harold’s Tower.” Large quantities of human bones, and several of the peculiarly-shaped Norse swords which Mr. Pope describes as “odd machines resembling ploughshares, all iron,” have been dug up in the neighbourhood.

455. The Bishop advised the people to allow him first to speak with the Earl, in the hope that he would be able to mollify him.

456. This seems to imply that it was at the grave of the holy Tröllhæna that the Bishop received his sight. Tröllhæna seems to be the Celtic St. Triduana or St. Tredwell, who, according to her legendary history, came from Achaia with St. Regulus in the fourth century. Being of extraordinary beauty, she was solicited by a Gallic prince, and to put an end to his solicitations she cut out both her eyes, and sent them to him skewered on a twig. Sir David Lindsay alludes to this:—

“Sanct Tredwall, als, there may be sene,

Quhilk on ane prick hes baith her ene.”

She died at Restalrig, near Edinburgh, and her tomb there continued, so late as Lindsay’s time, to be a resort of pilgrims who came to “mend their ene.” There is a chapel dedicated to St. Tredwell in the island of Papa Westray, which Munch considers likely to have been erected by Celtic ecclesiastics previous to the Norse invasion. There was another chapel dedicated to her at Kintradwell, in Sutherlandshire, where she is known as St. Trullen; but there is now no trace of a St. Tredwell’s chapel in Caithness.

457. The letter of Pope Innocent to the Bishop of Orkney, prescribing the penance to be performed by the man Lomberd, who cut out the Bishop’s tongue, gives the additional information that when the Earl’s men took the “borg” they killed almost all that were in it. (See the Introduction.) The “borg,” or castle, at Scrabster, may have been an earlier building on the site of the “Bishop’s Castle,” an old fortalice on the cliff near the present hamlet of Scrabster, or it may have been the ruins of one of the still older Pictish towers, not far off, which the Caithnessmen may have occupied for the occasion as a defensible position.

458. Eysteinsdal is not now represented in the topography of the district.

459. The battle of Floruvogar took place in 1194, according to the Iceland Annals appended to the Flateyjarbók.

460. Shetland then passed into the immediate possession of the Crown of Norway. Its revenues were granted by King Hakon Magnusson, in 1312-19, to the Mary-kirk in Osloe (Christiania) for the completion of the fabric, with the proviso that then they should revert to the crown.

461. According to the Iceland Annals of the Flateyjarbók, King Ingi Bardson “took the kingdom” in 1204, and Harald Maddadson died in 1206.

462. The death of Hakon Galinn took place in the year 1214, according to the Annals appended to the Flateyjarbók.

463. A spann = 24 marks, or 12 lbs. Scottish.—Balfour’s Odal Rights, p. 99.

464. Halkirk, in the Thurso valley.

465. The Icelandic Annals place the burning of Bishop Adam in the year 1222, and add that the King of Scots caused the hands and feet to be hewn off eighty men who had been concerned in the Bishop’s burning. Among the documents found in the King’s treasury at Edinburgh in 1282 (and subsequently lost) was one entitled: “A quit-claiming of the lands of the Bondi of Caithness for the slaughter of the Bishop.” A bull of Pope Honorius, dated 23d January 1223, and addressed to the Bishops of St. Andrews, Glasgow, Dunkeld, and Dunblane, speaks in terms of high commendation of King Alexander’s zealous desire to avenge such an unheard-of crime as the burning of a bishop, and thoroughly corroborates the Saga account of the manner of Adam’s death, stating that these “wolves” and “demons,” having stripped their Bishop of his garments, stoned him, mortally wounded him with an axe, and finally burned him in his own kitchen. (Theiner’s Vetera Monumenta, p. 21.)

466. See note at p. 107.

467. The Mainland of Orkney.

468. Haugaheith, now Hoxa, a peninsula on the north-west side of South Ronaldsay, on which there are still several ancient grave-mounds, and one mound larger than the rest, which has been ascertained to cover the ruins of a Pictish tower. The grave-mound of Earl Thorfinn has not been identified, but Low mentions that in his time there was a tradition that the son of a King of Norway had been buried in the How (haug) of Hoxa (Haugs-heith).

469. Steinsness, in Hrossey, is the “ness” or promontory at the Loch of Stennis on the Mainland of Orkney, now so well known as the site of the “standing stones of Stennis.” The Norsemen evidently named it Steinsness from the stone circles and monoliths which stood on it when they first knew it. (See the Introduction, under “Stennis.”)

470. There is a place at Stennis called Havard’s-teigr by the country people to the present day; teigr meaning an individual’s share of the tún-land.

471. Nithing—cowardly miscreant.

472. The name Magbiód is suggestive of Macbeth, but the date is too early for Macbeth Mac-Finlay.

473. Audna is probably the Irish name Eithne. Kiarval, her father, is the Cearbhal or Carrol of the Irish Annals, who was King of Dublin 872-887. He is mentioned in the opening chapter of the Landnamabók as King of Dublin when Harald Harfagri ruled in Norway and Sigurd was Earl of the Orkneys. The two branches of the Hy Ivar, Kings of Dublin and Limerick, were the descendants of Ivar the Boneless, son of Ragnar Lodbrok. (See War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, App. pp. 271, 299.)