Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793-1241 (52 page)

Holy
earls

Before setting out on his crusade, King Sigurd gave up the Earldom of Orkney to Håkon Paulsson (r. 1105 – 26), son of the deposed Earl Paul. Håkon was soon joined by his cousin Magnus Erlendsson (r. 1105 – 16), the son of Earl Erlend. The earldom was back in the hands of its original ruling family. Earls Håkon and Magnus at first ruled Orkney and Shetland amicably enough, dispensing justice and rounding up and executing many Viking pirates who were disturbing the peace. However, in 1114 the pair fell out. Though it is not clear what the cause was, there was certainly a faction among the Orcadian chiefs that was not happy with joint rulership, and they had the ear of Earl Håkon. A meeting was arranged in April 1116 on the Orkney island of Egilsay, ostensibly to patch up a peace between the two. Each earl was to be allowed to attend with two ships full of retainers, but when Magnus saw that Håkon had turned up with eight ships he knew that he meant to kill him. Magnus first tried hiding but then gave himself up to Håkon and tried to save his life by offering to go into exile or even be imprisoned. The chiefs, however, wanted a decisive outcome and demanded that one of the earls be killed. ‘Better kill him then,’ said Håkon. ‘I don’t want an early death: I much prefer ruling over people and places.’ Magnus had a reputation for piety – he had been present with Magnus Barefoot at the Battle of the Menai Straits in 1098 but had refused to fight because he had no quarrel with anyone there, and had read psalms instead – and he prepared for his execution with all the humility and composure of someone who knew he was destined to become a saint. Magnus asked his executioner to strike him on the head because it was not appropriate that someone of his birth be beheaded like a common criminal. A cult soon developed around Magnus’s memory but, even though he was recognised as a saint in 1135, Håkon’s reputation was not tarnished at all by the killing.
Orkneyinga
Saga
describes him as a popular ruler, an able administrator who brought firm peace and made good laws. For the Orcadians it probably seemed like an ideal arrangement, one earl in Heaven to care for their souls, and another on Earth to provide them with security and good government. Håkon, however, lived with a burden of guilt for the killing and later in his reign made the long pilgrimage to Jerusalem as penance.

In 1137, Magnus’s nephew Rognvald Kali Kolsson (r. 1137 – 58), who had been born and brought up in Norway, overthrew Earl Håkon’s son and successor Paul the Silent. Rognvald would have made a good PR man in the modern world: his given name was Kali and he adopted ‘Rognvald’ to associate himself more closely with earlier earls of Orkney, two of whom shared the same name. Among the promises that Rognvald made to the islanders to win popular support was that he would build a stone church more magnificent than any in Orkney to house Magnus’s relics. Rognvald immediately ordered work to begin at Kirkwall under the direction of his father Kol. The church was built in the weighty Norman Romanesque style, using red and yellow Orkney sandstone, by masons who had learned their skills on Durham Cathedral in northern England. The stylistic similarities between the two buildings are very obvious. Though it was still far from complete, St Magnus’s remains were enshrined in the cathedral when it was consecrated about fifteen years later. A skull with a prominent head wound that was found in a casket in a cavity in the cathedral’s walls in 1917 is generally accepted as Magnus’s. There was politics as well as piety in Rognvald’s actions. The recognition of Earl Magnus as a saint put the Earldom of Orkney on a par with the kingdoms of Norway and Denmark: by giving the earldom a church to rival anything in the Scandinavian kingdoms, Rognvald was making a powerful statement about his own status.

Rognvald further emulated the Scandinavian kings by leading his own crusade to the Holy Land with a fleet of fifteen ships in 1151, in the process establishing himself as a figure of Europe-wide stature. Rognvald returned to Orkney in time for Christmas in 1153, but the situation he found was probably an unwelcome reminder that he was not, after all, a king. Rognvald had left the earldom in the care of his junior co-earl Harald Maddadsson, the grandson of Earl Håkon Paulsson (r. 1139 – 1206), with whom he had ruled amicably since 1139. While Rognvald was away, King Eystein II became the first Norwegian king to visit Orkney since Magnus Barefoot’s death while he was on his way to plunder the east coasts of Scotland and England. In Orkney Eystein learned that Harald was at Thurso in Caithness with only a single ship. Eystein sent three ships to capture him: suspecting nothing Harald was taken without a fight. The price of Harald’s freedom was a ransom in gold and an oath of allegiance to the Norwegian crown. Worse followed when Harald’s cousin Erlend Haraldsson turned up to claim a share of the earldom, sparking a complex dynastic struggle that was only resolved with Erlend’s killing in 1161. Rognvald did not live to see the end of the dispute: he was killed in a skirmish with outlaws in Caithness in 1158 and was buried in the cathedral he had founded in Kirkwall. Miracles were soon being reported and in 1192, Rognvald was recognised as Orkney’s second saint.

The
last
Viking

The insecurity caused by the dispute between the earls was a heaven-sent opportunity for one of the last of the old-fashioned Viking freebooters, Svein Asleifarson, a chieftain from the small island of Gairsay in Orkney. In a career of piracy that lasted over thirty years, Svein raided the coasts of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, taking ships on the high seas, and plundering villages and (despite him being a Christian) monasteries too. Just as it had been for the earliest Vikings, piracy for him was a seasonal activity to be fitted into the cycles of the agricultural year:

This was how Svein used to live. Winter he would spend at home on Gairsay, where he entertained some eighty men at his own expense. His drinking hall was so big, there was nothing in Orkney to compare with it. In the spring he had more than enough to occupy him, with a great deal of seed to sow, which he saw to carefully himself. Then, when the job was done, he would go off plundering in the Hebrides and Ireland on what he called his ‘spring-trip’, then back home just after midsummer, where he stayed until the cornfields had been reaped and the grain was safely in. After that he would go off raiding again, and never came back until the first month of winter was ended. This he called his ‘autumn-trip’. O
rkneyinga
Saga
(trans. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards, Hogarth Press, London, 1978).

Svein’s band of eighty warriors was large enough to make him a major power in Orkney, but he seems to have had no political ambitions beyond maintaining his autonomy. When the dispute between the earls broke out, Svein sided with Erlend so that he could legitimately plunder Orkney and Shetland, capturing ships belonging to Harald and Rognvald and stealing their rents and taxes. Once Erlend was dead, he and his victims were quite easily reconciled. Svein, after all, had his uses and, as there was little they could do about him anyway, it was best to be pragmatic. Sometimes the earls loaned him ships for his raids for a cut of the plunder and, if there was someone they wanted killing, Svein was usually happy to oblige, being well-aware that such favours could always be called in. Around 1170, Earl Harald urged Svein to give up raiding, telling him that ‘most troublemakers are fated to end up dead unless they stop of their own free will’. All too aware that his high status could only be maintained by a continuous stream of plunder, Svein continued, meeting a predictably violent end in 1171 when he joined Asculf Ragnaldsson, the exiled Ostman king of Dublin, in his doomed attempt to recapture the city from the Anglo-Normans.

Earl Harald’s sole rule saw the gradual decline of the Earldom of Orkney. In 1194, Harald supported an unsuccessful rebellion against King Sverre of Norway and was once again forced to recognise the overlordship of the Norwegian crown. As punishment for the rebellion, Sverre took Shetland under direct royal authority. The earldom’s possessions on the Scottish mainland, Caithness and Sutherland, also came under growing pressure from the kings of Scotland. Scottish influence in Orkney had grown almost imperceptibly as a result of intermarriage between the Norse and Scottish aristocracies. Harald himself was the product of one such marriage: his mother was the daughter of Earl Håkon Paulsson and his father was Matad the mormaer of Atholl, through whom he had inherited Scottish royal blood. Because of his family connections, Harald’s claim to a share of the earldom had been supported by King David I. David’s successors, likewise, used family disputes in the earldom to increase their influence there. In 1201, King William the Lion of Scotland used a dispute over the rights of the bishopric of Caithness as a pretext to invade the province in overwhelming force. Harald kept the provinces but was forced to surrender a quarter of their revenues to King William. This prepared the ground for the definitive Scottish takeover of Caithness and Sutherland after Harald’s son and successor Jon Haraldsson was murdered in Thurso in 1231. Jon’s death brought the direct line of Norse earls to an end (his family was lost at sea on their way to Norway after his murder). In 1236, Håkon IV (r. 1217 – 63) appointed Magnus mac Gille Brigte, the mormaer of Caithness, as earl. Magnus was descended from the Norse earls through his mother but was culturally a Scottish Gael. For the remainder of its history the earldom would be ruled by Scottish families, although it remained Norse in culture, language and sovereignty.

Norse
and
Gaels

The situation further south in Man and the Hebrides in the years immediately following Magnus Barefoot’s death is far from clear because the main source, the
Cronica
Regum
Mannie
et
Insularum
(‘Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles’) is chronologically unreliable. It is likely, however, that the island was under Irish control until 1114 when Olaf Godredsson (r.
c.
1114 – 53) returned from his exile in England and, with Henry I’s support, restored Norse rule in Man and the Isles. Olaf strengthened his position with marriage alliances with neighbouring rulers, all of whom had an interest in containing the power of the Scots kings. Olaf’s first wife was Ingibjorg, a daughter of Earl Håkon Paulsson of Orkney, and he married one of his daughters by this marriage, Ragnhild, to Somerled, the Norse-Gaelic king of Argyll. Olaf’s second marriage was to Affraic, daughter of Fergus, the king of Galloway, and his wife, an unnamed illegitimate daughter of Henry I of England. Olaf’s wide-ranging alliances gave his kingdom security. The Manx chronicle describes him as ‘a man of peace… in such close alliance with the kings of Ireland and Scotland that no one dared disturb the Kingdom of the Isles in his lifetime.’

In 1152, Olaf sent his son Godred to pay homage to King Inge in Norway. In Godred’s absence the three sons of Olaf’s brother Harald, who had been exiled in Dublin, gathered a fleet and invaded the Isle of Man to demand that their uncle give them half of the kingdom. Olaf agreed to meet the brothers at Ramsey to discuss their demands. However, the meeting was a trap and Olaf was taken by surprise and beheaded. The Haraldssons had little popular support and they did not rule the island for long. Godred returned the next year, raised a large army in the Hebrides, and captured the brothers, blinding two of them and killing the third. According to the Manx chronicle, once he had crushed all opposition, Godred began to rule like a tyrant. His popularity may also have suffered as a result of a failed attempt to seize Dublin and other unsuccessful interventions in Irish politics. In 1155, a powerful Norse-Gaelic chieftain from the Hebrides, Thorfinn macOttar, went to Somerled and asked him to make his young son Dugald king over the Isles in place of Godred. Somerled obligingly handed his son over to Thorfinn, who duly paraded the boy through the isles, subjecting them to his rule and taking hostages. Godred acted quickly when the news of Thorfinn’s coup reached him, raising a fleet and sailing to the Hebrides to regain control, even though it was mid-winter. Somerled raised a fleet of eighty ships and fell upon Godred’s fleet on the night of Epiphany (5 – 6 January) 1156. The location of the battle is not known but it has been plausibly identified as being off the west coast of Islay. The fighting was hard but the outcome was indecisive. When day dawned the two leaders negotiated an agreement by which Godred ceded all of the Hebrides to Somerled, except for Skye, Harris and Lewis. This was not enough for Somerled. Two years later he landed at Ramsey in the Isle of Man with a fleet of fifty-three ships and forced Godred to flee into exile to Norway. Although he had ostensibly gone to war against Godred on behalf of his son, it seems that Somerled took the whole of the Kingdom of Man and the Isles under his personal rule and began to style himself
Rex
Insularum
– ‘King of the Isles’. Somerled’s victory began the final stage of the assimilation of the Norse of the Hebrides into the indigenous Gaelic population.

Several major Highland clans, including Clan MacDougall, Clan Donald, Clan MacRory and Clan MacAlister, consider Somerled to be their direct patrilinear ancestor and later clan histories have cast him in the role of champion of the Gaels against both the Norse and the feudalising Scottish monarchy. In reality Somerled was a typical chieftain of his time and place, defending his own lands and opportunistically raiding the lands of his neighbours irrespective of whether they were Gaels or Norse: his name is derived from Old Norse
Sumarliði
, meaning ‘summer warrior’, a common alternative name for ‘Viking’. Irish annals and later clan histories preserve several, mutually contradictory, traditions about Somerled’s ancestry but modern genetic studies have shown fairly conclusively that his patrilinear ancestors were ultimately Norse. Five chiefs of different branches of Clan Donald, who can all trace their descent back to Somerled, shared a distinctive genetic marker, identified as a sub-group of haplogroup (i.e. a distinctive sequence of genes) M-17, on the Y chromosome, which is inherited only through the male line. This marker is common in Norway but rare in indigenous British and Irish populations. The same marker was found to be shared by 40 per cent of men with the surname MacAlister, 30 per cent of MacDougalls, and 18 per cent of MacRorys: Somerled may have a lot of descendents. Although Somerled had Norse ancestry, his family had travelled the road to full integration with the local Gaels some generations before he was born as his father and grandfather had Gaelic names. Somerled was much more a Gael than a Norseman in language, culture and identity.