Chapter 10

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Isles while Sigurd still lived, though it well may be that he acknowledged the Orkney earl as overlord. The last king of the Limerick dynasty was Svein Kennethsson, and he, after the death of Sigurd in 1014, no doubt broke from the Orkney suzerainty, but at the time of Svein's death in 1034 Thorfinn and Ragnvald Brusason had once more established the supremacy of the Nordreys in these western waters.
       Thorfinn died as recognized overlord of all northern and western Scotland, holding these lands in fief for the king of Norway, but towards the end of his life, Malcolm Canmore, who succeeded Malcolm MacKenneth on the throne of Scotia, must have recovered from Thorfinn some of the Scottish earldoms of the south. It was at this time that the Isle of Man fell once again under the rule of the Dublin vikings, a Godfred Sigtrygsson, who took part with Harald Hardradi and Earl Tostig in the battle of Stamford Bridge (1066), being named, two years after Thorfinn died, as king of the island. But the Sudreys, it seems, still paid scatt to the king of Norway, even though the Orkney earls who followed Thorfinn henceforth interfered but little in their government.
       When Godfred Sigtrygsson and the little remnant of his fleet returned to Man after the battle of Stamford Bridge there was in his company a fugitive from the defeated army, one Godred Crovan, the son of an Icelander. Now this adventurer, having learnt the attractions of the island and having spied out its weaknesses, after a sojourn in Norway came back to Man some twelve years later at the head of a considerable fleet and overthrew the reigning king, Fingal Godfredsson, thus obtaining outright possession of the island where he forthwith installed himself as king. This, moreover, was not a solitary success, for his conquests outside the island made him monarch of no small realm, and it is said that Dublin and a great part of Leinster fell into his power, while in Scotland he was universally feared and his son Lagman was set up by him as lord regent of the Sudreys. Godred reigned for sixteen years over this great kingdom that he had so splendidly won, dying in the '90s of the eleventh century, and it must have been he, surely, who was the famous King Orry (or Gorry) of Manx legend.
       But now a Norwegian statesman and warrior intent upon winning a huge Scottish-Irish state for the possession of Norway, appeared in these western seas and shattered, temporarily at any rate, the newly created realm of Godred Crovan. This was none other than the king of Norway himself, Magnus




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Barefoot, who in 1093, 1098, and 1103, crossed the North Sea with a great fleet and by pillaging and massacre of the most outrageous kind successfully brought Orkney and the Hebrides, the western islands of Scotland, Kintyre on the mainland (won, it is said, from the Scottish king by a celebrated and astute piece of cheating), and Man, under the direct and unqualified overlordship of the Norwegian throne. Magnus even invaded Anglesey (1098) and reconquered as much of this island as had been formerly under Norse sway, and later he attacked Ireland (1103), wintered in Connaught, and was killed fighting in Ulster in 1104.
       After his fall most of the Norse population of Scotland still remained faithful to the Norwegian king as overlord. True that in Man and the Sudreys, and perhaps in Galloway too, the line of Godred Crovan was re-established upon the throne and that Godred's son Olaf (1113-1153) reigned over them for forty years. But he was a man of peace and rather than run the risk of another attack from Norway, he duly acknowledged her king as his overlord, paying him the proper tribute due on his succession. And in addition to this prudent act, he so cleverly courted the favour of the kings of Scotland and Ireland that none molested the Isles during his reign. Yet there were domestic troubles at the end of his long life and as a result of these he was assassinated by a rebel nephew, though after all it was his own son Godred who eventually succeeded him. This warlike prince for a short period ruled over Dublin in addition to the Isles, but he soon became so overbearing and tyrannical that it was not long before there was a movement afoot in Man to depose him.
       King Olaf had married one of his daughters to a powerful chieftain of Argyll who was of Scottish descent on his father's side but nevertheless bore the unmistakably Norse name of Somerled and who had beyond a doubt the blood of the Norse nobility in his veins, being probably of the family of Sigurd the Stout, the Orkney earl. To this Somerled the malcontents of the Isles appealed, begging him to give them Dugald, his son and Godred's nephew, as their king. Somerled, grand adventurer that he was, at once agreed, and immediately there was a struggle between himself and Godred. A great sea-fight took place on the night of Epiphany of 1156; but though both sides lost heavily, neither could achieve a complete victory, and in the morning a peace was patched up, the rival claimants, Godred and Dugald, agreeing to share the kingdom of the Isles, Dugald taking Kintyre and




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Bute, and the islands south of Ardnamurchan Point, while Godred, whose realm was thus split into two separate provinces, retained Man, Arran, and the Hebrides. 'So', says the Manx Chronicle, 'was the kingdom of the Isles ruined from the time that the sons of Somerled took possession of it', and it was plain enough that for a while the peace enjoyed under King Olaf was at an end. Two years later Somerled attacked Man and obtained possession of the island, Godred escaping to Norway. But in 1164 Somerled died and Godred came into his own again, taking to himself all his ancient domain with the exception of certain islands on the west of Scotland (Skye and Bute were two of these) that remained in the hands of Somerled's descendants.
       After Thorfinn died in 1064 there was for a time no great Orkney earl of equal power and estate, a frequent division of the earldom between brothers or cousins lessening considerably the importance of the Nordreys as a factor in the politics of Scotland, and a result of this was that northeast Alban fell away from the earldom and passed under the overlordship of the Scottish king. Such joint earls were Pall I and Erlend, sons of Thorfinn, and during their reign there was an interruption of the now long-established dynasty of earls founded by Ragnvald of Möre, for when King Magnus Barefoot of Norway invaded the Orkneys he deposed the two earls, setting up his own son Sigurd as earl in their stead. But Sigurd became king of Norway in 1103 and thereafter Haakon Pallsson, grandson of Thorfinn, and Magnus Erlendsson shared the earldom as dependents of the king of Norway. Magnus Erlendsson the Saint (d. 1115) was indeed after his death a revered and much-honoured personage, but in life he was an obscure personage, ruling only a half of the islands, and it was not until the earl of the other half, Haakon (d. circa 1123), had caused him to be put to death and had taken all the earldom for himself that the fortunes of the Orkneys seemed to improve; for Haakon, after making a pilgrimage of penitence to Rome, governed well, made new laws, and kept his realm at peace. But there was quarrelling after his death between his sons Pall and Harald Smoothtongue (who held Caithness in fief from the king of Scotland), and the earldom was again divided, though Pall (d. 1136) eventually recovered the whole island-dominion of his father. He was a peace-loving and unadventurous man, yet towards the end of his life when Ragnvald Kali (descended from Earl Erlend on the distaff side and named after Ragnvald Brusason)




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claimed the half of the Orkneys that Saint Magnus Erlendsson had possessed, Pall II refused to share the realm and drove Ragnvald off when he tried to seize his fancied heritage. But there was second invasion of Pall's earldom, Pall disappeared, and Ragnvald laid the whole of the Nordreys under him. He was a great and a famous figure in Orkney history, illustrious for good government, land reforms, the furthering of the cult of the new saint (canonized in 135) and the building of the first cathedral.
       There dwelt at this time in the Orkneys a rich chieftain of noble birth, having estates both in Orkney and Caithness, by name Svein Asleifarson, whose career, (1) though this is in the twelfth century, was a long series of the same sturdy and astonishing adventures that filled the lives of the vikings of three hundred years earlier. As the result of a murder he was outlawed by Earl Pall, and when Ragnvald came for a second time to the Orkneys, Svein suddenly crossed over from Thurso, took Pall captive, and hurried him off to the court of Maddadh, earl of Atholl, who had married Pall's sister. Pall's fate is unknown; there is a story that he was blinded and put to death by Svein and Margaret, the sister, but it is as likely that he was taken to Atholl to serve Svein's political ambitions, for it is certain that he would have been re-instead with honour in his own domain should Pall recover the earldom. But Pall, it happened, never did go back to Orkney and Svein returned alone to make his peace with now all-powerful Ragnvald. His next adventure was a daring raid on foot across the Highlands of Scotland from Atholl of Sutherland where he destroyed the home of the man who had slain his father; after which he plundered the neighbourhood and, regaining his ships, harried round Scotland. On another occasion he went to the Sudreys, on the invitation of Holdbodi, a noble of the Isles, whose lands were being plagued by a Welsh chieftain. Svein and Holdbodi together harried the coast of Wales, but the Welshman who was the cause of this punitve expedition retreated to a stronghold on Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel, and though Svein and Holdbodi pursued him there, they could not capture the place and so returned