Chapter 12

334

life together is over, for I can go no further. But you, dear Sigmund, look to yourself and take no heed of me.' Sigmund answered, 'We will never part thus, Thore', so he put his cousin's arm around his shoulder and struggled forward. At last he reached Sudrey; but by this time he was so completely exhausted that he was washed ashore in a helpless condition and Thore slipped from his grasp and was drowned. Sigmund lay on a heap of sea-weed and was there till the morning when he was discovered by the sons of a man called Thorgrim who lived at a neighbouring farmstead and was a tenant of Thrond's. These folk, although he told them who he was, murdered him for the gold ring and sodden clothes that he wore, and when Thore's body was cast ashore, they buried these two cousins side by side in a bank close to the sea. Some years later Thrond found out the true story of their death, for it was long supposed that Sigmund had been drowned at sea; he had the cruel murderers hanged and the bodies of the two cousins taken up and laid to their final rest upon Skufey near to the church that Sigmund had built. And there on Skufey can be seen to-day a stone that marks the grave of Sigmund Brestesson, the ever-beloved hero of the Faroe Islands.
       The immediate sequel to Sigmund's death was that Thrond once more became lord of the Faroes, though he shared his power with Leif Össursson, his foster-son and the grandson of that Hafgrim who had once owned a half of the islands. These two did not share Sigmund's loyalty to the Christian rulers of Norway and for many years the islands were a self-ruled and largely heathen colony. But after the accession of King Olaf the Saint in 1015 the small royalist and Christian party in the Faroes began to have friends at court, and in 1024 many of the Faroe chieftains journeyed to Norway to swear allegiance to Olaf and to promise him the tax that was his due as their overlord. But old Thrond held aloof and did all that he could to interrupt the collection of the necessary money from the islanders, and though Olaf threatened and sent messengers to take by force the sum owing to him, Thrond held out against the king and the islands paid nothing into the royal exchequer.
       Yet when Thrond died in the '30s, humbled by the women of Sigmund Brestesson's family and broken-hearted at the kidnapping from him of Sigmund's little grandson whom he had fostered and dearly loved, the conservative and anti-Christian party of which he had so long been the head could hold out no longer against the chieftains who knew the advantages of the royal




335

friendship. For Leif Össursson now ruled all the Faroes and he acknowledge the overlordship of King Magnus Olafsson the Good (1035-1047), journeying to Norway that he might play allegiance to him in person. Nevertheless, the complete triumph of Christianity was long delayed and although a bishopric was established in the islands in 1105, with the episcopal seat at Kirkebö, there are were many quarrels between the bishops and their stubborn flock, the most unfortunate of the island-prelates being (1268-1308) who was starved to death in his own unfinished cathedral, a ruin that is still to be seen.
       Once only in this later time do the Faroes win more than a passing notice from the historians of Norway and that is in connexion with the parentage of the great King Sverre (1177-1202). For though this monarch boasted himself the illegitimate son of King Sigurd Mouth (d. 1155), his mother, a Norwegian lady of good birth, was wed to a Faroese comb-maker called Unas, and the future king, her eldest son, was given the humbled Faroes name of Sverre. And whether or no he was of Faroese birth, the youth spent much of his time in the islands, for his uncle, Roe, was bishop of the Faroes from 1162 onwards, and with Roe at Kirkebö Sverre was trained for the priesthood, not returning to Norway until 1174.
       The rest of the story of the Faroes there is no need to recount, for the Norse stock has been little altered by the changing political and economic conditions of the centuries. Yet at the time of the union of the Scandinavian powers at the end of the fourteenth century the Faroes, like Iceland, passed under the control of the Danish sovereigns, and under the rule of the king of Denmark they still remain.