A History of the Vikings
Chapter 12
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THE FAROE ISLANDS
DICUIL, the Irish monk who lived in Francia and who wrote a treatise on geography in the year A.D. 825, is the first to tell of the Faroes, saying that they might be reached from North Britain if the wind were favourable after a voyage two days and two nights long. In these islands, said he, Irish hermits had been wont to dwell for a space of about a hundred years, but at the time when he wrote he supposed that men lived no longer there since Norse robbers had made it impossible for the hermits to stay. Only the sheep, he thought, and the countless sea-birds now inhabited this remote archipelago.
So there were Irishmen in the Faroes as early as about AD 700, (1) and it was just about a century later that the visits of the vikings drove them forth, these newcomers doubtless giving the archipelago its present name of Faereyjar, Norse words meaning Sheep Islands. But the first Scandinavian colonist of whom there is record was Grim Kamban and it was not until Harald Fairhair's days, towards the end of the ninth century, that he came. In his lifetime he was a renowned person, and after his death the other settlers in the islands are said actually to have worshipped him, believing that his spirit could bring them good seasons; they were impressed, perhaps, by his Christian lore, apart from his natural wisdom and authority, for because his second name (Camman) is Irish it is probable enough that he was a baptized viking who had been directed to the Faroes from Ireland. Yet there must have been others of the early colonists who had learnt something of Christianity from Ireland or Britain, even though the majority may have been heathen who had migrated direct from Norway.
The wealthiest and noblest family of the Faroe Islands were the Gateskeggs (Gatebeards) who dwelt at Gata on Austrey;
1. There is no papa element (see p. 339 ) surviving in Faroes place-names, but it may be that the first element of Baglahólm off Sudrey is derived from the Irish bachall, crozier. The name Dimon, two mountain, is believed to be of Celtic origin, but this does not necessarily date back to the pre-Norse period.
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they had the blood of Aud the Deepminded in their veins, for this remarkable woman, widow of a Norse king of Dublin, coming to the Faroes on her way to Iceland, gave her granddaughter in marriage to one of the settlers, and it was of this union that the Gateskeggs were sprung. But of the
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deemed to show. In the Faroes the story of the tenth century is likewise a blank, though it is at least certain that on each of the principal islands there dwelt by this time a chieftain with his family and servants and that this community of scattered families was so far developed as a corporate society as to possess a central thing-place, doubtless with a temple too, for the general assembly of the islanders. This thing was at Thorshavn where is now the capital town of the Faroes.
Whether Harald Fairhair was acknowledged as overlord of this Norse colony of the Faroes history does not record, but it seems that at a very early date the Norwegian royalties owned these islands and possessed here a far greater authority than they ever had in Iceland. For in King Harald Greycloak's time (c. AD 965) a chieftain called Hafgrim, who dwelt in Sudrey, ruled over one half of the islands as a vassal of the king, while the other half was held by two brothers, Breste and Beine, of the Gateskegg family, as vassals of Jarl Haakon Sigurdsson of Lade, the redoubtable rival of the king.
The great saga of the Faroe Islands, the story that is preserved in chopped and separated pieces in the Flatey Book, is concerned with this Breste's son and another member of the same family, Thrond, the younger son of Thorbjorn Gateskegg who was himself the son of Aud the Deepminded's granddaughter. Thrond had come into possession of the homestead at Gata and after travelling in Norway and Denmark had returned to the Faroes with great riches; he was a tall red-headed man with freckles and a beard, a gloomy and grim-looking person of whom the island folk were much afraid. When Hafgrim quarrelled with Breste and Beine, Thrond, although these two were his cousins, took Hafgrim's side and together they made a cowardly attack with three boatloads of armed men upon the brothers whom they caught alone with their two young sons sheep-tending on uninhabited Dimon minni. Breste and Beine were killed, but the two boys were spared and Thrond took them back to Gata with him, but in the same summer he had them sent out of the islands to Norway. As Hafgrim had fallen in the fight on Dimon minni and the Gateskegg brothers were dead, both of the two halves of the colony had lost their rulers, so Thrond very easily became lord of all the Faroes; nevertheless, when he had established his leadership throughout the islands, he granted to Össur Hafgrimsson, whom he had fostered, the right to his father's possessions.
In Norway the two boys, Sigmund Brestesson and Thore Beinesson, came at length to the court of Jarl Haakon who now
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held the reins of power, Harald Greycloak having been slain. They were well received and in the course of time, as young men in their twenties, they went back to the Faroes with two ships and an armed following given to them by Haakon. Sigmund attacked Össur in his fortified homestead on Dimon meiri and killed him, and then, accompanied by Thore, he met Thrond at Thorshavn and forced him to submit their quarrel to Haakon's arbitration. The result was that the crafty old Thrond, who had to protest his willingness to secure peace, was heavily fined and given to understand that Sigmund and the great jarl were now lords of the Faroes in his stead. Nevertheless he was allowed to retain his own estate at Gata as long as he obeyed the terms of Haakon's settlement.
But all this was only prelude to the great drama that was to be played in the Faroes at the time of the introduction of Christianity; for it was Sigmund who was evangelist to the islands while suspicious and resentful old Thrond stood forth at the head of the conservative and heathen party to withstand the coming of the new faith and the everlasting meddling by Norway in the affairs of the islanders.
It was in AD 987, after Olaf Tryggvason had been king of Norway for two years, that that urgent and tremendous missionary sent suddenly for Sigmund Brestesson and promised him the royal favour if he would be baptized. Sigmund dutifully went to court and, like most of Olaf's visitors, agreed that a religion good enough for so mighty a monarch must be good enough for himself; so he became a Christian and the king thereupon renewed his title to the lordship of all the Faroes.
But Sigmund was also asked to undertake the conversion of his fellow-islanders and to this request he agreed only with considerable reluctance, as did also Leif Ericsson three years later when Olaf bade him convert the Greenlanders, for the task of persuading these conservative Norsemen abroad to abandon their old faith was one such as might daunt even a trained and enthusiastic missionary; yet Olaf paid no heed to his protests and excuses, but sent him off with priests in his company to do the best he could for the Christian cause. So Sigmund, on his return, summoned the chieftains of the Faroes to a thing and asked them to accept Christianity, but he found at once that popular opinion, headed by Thrond, was unmistakably against him, and so angry was the temper of the meeting that Sigmund only escaped with his life by swearing that he would never again ask the Faroe folk to become Christian.
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He took this defeat at the thing very much to heart, but he dared not abide by his oath nor abandon his mission, and as he now realized that a general appeal was not only useless but dangerous he determined upon a more practical plan of piecemeal conversion. This he put into operation in the following spring and began his campaign with a surprise attack upon Gata where he took Thrond prisoner. Sigmund had the man at his mercy and forced him to be baptized; then he took this unwilling convert with him and made a tour of all the Faroes, seeing to it that one by one the terrified colonists accepted Christianity.
King Olaf fell at Svold in the year AD 1000 and the two jarls, Eric and Svein, sons of Jarl Haakon of Lade, who then became the rulers of Norway, likewise extended their favour to Sigmund, the lord of the Faroes. And Sigmund, in his turn, built a church close to his homestead on Skufey and made sure that at least the members of his own household were good Christians. But the other colonists, though nominally converted, lived much as they would and were most of them still heathen at heart; Thrond, especially, hated the faith he had been forced so shamefully to accept and plotted to have his revenge.
The first move was an attack by Thrond and eleven followers upon Sigmund and his cousin Thore and a third man called Einar when they were alone upon Dimon minni, the scene of the tragic death of Breste and Beine. But Sigmund and his companions outwitted their assailants and, making off with Thrond's boat as well as their own, left them marooned upon the island so that they had to light a beacon before they were rescued. Thrond made another attack the same summer and caught Sigmund in a boat with the same two companions; but once again Sigmund triumphed by the exercise of his cunning and his great strength, for he succeeded in capsizing Thrond's boat. Some of the crew were drowned, and Thrond and the others who were saved so marvelled at their luck in escaping Sigmund's sword, for he would not slay them helpless in the water, that they felt fortune was upon their side and were encouraged to make yet a third attempt against the Christian chief.
Therefore, in the autumn of this year, AD 1002, Thrond gathered together sixty men and landed one night after dark with this force upon Sigmund's island of Skufey. He took the homestead completely by surprise and set upon it with fire and weapons; those within, Sigmund and Thore with Sigmund's wife and the whole household, defended themselves boldly and there was hard fighting for a while. Then Sigmund's wife called out, 'How long are
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you going on fighting with headless men, Thrond?', and Thrond knew from this that Sigmund must have escaped. He ran round the houses whistling after them and then he came to the mouth of an earth-house a little way off the homestead. There he stopped and began feeling the ground, the while raising his hand and sniffing it. At last he cried, 'Three men have gone this way and they are Sigmund, Thore, and Einar I', and he continued snuffling around as though he were a dog tracking them; then, bidding no one follow him, he made his way to a point near the cliff-edge where the ground was broken by a sudden and steep drop (1) and he realized that the fugitives must be lurking at its foot. He summoned his men and called out, 'Now is the time to show yourself, Sigmund, if you have a brave heart and would be thought as bold as men have long believed you to be!'. The answer to this taunt was that a man suddenly appeared among them, although it was quite dark, and struck down one of Thrond's men, after which he was as suddenly lost again in the night; whereupon Thrond and his men stumbled down the slope in pursuit. By this time Sigmund and his companions had taken refuge upon a rock that jutted out over the sea, but soon they heard the voices of their pursuers close upon them; then Thore said, 'Let us stand at bay here'. Sigmund, however, had lost his sword in the fight when he had appeared among Thrond's company, so he could battle no longer. 'Let us jump from the rock and swim', he cried, and thereupon he and his two companions leapt down into the sea. Thrond heard the splashes and shouted directions to his men who hurried down through the darkness to the beach and tried to follow, some on the shore and some in a boat; but it was too late and they found nothing.
Sigmund and his friends swam on in the dark. They may have intended to make Dimon, but as they were swept by the current in the direction of Sudrey it was for this island that they made, the distance being some six or seven miles. About halfway across Einar gave up, saying 'We must part here'; but Sigmund said that should never be and bade Einar hold on to him; so they swam on for a while until Thore said, 'Sigmund, how long are you going to carry a corpse on your back?' And Sigmund realized that the devoted Einar was dead, so he loosed him into the water. They swam on until only a quarter of the crossing remained and then Thore said, 'All our lives we have been together, cousin, and great has been the love between us; but now our
1. A rift crossing the island, says the saga; but actually there is no cleft of this kind on Skufey near 'Sigmund's Leap'.
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