The Orkneyinga Saga

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                          THE ORKNEYINGA SAGA




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                        Printed by R. & R. Clark

                                  FOR

                    EDMONSTON & DOUGLAS, EDINBURGH.

                LONDON          HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.
                CAMBRIDGE   MACMILLAN AND CO.
                GLASGOW      JAMES MACLEHOSE.




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[Illustration: ST. MAGNUS CATHEDRAL
(South Transept and part of Choir)]


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                                  THE


                            ORKNEYINGA SAGA



                     TRANSLATED FROM THE ICELANDIC
                 BY JON A. HJALTALIN AND GILBERT GOUDIE



                  EDITED, WITH NOTES AND INTRODUCTION

                           BY JOSEPH ANDERSON

      KEEPER OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND



                               EDINBURGH
                         EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS
                                  1873


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                                PREFACE.

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THE ORKNEYINGA SAGA is the history of the Orkneymen, Earls and Odallers
of Norwegian extraction, who established an Earldom of Norway in the
Northern Scottish Isles a thousand years ago, and whose descendants for
several centuries held sway over the Hebrides and Northern Mainland of
Scotland. Commencing with the conquest of the Isles by Harald Harfagri,
the Saga relates the subsequent history of the Earldom of Orkney under
the long line of its Norse Jarls, and is, for a period of three
centuries and a half, the principal authority for the history of
Northern Scotland. The narrative is mainly personal, and therefore
picturesque, pourtraying the men in person and character, impartially
recording their deeds, and mentioning what was thought of them and their
actions at the time. Occasionally the Saga-writer is enabled to do this
in the words of a contemporary Skald. The skaldic songs, so often
quoted, were the materials from which the Sagas were subsequently
elaborated. In estimating their value as historical materials, it must
be borne in mind that all history has begun in song. When great events
and mighty deeds were preserved for posterity by oral recitation alone,
it was necessary that the memory should be enabled to retain its hold of
the elements of the story by some extraneous artistic aid, and therefore
they were welded by the word-smith’s rhymes into a compact and
homogeneous “lay.” Thus, worked into a poetical setting (as the jeweller
mounts his gems to enhance their value and ensure their preservation),
they passed as heirlooms from generation to generation, floating on the
oral tradition of the people. Snorri Sturluson tells us that the songs
of the skalds who were with Harald Harfagri in his wars were known and
recited in his day, after an interval of nearly four centuries. “These
songs,” he says, “which were sung in the presence of kings and chiefs,
or of their sons, are the materials of our history; what they tell of
their deeds and battles we take for truth; for though the skalds did no
doubt praise those in whose presence they stood, yet no one would dare
to relate to a chief what he and those who heard it knew to be wholly
imaginary or false, as that would not be praise but mockery.” Our
earliest Scottish chroniclers did not disdain to make use of the
lay-smith’s craft, as a help to history, long after the Iceland skald
had been succeeded by the Saga-writer, and the flowery recitative of an
unclerkly age superseded by the terser narrative of the parchment
scribe. The art is as old as Odin and the gods, if indeed it be not
older, and these its creations. But its golden age had passed ere
Paganism began to give way before Christianity, and the specimens we
have in this Saga are mostly of the period of its decadence and by
inferior skalds. Yet it is significant of the esteem in which the art
continued to be held by the settlers in the Orkneys, that we find Earl
Sigurd honouring Gunnlaug Ormstunga with princely gifts, Arnor
Jarlaskald enjoying the special favour and friendship of Earl Thorfinn,
and Earl Rögnvald, the founder of the cathedral, courting for himself
the reputation of an accomplished skald.

But though we can thus trace to some extent the authorship of the
unwritten materials from which the Saga was framed, there is nothing to
show where or by whom it was written. There is proof, however, that it
was known in Iceland in the first half of the thirteenth century.