Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Scandinavian Britain - III. The Norse Settlements - 6. The Earldom of Orkney
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Einar’s name is also connected with an important
social revolution. He revenged his father by slaying
Harald Fairhair’s son, Halfdan Hálegg; Dietrichson
thinks that the scene of the revenge was at Tresness
on Sanday, where a cairn may be Halfdan’s grave.
The "blood-eagle" by which he was executed was
rather a form of ignominious sacrifice to Odin than
an ingenious variety of torture ; and it called for
vengeance on Harald’s part. He fined the Orkneys
sixty marks of gold, which Einar paid on condition that
the landowners gave up their odal rights to him.
Of his three sons, Arnkel and Erlend fell with Eirík
Bloodaxe at Stainmoor (954 ?), and the survivor,
Thorfinn Hausakljúf (Skull-cleaver), by his marriage
with Grelaug, daughter of Dungal, Donnchadh or
Duncan of Djincans-bæ, added Caithness to Orkney.
He was buried at Haugseid (Hoxa, South Ronaldsay),
and Dietrichson, quoting a tradition given by Low in
1774, thinks that his grave may be seen in a mound
formed out of the ruins of a broch.
About this time, if there is any germ of truth in
a legend to be found in the later and partly fictitious
Fljótsdæla-saga, Shetland was ruled by a jarl named
Björgúlf, connected by marriage with Denmark ; but
this statement is not confirmed.
Eirík Bloodaxe left an evil legacy to the islands in his
daughter Ragnhild, who married and murdered three
of Thorfinn’s sons one after another. At Howardsty
(Hávardsteigr), near the famous stones of Stennis, the
largest of a group of Norse barrows was found to contain
an urn with ashes, conjectured to be the remains
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