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Orkney in the Sagas
There can be few places with more literature per inch than Orkney and this has been the case for as long as stories have been written down. It features in several of the Icelandic sagas and even has its own, the Orkneyinga Saga, written about 1200.
In this readable book, Tom Muir pulls together the stories of the Earls of Orkney from the various sagas and there are additional articles by Anne Brundle, Julie Gibson, Barbara E Crawford and Steven P Ashby.
The Sagas are full of incident and character and this is a good, straightforward introduction, with a very useful family tree and many colour photos of the scenes of the action.
Softback, 142 pages
Published 2006
ISBN 0954886232
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Earl Sigurd the Stout was the last pagan earl of Orkney and his mother was reputed to be a powerful sorceress. She made him a banner with a raven on it, which would bring victory to the army but death to the bearer. The earl won many battles but was killed at the Battle of Clontarf and the story is told in one of the greatest Icelandic sagas, Njaal’s Saga.
Earl Sigurd’s men were attacked by Kerthjalfad, the foster-son of King Brian. He cut his way through them right up to the raven banner and killed the standard bearer. Sigurd ordered another man to pick up the banner, but Kerthjalfad killed this standard bearer too. Earl Sigurd ordered Thorstein Sidu-Hallsson to pick up the banner, but as Njal’s Saga says:
Then Amundi the White said, “Don’t take the banner; everybody who does gets killed.”
“Hrafn the Red,” said the earl, “you carry the banner.”
“Carry that devilish thing yourself,” answered Hrafn.
The earl said, “Then it’s best that the beggar and his bag go together,” and he took the banner off the pole and stuck it between his clothes. A little later, Amundi the White was killed. Then the earl was pierced through by a spear.
Earl Sigurd’s death is also recorded in Thorstein Sidu-Hallsson’s Saga, although the players differ from Njal’s Saga.
Njal’s Saga records how Thorstein’s life was saved when he stopped to tie his shoe-string while the other followers of Earl Sigurd fled. He was asked by King Brian’s foster-son Kerthjalfad why he wasn’t running away.
“Because I can’t reach home tonight - my home’s out in Iceland.”
Kerthjalfad spared his life and Thorstein returned to Orkney…
Njal’s Saga also contains one of the strangest stories ever told in a saga. On the morning of Good Friday, a man in Caithness named Dorrud saw twelve people riding to a woman’s workroom, where they went inside. He went and looked through the window and saw that all the people were women, and that they had set up a loom. These were no ordinary women and it was no ordinary loom either. The uprights were made of spears, the loom-weights were men’s heads and the cloth was woven from human entrails. Swords were used as weaving battens and arrows served as shuttles. As they wove this gory cloth the women chanted verses over it. These women were the valkyries, the handmaidens of Odin, who decide who dies in battle, and who choose the warriors that will go to Valhalla. As they wove they were directing the fate of the warriors and the battle itself. When they had finished they tore the cloth from the loom and each one took a part with them, six going to the north and six to the south.
Earl Sigurd’s faithful follower Harek waited in Orkney for news of the battle. One day he saw Earl Sigurd and some of his men returning, and he took a horse and rode to meet them. People saw them meet, then Harek went with Earl Sigurd and his men and they disappeared behind a hill. Nobody ever saw Harek again, nor the ghostly army of Earl Sigurd the Stout.
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