Margaret

“The Annals only notice one Gilbride, whom they call “Gibbon, Earl of Orkney.” His death is placed in the year 1256. According to the Diploma, Gilbride had one son, Magnus, and a daughter, Matilda. This Magnus is mentioned in the Saga of Hakon Hakonson as accompanying the ill-fated expedition of that monarch against Scotland in 1263. “With King Hakon”
― unknown author, The Orkneyinga Saga

“impignorate”
― unknown author, The Orkneyinga Saga

“Whoever’s in government, whichever party it happens to be, and however lacking in leadership skills and a basic grasp of reality, they’re the ones pulling your Service’s strings. This despite the fact that no government we’ve seen over the past ten years has been capable of making the decisions necessary to protect our nation. Take Salisbury. A clear-cut case, evidence stacked a mile high, the guilty party visible for all to see. And yet nothing happens.’ ‘It’s how democracy works.”
― Mick Herron, The Slough House Thrillers Books 1-8

“But the most notable event in the life of Earl Sigurd was that which befel him as he lay in the harbour of Osmondwall shortly after his accession to the earldom. Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway, returning from a western cruise, happened to run his vessels into the same harbour, as the Pentland Firth was not to be passed that day. On hearing that the earl was there he sent for him on board his ship, and told him, without much parley, that he must allow himself to be baptized, and make all his people profess the Christian faith. The Flateyjarbók says that the king took hold of Sigurd’s boy, who chanced to be with him, and drawing his sword, gave the earl the choice of renouncing for ever the faith of his fathers, or of seeing his boy slain on the spot. In the position in which he found himself placed, Sigurd became a nominal convert, but there is every reason to believe that the Christianity which was thus forced upon the Islanders was for a long time more a name than a reality. Nearly twenty years afterwards we find Earl Sigurd bearing his own raven-banner “woven with mighty spells,” at the battle of Clontarf, against the Christian king Brian; and Sigurd’s fall was made known in Caithness by the twelve weird sisters (the Valkyriar of the ancient mythology) weaving the woof of war:—[27] “The woof y-woven With entrails of men, The warp hardweighted With heads of the slain.”
― unknown author, The Orkneyinga Saga