‘I thought of giving your son Rupert a tide. How would an earldom suit, do you think?’
“Thre hundyre men in cumpany Gaddyrt on hym suddanly, Tuk hym owt quhare that he lay Of his chawmyre befor day, Modyr naked hys body bare; Thai band hym, dang hym, and woundyt sair In-to the nycht or day couth dawe. The monk thai slwe thare, hys falawe, And the child that in hys chawmyr lay, Thare thai slwe hym before day. Hymself bwndyn and wowndyt syne Thai pwt hym in hys awyn kychyne, In thair felny and thare ire Thare thai brynt hym in a fyre.” The Saga tells that when the tidings of this outrage reached King Alexander he was greatly enraged, and that the terrible vengeance he took was still fresh in memory when the Saga was written. Fordun states that the king had the perpetrators of this deed mangled in limb and racked with many a torture. The Icelandic Annals are more precise. They say that he caused the hands and feet to be hewn from eighty of the men who had been present at the burning, and that many of them died in consequence.”
― The Orkneyinga Saga
― The Orkneyinga Saga
“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”
― The Orkneyinga Saga
― The Orkneyinga Saga
“The Bishopric of Caithness appears to have been co-extensive with the older earldom, comprehending Caithness and Sutherland as far south as Ekkialsbakki or the Kyle of Sutherland. In”
― The Orkneyinga Saga
― The Orkneyinga Saga
“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.”
― The Orkneyinga Saga
― The Orkneyinga Saga
“Elizabeth nods. ‘I’m glad you see him too. How ridiculous”
― The Impossible Fortune
― The Impossible Fortune
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