One Day Towards the End of Summer

The following is an extract from something I am working on at the moment - an analysis of the killing of Earl Rǫgnvaldr of Orkney, as reported in chapter 103 of Orkneyinga saga, on the 20th of August, in 1158 (all translations my own):

Replica of a statue possibly of Earl Rǫgnvaldr, Kirkwall, Photo © Judith Jesch 

It was one day at áliðnu sumri 'towards the end of summer' that the two joint earls of Orkney, Rǫgnvaldr, originally called Kali Kolsson, and Haraldr Maddaðarson, sailed over to Caithness to go deerhunting. By the end of the following day, the 20th of August, or five nights after Assumption Day as Orkneyinga saga has it (ch. 103), Rǫgnvaldr was dead and Haraldr was in sole charge of the earldom. For Haraldr, this was the beginning of a very long period of rule which is given rather short shrift in the saga. As for Rǫgnvaldr, it was some 34 years before his holy relics were taken up, ostensibly after some miracles and with the Pope's permission, and he was sanctified, though there is no official record of this. In the Icelandic annals, the death of Rǫgnvaldr is dated to 1158 and his translation to 1192. Discussion of this episode has tended to focus on its implications for politics, both ecclesiastical and secular. Whatever the politics of it all, the episode describing the killing of Rǫgnvaldr in chapter 103 deserves some more detailed attention.

Already the first words of chapter 103 are remarkable enough: 'When Rǫgnvaldr had been earl for twenty-two years since Earl Páll was captured...'. This reminds us that Rǫgnvaldr's grip on the Orkney earldom was consolidated when his rival Páll Hákonarson was eliminated through the actions of Sveinn Ásleifarson (chs 74-75). On that occasion, Rǫgnvaldr managed to keep a low profile despite clearly benefiting from Sveinn's actions. This first sentence is a clear signal that this chapter, too, will result in a similar situation: the reduction of two earls to one, with the survivor escaping any real responsibility for the events.

There is another echo of earlier events in the lead-up to the killing. Chapter 100 tells how Rǫgnvaldr and his eventual killer, Þorbjǫrn Cleric, get involved in a feud between their respective followers which turns violent after some drinking in Kirkwall. This feud was never settled and the implication is that this unfinished business contributed to the events that led to Rǫgnvaldr's death. This episode echoes a longer one back in chapter 61 in which there is a similar feud between followers of respectively Rǫgnvaldr and a Norwegian called Jón, also arising during some drinking, but this time in Bergen. This feud is eventually settled by no less than the king of Norway, who also uses the occasion to grant half of the earldom to Kali and to bestow on him the name of Rǫgnvaldr. This echo of an earlier episode at a crucial moment in Rǫgnvaldr's career serves to suggest that his luck has now run out, that what once served him well will no longer do so. This is further emphasised by two ominous events. On the first night in Caithness, Rǫgnvaldr sneezes, and on the next day when he sees Þorbjǫrn and wants to dismount to engage with him, he unfortunately catches his foot in his stirrup. Both of these are typical saga-motifs of omens signalling the death of the person to whom they happen. Other omens have happened before in the saga: in chapter 29, Rǫgnvaldr's namesake Rǫgnvaldr Brúsason anticipates his own death with the fateful misspeaking '"We will be fully old when these fires have burned out." But what he wanted to say was that they would then be fully warmed up'. And in chapter 47 a wave engulfs Magnús Erlendsson's ship as he is approaching Egilsay where he will eventually be martyred.

Rǫgnvaldr however does not come out of his 'martyrdom' quite as well as his uncle Magnús did. Or at least the story of Rǫgnvaldr's killing lacks the hagiographical tinge that one might expect of a future saint and there are some details which suggest that the narratorial sympathy is not entirely with him. Interestingly, it is Rǫgnvaldr's killer who is presented as a heroic figure in this account. Þorbjǫrn Cleric is the one who manages, despite severe injuries, to leap nine ells across a ditch. The extent of his injuries only becomes clear after his death: 'and when Þorbjǫrn’s wounds were inspected, his intestines had slipped out through the wound that Jómarr had given him'. The wound in question was given right at the beginning: 'And at that moment Jómarr thrust a spear into Þorbjǫrn’s thigh and the lunge continued into his intestines'. After receiving that wound, Þorbjǫrn and his men cross a swamp and defend themselves manfully, Þorbjǫrn makes a long impassioned speech to Haraldr and then jumps across the ditch, and he and his men make for some deserted shielings where again they defend themselves manfully, before eventually Þorbjǫrn expires. No one else in this chapter is said to have defended themselves manfully, certainly not Rǫgnvaldr, but the defence of Þorbjǫrn and his men is twice described this way in the chapter.

Þorbjǫrn's speeches are also extraordinary. In asking Haraldr for a truce, his grounds are that the surviving earl is going to benefit from his crime: 'And this deed that I have done is a great crime, and I am responsible, but all the territory has fallen into your power'. It is only at this point, as Haraldr is dithering about what to do, that some of Rǫgnvaldr's followers intervene and put an alternative argument, emphasising Haraldr's potential role in the killing:

...if Þorbjǫrn is given a truce after this deed and also that he dares to tell you to your face in every word that he had done this evil deed for you or to honour you, it will bring everlasting shame and dishonour to you and all the earl’s kinsmen if he is not avenged. I think that Earl Rǫgnvaldr’s friends believe that you will have for some time been advising the killing of Rǫgnvaldr, which has now happened.'

In the end, Haraldr takes the easy way out, refusing to do anything to Þorbjǫrn but tacitly allowing him to be killed.

Stepping in at this late stage to chase Þorbjǫrn and his men are the sons of Hávarðr Gunnason, including one called Magnús, who made that speech, but it is noteworthy that these supporters of Rǫgnvaldr take no part in the earlier encounters. The only followers of Rǫgnvaldr mentioned when he is first attacked are two complete unknowns, a young Norwegian called Ásólfr who gets petulant when he loses a hand in the fight, and Jómarr, said to be a kinsman of the earl. Jómarr could be said proleptically to have carried out the vengeance for Rǫgnvaldr with his spear-thrust to Þorbjǫrn's intestines which was the ultimate cause of his death. It is therefore odd that he is not more celebrated for this, rather the focus is on Þorbjǫrn for heroically persisting despite such a grave injury.

This reading suggests that the narrative of Rǫgnvaldr's death did not come from his camp. He does not cover himself in glory, but then neither does Haraldr. Indeed, Haraldr's prevarications stand in contrast to the way in which Rǫgnvaldr himself managed totally to evade any responsibility for the elimination of his rival Páll Hákonarson twenty-two years earlier. It has been suggested that the narrative derives from the eyewitness account of the sons of Hávarðr, but as already noted these only come into the story at a slightly later stage. Certainly the close attention to landscape and place-names in chapter 103 does suggest origins in an account by someone who knew the area and perhaps even was present at the events. But the real import of the narrative is in the speeches of both Þorbjǫrn himself, and Magnús Hávarðarson, as cited above. These are both deeply political speeches, encapsulating what must have been a matter of much local discussion, at the time or afterwards, about responsibility and benefit in situations where a leader is ousted.

By contrast, the rather glowing obituary for Rǫgnvaldr in chapter 104 presents him as quite the paragon:

Earl Rǫgnvaldr’s death was much lamented, because he was very popular there in the isles and widely elsewhere. He had been of assistance to many people, generous with money, calm and loyal to friends, a man of many skills and a good poet.

This can presumably be seen as official church or court propaganda, especially since it follows the reference to his translation many years later, and so is likely to represent a later, whitewashed picture. There is little sense of this person in the chapter describing his killing and, as already suggested, Haraldr does not necessarily come off much better either. Chapter 103 resonates with a feeling of 'a plague on both their houses', the response of an exasperated population who is not particularly enchanted with the leadership available to them.

Street named after Earl Rǫgnvaldr, Lerwick. He had connections in Shetland. Photo © Judith Jesch

This is for all 'exasperated populations' around the world....

St Olaf and Orkney

Doorway in Kirkwall
photo by Judith Jesch

Today is the feast day of Óláfr Haraldsson, king of Norway and saint, who died in battle, killed by his political enemies at Stiklestad, on this day in 1030. He soon became a popular saint in many parts of northern Europe and further afield, as can be seen in some interesting contributions on Twitter today (they tend to turn up every year on this day, and I have been guilty of some blog posts on this theme too). Thus, St Óláfr was venerated in England (Eleanor Parker and Francis Young), Denmark (Steffen Hope) and Ireland. So it is no surprise that he was an important figure in Orkney, too. The doorway pictured is what is thought to be left of a medieval church (possibly from the eleventh century) dedicated to St Óláfr in Kirkwall.

As an important saint and historical figure, Óláfr gets quite frequent mentions in Orkneyinga saga, the text I'm mainly working on these days. That he was considered to have a special bond with some of the earls of Orkney is also clear. Thus, in chapter 29, Earl Rǫgnvaldr Brúsason travels to Papa Stronsay to get some malt for the brewing of ale for the upcoming Christmas feast. While they were sitting by the fire there one evening, 

....he who was stoking the fire spoke about how the firewood was running out. Then the earl misspoke and said this, ‘We will be fully old when these fires have burned out’. But what he wanted to say was that they would then be fully warmed up. And as soon as he noticed, he said this, ‘I have not misspoken before, as far as I remember. What occurs to me is what my foster-father, King Óláfr, said at Stiklestad, when I heard him misspeak, if it ever happened that I misspoke, that I should prepare myself that I would stay alive for only a short time. It might be that kinsman Þorfinnr is alive.’ [my translation]

And indeed, Rǫgnvaldr's uncle and rival earl, Þorfinnr Sigurðarson and his men turn up and make short work of killing him to consolidate Þorfinnr's power.

South doorway
St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall
photo by Judith Jesch

The earls of Orkney were often in the habit of killing their kinsmen to ensure their own grip on power. The most notorious example involved the feud between Þorfinnr's grandsons, the cousins Hákon Pálsson and Magnús Erlendsson. The former killed the latter on the island of Egilsay at Easter, creating another much loved Scandinavian aristocratic saint, to whom the very beautiful cathedral in Kirkwall is dedicated, replacing the smaller church dedicated to St Óláfr.

Magnús' connection to St Óláfr is perhaps not quite as clear as that of his father's cousin Rǫgnvaldr, though the saga does connect their deaths chronologically, stating somewhat confusedly that the killing of Magnús happend 74 years after that of St Óláfr (ch. 51) - although we don't know the exact year it happened that is out by at least a decade.

As can be seen from the quotation above, Rǫgnvaldr Brúsason had been present at the battle in which Óláfr was killed, while Magnús in his turn became a saint like Óláfr, his cathedral sponsored by his nephew, also called Rǫgnvaldr, who was in his turn murdered by his political enemies in the interminable internecine warfare of those times. Despite his saintly powers, Óláfr could no more keep his Orcadian earls alive than he could keep himself alive, but it may have comforted these political martyrs that he was on their side. Certainly, through the powers of sanctity and the church they are remembered more than the kinsmen and compatriots who killed them.

 

The Tale of the 'Holiday Shocker'

 

Christine Fell in 1965
from a photo
kindly provided by
Gillian Fellows-Jensen 

One of my most treasured possessions is my copy of Sigurður Nordal's scholarly edition (1913-16) of Orkneyinga saga, which has been my constant companion for over two decades now, ever since I inherited it from my former colleague and friend Professor Christine E. Fell OBE (1938-1998; you can read about her on pp. 214ff. of this link). I have treasured this volume for its mere existence, because this edition is not always easy to get hold of and it is essential to my work on this saga and on Orkney generally. As a result, it's started to get a bit battered. Using it regularly always reminds me that it was Chris who encouraged me to go to a conference in Kirkwall in 1987, celebrating the 850th anniversary of St Magnus Cathedral. It was my first visit to Orkney and so she can be held responsible for my subsequent obsession with the place. But, although I have always been aware that the book has an interesting history, I've only just recently started to explore that history in more detail through the clues in the book itself.

The book bears the mark of Weeks & Co. Binders. London. N.W.1., and it was when it was bound that the letter that explains the book's provenance was bound into it. Loosely inserted into the book (it's a miracle that I still have it) is a small, neatly written note that explains who that letter was from. More on the letter later, but first the note. It is signed (but not dated) by Edith C. Batho. The name rang a faint bell with me, so with the help of Wikipedia, I discovered that she was the Principal of Royal Holloway College of the University of London from 1945-62. There I thought I had a possible connection with Chris Fell, as she got her BA in English from Royal Holloway in 1959, and Batho was an English specialist. Chris Fell went on to do an MA in Old Norse at UCL, awarded 1961, and presumably her interest in the subject began during her undergraduate years. However I have not been able to find any evidence that the two met then, though it is quite possible - in the late 1950s, there were apparently fewer than 400 students in the college. There's a nice painting of Edith Batho in 1961 here and I would like to imagine that Batho had given Fell the book around then, but it could equally have been at a later date. I'm told by an authoritative source that Batho was a regular attender at meetings of the Viking Society for Northern Research until her death, suggesting that she was still interested in Old Norse topics even after her retirement. This could have been where they met if not before and it gives an extended window during which Batho could have given Fell the book, perhaps especially when Chris was the Society's President 1980-82. But I also know that Chris was an assiduous purchaser of secondhand books and had built up an impressive library before her own death in 1998, so she might have bought the book after Batho's death in 1986. At the same time, Chris was keen for her books to be passed on to people who would find them useful, which is how I and some other younger colleagues and students had the privilege of selecting items from her library after her death. I suspect that this attitude reflected her own experience as a grateful young scholar on the receiving end of important books, which is why I like to think she got it directly from Edith Batho, whenever that was.

But why did Edith Batho have this book in her possession? Well, she had a degree in English and, although Wikipedia only mentions her publications on Wordsworth and the Victorians, she also had an interest in Scottish texts. She published on James Hogg, the 'Ettrick Shepherd' (more on this below) and co-edited John Bellenden's 1531 translation into Scots of Hector Boece's Chronicles of Scotland for the Scottish Text Society. And she published an article on Sir Walter Scott and the sagas in the Modern Language Review for 1929. Well, that's more than enough to explain why she might want the edition of Orkneyinga saga, but how did she get it?

The answer is in the letter, which Edith's note explains is from Olivia Stuart Horner, 'my friend for 50 years'. While the note is not dated, the letter is, to '10.11.25', so the note cannot have been written any later than 1975 and could be quite a bit earlier. In 1925, Edith was 30, and Olivia a bit older (the note states that she married Sir Ernest Barker a year or two after writing the letter and the census records that she was baptised in 1891, though elsewhere it is suggested that she was born in 1894). Googling Olivia Stuart Horner certainly gave me a clue to what the letter says about the book. Olivia was the god-daughter of no less than William Paton Ker, a distinguished literary scholar usually known as W.P. Ker, who was himself Scottish and who wrote on both Old Norse and other medieval topics. Among his many achievements was the establishment of the teaching of Scandinavian Studies at University College London in 1917. Olivia was with him when he died on a walking tour of Italy, at a place called Macugnaga.

According to the letter, Olivia is sending Edith what she describes as 'W.P.'s "holiday shocker" as he called it in 1923 at Macugnaga'. The reason she had it was because 'it got among other paperbacked books' which she discovered as her family was moving house. Clearly Edith thought highly enough of this rough paperback (the original paper covers are bound into the back of my copy) to have had it bound in London, with the letter also bound in to indicate its provenance. Olivia notes that 'you are the right person to have it'. This is explained by the fact that not only did Edith get her degree in English from University College London in 1915, while W.P. was Quain Professor of English there, but her book The Ettrick Shepherd (1927) is posthumously dedicated to him. The preface makes clear that it is based on work she did for her MA, and one could surmise that he was her supervisor for it, but then perhaps these things worked differently in those days. I'm wondering if it was W.P. who introduced his promising student to his god-daughter.

W.P. Ker's literary interests were very wide, and when he wrote about Old Norse texts it was usually to place them in a broader literary context. Typical is his inaugural address when he became President of the Viking Society for Northern Research (then still known as the Viking Club) printed in its journal Saga-Book as 'Iceland and the Humanities'. He was very active in the Viking Club during the first two decades of the twentieth century and his obituary in Saga-Book notes that 'The thing for which he cared most was the study of what Scandinavia had given to the world' (p. 410).

Although Olivia Barker is less well-known than the other actors in this little saga, there's actually quite a bit more to say about her and her family, even if it is not especially relevant to my book and its history. She was born in Cheshire, but by the 1911 census was living in Surbiton, and may have spent time in the family's ancestral home of the Manor House in Mells, Somerset. At the time of writing the letter she was, on the testimony of the letter itself, still living in Surbiton but about to move to Sussex. One of her brothers, Maurice, was murdered in London in 1943, a murder that was never solved. Another, David, wrote a novel based on this murder and was the long-term partner of no less than Osbert Sitwell.

I still need to find out whether the Scot W.P. Ker had a particular interest in this 'Scottish' saga, or whether he was just omnivorous when it came to Old Norse-Icelandic literature. So far I have not discovered any specific references in his works (but there are very many!) to Orkneyinga saga, but maybe he was reading it for the first time on that fateful Italian holiday. After all, it had only quite recently been published. So there may still be more to be found out about my treasured book. In the meantime, I'm delighted to have learned a bit more about its adventures.

So it's wonderful to think that my copy of this book has been to northern Italy with W.P. Ker, sat on the shelves first of Edith Batho and then of Christine Fell, and here I've been bashing it about for 20-odd years. I really must take better care of it! And from a personal point of view, I am delighted that this book links three Past Presidents of the Viking Society (Ker, Fell and myself) and three women scholars (Batho, Fell and myself), and that it is all down to Olivia Stuart Horner's clearout.

If You Want to Listen

Shameless self-promotion has not generally been the main purpose of this blog. I've tended to aim for the slightly quirky, or even personal, just recording things that I have found interesting. But I have also enjoyed bringing to light various Norse and Viking things that I have observed in my studies or my travels. And every once in a while I am minded to comment on books or other phenomena from the academic world of Viking studies. Over the last few years (and especially during the pandemic) I have increasingly been doing this in the form of podcasts and other audio discussions or interviews. While my preferred medium is still the written word, I have noticed that more and more people seem to like listening to something more than reading something (and unlike reading it's something they can more easily do while doing something else). So I have enjoyed this way of communicating with people who might not otherwise read anything I have written. The audio experience is also different from this blog (and from much of what I write) in that in these contributions I am not necessarily following my own nose but more likely responding to questions or topics suggested by those who produce them, and this can force me to look at things differently.

So, for those who think this blog has been a bit thin of late, or who can't be bothered to browse in it, here are some links to the things that I have been broadcasting to the world in recent times, in reverse chronological order:

The Viking Diaspora - podcast interview with two of the guys who run the Seven Ages website, 'Exploring History, Archaeology, Science and Culture' (November 2020)

Inghen Ruaidh, the Birka Grave and Viking Warrior Women Not What You Thought You Knew with Fern Riddell and one other guest (September 2020)

Valkyries: Fierce women of war BBC World Service, Forum with Bridget Kendall and two other guests (July 2020) 

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Vikings, but were afraid to ask History Extra podcast with David Musgrove (May 2020)

The Danelaw In Our Time BBC Radio 4 with Melvyn Bragg and two other guests (March 2019) 

Runes: The Vikings in their own Words  on The History of Vikings podcast with Noah Tetzner (October 2018) 

By the way, the title of this blog post is a quotation from the first stanza of Háttalykill 'Key of Metres' by Earl Rǫgnvaldr Kali Kolsson and Hallr Þórarinsson, ed. by Kari Ellen Gade for the Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages project.

Runes in Our Troubled Times

Back in the day when this blog was nobbut a baby blog, one of my first posts gave a quick mention to the Odinic obsessions of a certain Julian Cope, ageing musician and antiquarian who grew up in Tamworth. Twelve years later, the Other Half is still keeping not-very-musical me up to date with Cope's antics, especially when they have a Viking flavour, as they often do, such as his 2017 album Drunken Songs with a cute Viking ship on the cover. So I couldn't help noticing that his latest album, Self Civil War, includes a runic inscription which is very familiar to me (pictured above). It is of course one of the graffiti from the chambered tomb of Maeshowe, on the mainland of Orkney, which I have had occasion to mention one or two times before. Not that you would know this from the album, which nowhere explains what these funny marks are...

The runes read utnorþr : er fe · folhit · mikit, which in standard Old West Norse is Útnorðr er fé folgit mikit, meaning 'In the north-west is great wealth concealed.' What it actually means is anyone's guess, though I suspect there is a strong element of joke about it, like many of the other graffiti in Maeshowe, several of which play with the idea that there was once treasure in the mound. Why this inscription is on this album is also anyone's guess, though Cope has a long history of being interested both in ancient monuments and Norse stuff. A quick internet search shows that he was writing a version of this message (with what looks like a felt-tip pen) on a plastic-looking stone at the Lunar Festival in Tamworth in 2015. OK, so he wrote 'buried' instead of 'concealed', and 'north', instead of 'north-west', but he is forgiven for thinking that treasure is always buried and for not knowing the concept of útnorðr, which only features in my more advanced Old Norse classes. Like many Old Norse words it reveals a fascinating way of looking at the world, but would require altogether another blogpost to explain.

But Cope does appear to have been doing his Scandi homework, since the album also contains a song 'Lokis sympati' in Danish. I don't pretend to understand what it's about, even though my reading Danish is excellent. If you have any thoughts, let me know! The credits say 'All words by Julian Cope' so I have to assume he knows Danish. Good lad. I suppose this goes back to his interest in 'lost Danish music' which started in a charity shop in Melksham in 1999...

The title of the album is however not Cope's but taken from a poem from the 1630s, 'Self Civil War' by a certain Reverend Roger Brearley. This one I do understand, all too well, and also Cope's comment that it 'seems to sum up the psychic and political divisions that many modern Brits share with their Cavalier and Roundhead counterparts.' This is even more true now than when the album came out at the beginning of this year. Let us hope we can somehow find that elusive treasure, wherever it is.

Orkney Yule

The church at Orphir.

Photo © Judith Jesch

As I noted in a festive blog post a few years ago, the Old Norse word jól can refer either to the pre-Christian midwinter festival, or the Christian one. What seems to unite them is that it is very much a time of feasting, as can be seen from both skaldic and saga-references. But the stories are generally interested in conflict, so we rarely get a picture of peaceful feasting, rather the Yuletide feast often seems to be a trigger for violent altercations. These violent events are quite clearly linked to the alcohol consumed at these feasts, and I guess it is these saga-episodes which give us our popular image of violent Vikings indulging in excessive drinking..

In the saga about the earls of Orkney, usually known as Orkneyinga saga, we get two rather different views of the most famous of those earls, Þorfinnr Sigurðarson, at this season. In chapter 20, he is praised for how he treats his followers at this time of year and, yes, it does involve feasting, with perhaps a little moral twist to the tale:

Earl Þorfinnr did that admirable deed in the Orkneys that he gave hospitality, both food and home brew, to all his court and to many other powerful men all through the winter, so that they did not need to go to the tavern, just as it is the custom for kings and earls in other countries to entertain their court throughout Yule.

The anecdote is supported by a half-stanza by Arnórr jarlaskáld 'Earls' poet' emphasising Þorfinnr's generosity. It comes just at the point in the story in which Þorfinnr's brother Brúsi dies, and he takes power over all the Orkneys. The throwaway comment about keeping his men out of the pub also underlines his firm hand on the tiller of state.

The saga is largely about internecine warfare in the families born to rule. So it is no surprise that Brúsi's son Rǫgnvaldr soon comes back home from his travels to challenge for his share of power, which he gets, at least temporarily. Þorfinnr however starts to chafe at the power-sharing arrangement, which also involved political interventions from Norway. After a decisive battle, Rǫgnvaldr flees to Norway but soon comes back and sets fire to the farm where Þorfinnr was staying at the time, but doesn't realise that the earl has managed to escape with his wife Ingibjǫrg. Rǫgnvaldr assumes power and does his ruler's duty by going to Papa Stronsay for the malt with which to brew the Christmas ale (chapter 29).

His followers never get to drink the brew, as Þorfinnr uses the advantage of surprise to attack Rǫgnvaldr and his men and burn the house down over their heads. Rǫgnvaldr has a premonition of his death just before: as they are sitting around the fire he misspeaks and says that 'we will have reached our allotted ages [fullgamlir] when these fires have burnt out', having meant to say fullbakaðir 'fully-baked', or 'well-warmed up', I suppose.

Having eliminated his main rival ('the most popular and most accomplished of the earls of Orkney; his death was a great sorrow to many'), Þorfinnr consolidates his power and continues to rule successfully. His obituary is less positive. In chapter 32, we're told that he was the most powerful of the earls of Orkney. His death was mourned by those in his ancestral lands. But in those lands he had subjugated, people really felt their lack of freedom living under his power.

More dramatic Yuletide events are recounted in chapter 66, as I alluded to briefly in a blog post a few years ago. It is a chapter of great interest since it not only provides quite a lot of detail about the buildings at the earl's residence of Orphir (remains of which can still be seen), but also gives a detailed account of the Christmas festivities as held by the earl, in this case Páll Hákonarson. Páll was at the time resisting claims to power by yet another Rǫgnvaldr, or Kali Kolsson, the nephew of St Magnús who had been killed by Páll's father Hákon. I told you there were family feuds aplenty in the saga.

The sequence of feuds and killings in the saga is really quite complicated at this point, so suffice to say that the episode marks our introduction to the saga's most complicated character, Sveinn Ásleifarson, a great power player in Orkney politics, and variously friend or enemy to several of the earls. At this point in the story, Sveinn's father Óláfr has recently been burned to death in his house with five other people. Sveinn uses the Christmas feast at Orphir as an opportunity to kill another Sveinn, called brjóstreip 'Breast-rope', an associate of the person responsible for Óláfr's death.

The narrative weaves the story of the killing into the sequence of Christmas festivities. Orphir is said to have had a large drykkjuskáli 'drinking-hall', with a fine church right next to it. Going into the hall, there was a large flat stone slab on the lefthand side, behind which were many large beer-barrels. When people came from Evensong, they were placed in their seats. After the tables had been taken up, most of the people went to sleep, but then got up during the night for the canonical hours. Then there was a high mass, and people then went to eat. There was a master of ceremonies, a certain Eyvindr, who was in charge of the feast, with waiters and attendants serving the drinks he poured out. There was a minor contretemps when Sveinn brjóstreip thought he was being served more quickly than Sveinn Ásleifarson, who was holding back on the drinking, contrary to etiquette. After another service at nones, the drinking continued, with speeches and drinking from horns. Then Sveinn brjóstreip, whose horn was smaller, wanted to switch with Sveinn Ásleifarson. Eyvindr intervenes to make this happen and Sveinn brjóstreip mutters under his breath that one Sveinn will kill the other. This is heard by Eyvindr, who basically eggs Sveinn Ásleifarson to kill Sveinn brjóstreip, but not before further drinking up until Evensong. The deed is done beside the aforementioned slab, as people are leaving the hall for church again. Sveinn Ásleifarson is spirited away and thanked by the bishop for his good deed in ridding the country of Sveinn brjóstreip. His responsibility for this (another man is killed too) becomes clear back in Orphir when the earl makes people go back to their seats and only Sveinn Ásleifarson is missing. Clearly, feasting your followers to keep them out of the pub and whatever trouble they might have got into there didn't really work, and the episode does seem to mark Páll out as a rather weak earl.

And so the feuds continue. It's rather hard to sum up all the events of Orkneyinga saga so I won't. But the episode presents quite a complex picture. Two people are dead and, though there are feuds and enmities to explain the killings, the sheer amount of drinking that appears to have gone on must have been a factor, too. Presumably the regular excursions to church broke the drinking up somewhat, but the church is also complicit in this kind of behaviour by the powerful, to judge by the bishop's reaction. Once again, there is a potent combination of the dark of winter, fire, home brew, and murder, here with added multiple church services.

It's rather good to think that nowadays, factions of Orcadians compete and contend at Christmas (and New Year) only in a rough, but not violent, game of surfing a ball from one end of Kirkwall to the other, known as the Ba' - indeed they are doing it more or less as I write this. And Merry Christmas to them.

How(e) I Love Hoxa

Time flies, and it's been all of three years since I was last in Orkney, so I was very happy to have the opportunity to go again last month. As so often, the excuse was an academic event, the splendid 4th St Magnus Conference, but I always manage to work in some extra time to enjoy my favourite islands. As this was my twelfth visit to Orkney, I have been around quite a lot of it, including most of the inhabited islands. But each time I discover something new, and this time I got quite excited about Hoxa on South Ronaldsay. Something for everyone there, starting with a broch (who doesn't love them?), a fascinating Norse place-name with associated saga-reference, antiquities from both world wars, and a gallery with some wonderful tapestries. So here's a little bit about all of these marvellous things.

There's not much to see of the broch, as it's been mucked about with quite a lot, but its position is amazing, as with so many brochs, and as noted by the RCAHMS 'The broch, Howe of Hoxa, lies in a conspicious and commanding position on a rounded eminence, 50-60ft above the beach, at the N end of a hog-backed ridge on the broad low-lying isthmus which divides the Bay of Widewall on the S frrom the Dam of Hoxa on the N.' In the Viking Age, the broch will have appeared as a mound and this mound has given its name (Old Norse haugr) to the nearby farm, Howe, and to the isthmus on  which it is placed, Hoxa. The name of this isthmus is recorded in Orkneyinga saga as 'a Haugahæide' - the form is not very reliable as the only medieval manuscript of the saga at this point is the late, and sometimes confused, Flateyjarbók. Luckily, there is an earlier reference to it from 1329 as 'a Haugs æiðe' and by 1492 it is already being written as 'Hoxa'. The 1329 document is of great interest since it is one of the only four surviving documents written in Old Norse and issued in Kirkwall. It records a sale of lands and has contemporary forms of 10 place-names (including that of the island) 'all of which, with the exception of [one], can still be easily recognised today' (Hugh Marwick, Orkney Farm-Names, 1952, p. 169).

The saga-reference to Hoxa is equally interesting, as it claims (Orkneyinga saga, ch. 8) that Thorfinn Skull-Splitter (Þorfinnr hausakljúfr) died of illness and was heygðr 'laid in a haugr' í Rögnvaldsey á Haugaeiði as Finnbogi Guðmundsson's edition of 1965 has it. There are examples of Viking Age burials in brochs, at Gurness for example, so this is not implausible. Or it could just be an example of an aetiological tale, a story explaining the origins of something, derived from an understanding of the place-name. We don't know much about this particular Thorfinn, or why he got his nickname, though the saga does tell us that the daughter of Eirik Bloodaxe and Queen Gunnhild was married to his son Arnfinnr and that Thorfinn got to be Earl of Orkney because his two brothers had died with Eirik Bloodaxe in England. Thorfinn was höfðingi mikill ok herskár 'a great chieftain and warlike' - I suppose they had to add the last bit to counter the fact that he died on his sickbed. His nickname was also borrowed for the strong ale (Alc 8.5% b.v.) produced by the Orkney Brewery.

The broch-mound does indeed dominate the isthmus though the latter is very hard to photograph, as you can see from my attempt. And why does English not have a better word than the unpronounceable 'isthmus'? 'Neck' doesn't sound quite right....Also, do ignore the Hermann Pálsson/Paul Edwards Penguin translation of Orkneyinga saga which claims that Thorfinn 'was laid in a burial mound at Hoxa in North Ronaldsay' - they had clearly confused the two present-day Ronaldsays, although the names are clearly distinct in the saga (what is now North Ronaldsay was originally Rínansey and this is the form used in the saga). A. B. Taylor managed to get it right in his 1938 translation.

Another interesting place-name nearby, in fact just a bit off to the right of the picture of the isthmus above, is Roeberry, which I argued (Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age 2001, 78) was the Rauðabjörg where a later Earl Thorfinn defeats his kinsman and rival Rögnvaldr Brúsason in a sea-battle. The significance of this part of Orkney for military strategy is underlined by the twentieth-century antiquities out on Hoxa Head, gun batteries from both the First and Second World Wars. The site is quite amazing to walk around, especially for the views on a day as gorgeous when I was there.

Last stop before the war relics is the Hoxa Tapestry Gallery. I learned about this through my mother, who is very interested in weaving and textiles generally, so dropped in for a visit. The tapestries are amazing, all of them, and Leila Thomson frequently makes use of both the local landscape and its historical associations. Although the isthmus is difficult to photograph, as I noted above, she can imagine it, and has, in a tapestry called Haugsaith: between two shores which also has some not bad runes on it. There is so much of interest at Hoxa and with the fabulous weather it was certainly a most successful excursion.

Nordic Noir Yule

Writing in yesterday's post about Þorsteinn 'Wound-Spear' reminded me that Scandinavians have been killing each other since long before Nordic Noir hit our bookshelves and our television screens, and that Christmas was a prime time for such things. Chapter 66 of Orkneyinga saga tells in some detail of the Christmas feast at the earldom estate of Orphir (the remains of which are pictured left) and the killing there of Sveinn 'Breast-Rope', in the context of quite a lot of seasonal drinking, in 1136.

In Norway, it appears, such things happened quite often and documents about the legal proceedings following such killings survive. A number of these were discussed a few years ago in a fascinating book by Olav Solberg, Forteljingar om drap. These and many other medieval documents, published in the multi-volume Diplomatarium Norvegicum, were most usefully digitised some years ago in an initiative to make work for those who objected on grounds of conscience to taking part in Norway's compulsory military service (!). These documents are a fascinating and inexhaustible resource for all kinds of historical enquiries. In my search for things that happened at jól I found the following intriguing but sorry tale.

The document concerned is a report by a royal official, a sort of Saga Norén of the 15th century, writing in January 1465 to tell the king of his investigations into a killing that took place on the farm of Hattrem in Lesja, Gudbrandsdalen (pictured right), on the 28th of December in 1464. His main investigation methods involved interrogating a number of witnesses in order to establish what had happened.

The first witnesses were a couple who swore a solemn oath on the Bible that the perpetrator had announced to them that he, Tore Håvardsson, had stabbed Tore Stavn at Hattrem. This is more like the Icelandic sagas than our modern detective stories, since there is no question about who the perpetrator is. It was important to announce yourself as the killer since then it was drap 'killing' and not the much more serious crime of morð 'murder'. Indeed, the investigator makes clear from the beginning that the death was 'unintended'. Other witnesses then swore solemn oaths as to what had happened. Apparently a group of men had started their drinking at the farm of Hågå on the evening of Christmas Day, and had been to another farm as well, before they ended up at Hattrem, where they would have been well plastered by the 28th. There is an amusing interlude during which the victim lay down in bed, fully clothed, and refused to go when the perpetrator wanted them all to go back home. Tore Håvardsson may have become a bit tetchy as a result and then for reasons not explained got into a fight with another person present. Tore Stavn got himself stabbed when he woke from his drunken slumber and tried to intervene.

Another document from a few years later tells what the result of these official investigations was. Because the crime was unintentional, Tore Håvardsson got off with the usual pair of fines, known as tegn oc fridkiøp, both payments to the king, the first for having killed one of his subjects and the second to buy his freedom. He probably also had to make a payment to the victim's family, though no document survives recording this.

The Birth of Norway

Today the Norwegians celebrate the bicentenary of their constitution, and their freedom from Danish rule. Til lykke med dagen! Although they did not achieve full independence until 1905, the adoption of the constitution in 1814 marks the birth of the modern nation of Norway. But Norway as a geopolitical concept goes back at least to the Viking Age, as attested by two important runic inscriptions. Both the larger Jelling stone, from Denmark, and the Kuli stone, from Nordmøre in Norway, mention Norway in the context of the conversion to Christianity in the decades around the year 1000. The Jelling inscription also acknowledges Norway as a political entity which could be conquered by that ambitious king, Harald Bluetooth of Denmark (which also gets a mention in the inscription).

Much could be (and has been) said about the earliest history of Norway. But today I celebrate my favourite country by joining its (supposedly) eponymous founding king on his first royal tour of the dominions. The beginning of Orkneyinga saga (chapters 1-4) envisages the parallel origins of Norway and its western islands in a story about two brothers, Nórr and Górr, who conquer their realms during a long search for their missing sister Gói. There is much of interest in this legend of conquest and origin (and other versions of it exist), but what I particularly like is its visualising of the geographical extent of Norway, a kind of map avant la lettre.

Górr sets off immediately to search for his sister by ship 'around the out-skerries and islands', while Nórr rather awaits the time when 'snow lay on the heath and the skiing was good'. (As in so many sagas, skiing is a quintessentially Norwegian activity in the view of the somewhat bewildered Icelanders). His journey of conquest starts in the far north-east, Kvenland, where his family originates, and then travels west across the 'Keel' (the mountain range which now separates Norway and Sweden), until 'the waters fell on the west side of the mountains'. They follow these 'waters' down to the sea, arriving in a great fjord with populous settlements and large valleys branching off it, where Nórr subdues the local population and makes himself king of the district. But by now it is summer, so Nórr being Nórr, he awaits the skiing season again. Then he heads up the valley which goes south from the fjord ('which is now called Þrándheimr', the Trondheimsfjord), while sending some of his men along the coast of Møre. Nórr follows the great valley south until he gets to the great lake of Mjǫrs (Mjøsa), from where he turns west into 'the district which they called Valdres'. From there they head to the sea, arriving at 'a long and narrow fjord, which is now called Sogn' (and probably passing through Lærdal along the way). In this western region he meets up with his brother Górr, and it is at this point that they decided to divide up their realms so that Nórr has the mainland and Górr the islands to the west.

Nórr then consolidates his eastern regions, by travelling first to the Upplǫnd (Opplandene), where 'it is now called Heiðmǫrk (Hedmark)'. There he finds his sister, who has been kidnapped by the local king, son of a giant of Dovre (shades of Peer Gynt there!). After an unsuccessful attempt to kill his newly-discovered brother-in-law, Nórr resolves the matter by marrying his brother-in-law's sister. It is at this point that he names the country Nórvegr and he rules it for the rest of his life. The saga then turns to the adventures of Górr, which are of more interest to the subsequent history of Orkney which is its prime concern. So it may not be significant that the southern part of Norway is missed out from this long-distance ski-tour. Or the story may reflect a time when southern Norway was ruled by Denmark, as Harald Bluetooth boasted on the Jelling stone. Other versions of the story (notably Hversu Nóregr byggðist in Flateyjarbók) have more geographical detail and clearly the conceptualisation of Norway shifted according to historical and political circumstances.

And then there is the name... The story of how Nórr gave his name to Nóregr is usually dismissed as a learned medieval construction and the whole story as an origin myth, which in many ways it clearly is. But I don't think the whole story of the origins of Norway's name has been told yet, a topic to which I may return in another blog sometime.

In the meantime, we congratulate modern Norway on its 200th birthday.

From Another Place I Take My Name

Once upon a time, when I was an undergraduate, I met a fellow student who rejoiced in the glorious name of Kjartan Poskitt. Kjartan pronounced 'Ka-djartan', by the way, rather than 'Kyartan' (excuse my phonetics). I remember coming fresh from an Old Norse class and somewhat disingenuously asking him where he got his name from; his reply was that his mother had been reading 'some old book' when he was born, and he seemed to know no more about it, and I don't think I enlightened him. I see now that he is a successful author for children (there can only be one of him, surely), and have no doubt whatsoever that his fine name, however pronounced, has contributed to that success.

Why have I suddenly thought of him again after all these years? Well, I read in yesterday's Observer that no. 2 among the top 5 currently popular names for girls is Freya. Now I've been aware that Freya is quite popular, as I know a few myself, and often ask students if they know someone of that name, and many of them do. Most of these though are lasses in their late teens or twenties, so it's interesting that the name has continued to climb the popularity ladder. Of course it has always been around - the bestselling author Freya North is a wee bit older than 30, I believe, and of course there was the redoubtable Dame Freya Stark, explorer and author, who was born in 1893 and lived to be 100. Doubtless they were all named after the Norse goddess Freyja, quite frequently mentioned in this blog, though occasionally I have asked bearers of the name where their name came from and they professed not to know (a sure sign that the name has been fully adopted into the anthroponymicon).

Are Norse names becoming more popular in this country? Orkney and Shetland have had their fair share of Thorfinns, Erlends, Sigurds and Magnuses in the last century or so, the phenomenon interestingly manifesting itself mainly in boys' names. Also, the Victorian fascination with all things Norse and Viking has lived on until the present day and spawned the occasional outlandish name elsewhere in the country, viz. Mr Poskitt, but I do wonder if the trend is increasing? If so, it is quite the opposite in the Scandinavian countries. Statistics of the most popular baby names there show that none of the top names is actually a Scandinavian name, instead they prefer international, often anglicised, names such as Emma and Victor (Denmark), Eva and Lukas (the Faroes), Emelía/Emilía and Aron (Iceland), Nora and Lucas (Norway), and Alice and William (Sweden) (I've taken this information from a splendid Wiki called Nordic Names, by the way, well worth a browse if you are interested).

The history of personal names in Scandinavia has always been very interesting. Many 'pagan' Norse names survived the conversion and lived alongside the Europe-wide 'Christian' names, some of them in continuous use until the present day, often in much changed form. Nationalist movements, e.g. in nineteenth-century Norway, led to a revival of the Old Norse names, which have been pretty popular throughout the twentieth century, too. But new names always creep in. I remember when I lived in Norway in the 1980s and some friends of mine had a baby they called Carina, I was both horrified that they were naming her after a Japanese car, but also reassured that this was really just an updated version of that very popular Scandinavian name Karin (made exotic with that 'c'), ultimately of course from the international name Katherine (and all its variants). In fact, names can often be hard to pin down to a particular language or culture, and often develop peculiar local forms even when originally imported. Thus, we mustn't forget that Kjartan is a Scandinavianisation of a name that was originally Irish. Imported names have a habit of becoming acclimatised (cf. Freya, above) and have curiously different distributions - just compare the top names in the Scandinavian countries cited above - all 'foreign' names, but different ones in each country. I know that my own given name is much more common in the country in which I was born than in any other country with which I am familiar, even though it is an 'international' name with biblical origins.

A little bit of crowd-sourcing here, just for fun: if you are not Scandinavian, but have a name that is linguistically of Scandinavian origin, I'd be interested to hear why you were given that name!