The old Sagas, indeed, expressly point out the dangers of the Pentland Firth. Thus, when Olaf Trygvesön came from the West to the Orkneys with the intention of Christianizing the islands, he was obliged to run into the harbour of Asmundarvág (now Osmondwall) in the south of Hoy, because Pentland Firth was not navigable; and on the return of King Hakon Hakonsön from the Hebrides in 1263, one of his ships was lost in the Röst, and another escaped only with the greatest difficulty. Nevertheless the ancient Norwegians and Danes navigated this dangerous firth regularly, and do not seem to have considered it as forming any real boundary between the Orkneys and Scotland. At an early period the Norwegians had settled themselves along the south coast of the Pentland Firth, and founded colonies there which soon became so preponderatingly Norwegian that they might almost be regarded as inseparable parts of the Orkney jarldom. On this account the two most northern counties of Scotland, both of which united originally bore the Gaelic name of Catuibh, are still called after the original Norwegian forms, “Caithness” (_Old N._, “Katanes,” the naze of Catuibh) and “Sutherland” (_Old N._, Suðrland), or the land in the south; that is, as regards the Orkneys. It would be perfectly inexplicable, in any other way, why the north-western part of Scotland should be called the south land, or Sutherland. It is, moreover, a remarkable proof of the Norwegian origin of these names, that even the present Gaelic inhabitants do not adopt them, but always call Sutherland, after the old fashion, “Catuibh.” For the sake of distinction, however, they call Caithness “Gallaibh,” or the stranger’s land, because so many Norwegians immigrated to, and settled in, that county in preference to Sutherland.