No incident in Scottish history is more pathetic than that of the untimely death of the young Princess on her voyage to Orkney; and no single event in the whole course of that history has exercised a more important influence on the destinies of the nation. In these circumstances, we cannot cease to wonder how it came to pass that there is no authentic record of its details in the contemporary or nearly contemporary chronicles of Scottish or Norwegian history. The only contemporary document in Scottish record which notices her death is the letter of the Bishop of St Andrews to Edward I., dated at Leuchars the 7th of October 1290, in which the bishop states that there was a rumour of her death; but that he had heard subsequently that she ‘had recovered of her sickness, but was still weak.’ It was plain, however, that the bishop did not believe the rumour of her recovery, for he concludes his letter by praying King Edward to approach the Borders with his army to prevent bloodshed, seeing that Sir Robert Bruce had come to Perth and Mar and Athole were collecting their forces. On the Norwegian side, there is a total absence of authentic contemporary record of the time and manner of the death of the Princess; and there would have been absolutely nothing known of the details of her decease, if it had not been for the appearance ten years later of the Claimant, whom Munch, the historian of Norway, following Bishop Audfinn, has no hesitation in designating ‘The False Margaret.’ In his official interdict of 1320, forbidding the people ‘any longer to invoke that woman with great vows and worship as if she had been one of God’s martyrs,’ the bishop states that he has deemed it his duty to declare the truth as to her case; ‘She said, indeed, that she was the child and lawful heir of King Eirik; but when she came from Lübeck to Bergen she was gray-haired and white in the head, and was proved to be twenty years older than the time of King Eirik’s marriage with Margaret of Scotland. He was then only thirteen winters old, and consequently, could not have been the father of a person of her years. And then he had no other child than one daughter by Queen Margaret. This only child of King Eirik and Queen Margaret was on her journey to Scotland, when she died in Orkney between the hands of Bishop Narve of Bergen, and in the presence of the best men of the land, who had attended her from Norway; and the bishop and Herr Thore Hakonson and others brought back her corpse to Bergen, where her father had the coffin opened and narrowly examined the body, and himself acknowledged that it was his daughter’s corpse, and buried her beside the queen her mother, in the stone wall on the north side of the choir of the cathedral church of Bergen.’