Earl Torf-Einarr, 875-910, was the illegitimate son of the Norwegian earl Rögnvaldr, by a thrall mother who was thrall born on all sides, _í allar ættir þrælborinn_. He was therefore half Norse and half thrall. His mother was probably of the pre-Norse small dark race, the Finnar or Lappir, which may account for her son being ugly, _ljótr_, one-eyed, _einsýnn_, but keen-sighted, _skygnstr_, an expression which latterly meant second-sighted, and capable of seeing elves, etc. He saw, what others did not, Hálfdán há-leggr, the self-appointed “king of Orkney,” bobbing up and down on another island, and had a _blóð-örn_, blood-eagle, carved on him. His poetic genius may have been the result of the mixture of Norse and Finn. He died of sickness, _sótt-dauðr_, equivalent to _strá-dauðr_, straw-dead, died in bed, an ignominious death for a víkingr. Nothing is known of his wife, but, as he had children before he left Norway, she was, probably, a Norwegian. His children were earls Þorfinnr, Arnkell and Erlendr, and two daughters, Þórdís, born in his youth, in Norway (she was brought up by her grandfather, earl Rögnvaldr, and married Þórgeirr klaufi, whose son Einarr went to Orkney to his kinsmen, and as they would not receive him, he bought a ship and went to Iceland), and Hlíf, who had descendants in Iceland. Earl Þorfinnr hausakljúfr (skull-cleaver), 910-963, was the son of earl Torf-Einarr and an unknown mother, probably Norwegian, so that he would be three-fourths Norse and one-fourth thrall in descent. He married Grelöð, a daughter of Dungað (Gaelic _Donnchadh_, Duncan), Gaelic earl of Caithness, and Gróa, daughter of Þorsteinn rauðr.[1] [1] Hkr. He is described as a great chief and warrior, _mikill höfðingi ok herskár_, and died of sickness, _sótt-dauðr_, and was buried in a mound, _heygðr_, in Rögnvaldsey _á Haugs-eiði_, at Hoxa. The Saga reads _á Hauga-heiði_, wrongly; this isthmus would have been called _Haugs-eið_, how’s isthmus, because the Norse found on it a large mound, which covered the ruins of a pre-Norse round tower, in which the earl may have been buried. His children were earls Arnfinnr, Hávarðr ár-sæli (of prosperous years), Hlöðver, Ljótr or Arnljótr, and Skúli, and two daughters. Three of his five sons married, in turn, the murdress Ragnhildr, daughter of king Eiríkr blóðöx and the notorious Gunnhildr. She killed her first husband herself. The second husband was killed by his nephew Einarr klíningr (butter), at the instigation of his aunt, who promised to marry him, and for which deed he was thought to be a _níðingr_, dastard. Preparatory to marrying the third brother, she got rid of Einarr at the hands of his cousin Einarr harðkjöptr (hard-jawed), who was in turn slain by the third and last husband.