Fifteen years elapsed without any diminution in the friendship of Rognwald for his youthful colleague; Madach and his royal cousin sunk into the grave; and the elder earl departed for the Holy Land, leaving Harald in charge of the earldom.[467] The same year witnessed the last expedition, in which a Norwegian king enacted the part of a pirate in the western seas; Eystein, in a time of profound peace, inflicting upon the unoffending inhabitants of the English and Scottish coasts a repetition of the ravages of his heathen predecessors. Amongst the sufferers was Harald, who was surprised and captured off Thurso, but he regained his liberty at the price of several marks “in gold,” and an acknowledgment of his dependance upon Norway;[468] though he was less fortunate some years later, when his cousin Erlend Haraldson arrived to claim his share in the earldom. Erlend, who appears to have succeeded to the authority of his uncle, Ottir of Thurso, had taken advantage of the absence of Rognwald to obtain from the youthful king of Scotland, Malcolm the Fourth, a confirmation of his right to the half of Caithness, and he now demanded a similar division of the islands. Harald demurred to his claims unless they were confirmed by the Court of Norway, nor would he consent to acknowledge Erlend as his colleague, even after his rights were recognized by the Norwegian kings, till the defection of Sweyne Asleifason forced from him a reluctant acquiescence in this arrangement. Not content with depriving Harald of half the earldom, Erlend carried off the Earl’s mother, the still beautiful Margaret, bearing her to that singular fort of Mousa, in the Shetland Isles, of which the remains still exist to excite the curiosity of modern times; where he defended his prize with such tenacity, that he forced Harald to consent to their marriage, and this singular union of a nephew with his aunt is related in the Saga without a comment![469]