After the establishment of the power of Harald Harfager by the successful battle of Hafursfiord, many of his vanquished opponents fled to the Orkneys and the Shetland isles, periodically infesting the Norwegian coasts in revenge for their defeat and expulsion; and to put an end to these piratical inroads Harald at length fitted out a numerous fleet, devoting an entire summer to extirpating the hostile Vikings from the creeks and bays in which they sought shelter from his vengeance. In one of the numerous conflicts occurring during this expedition, Ivar, a son of Harald’s favourite and most trusted friend Rognwald, Jarl of Mœri, lost his life, and as some compensation for the death of his son the king bestowed his own conquests upon the father. Rognwald, however, preferring to return to his Norwegian home, transferred the royal donation to his brother Sigurd, who was accordingly confirmed as Jarl, and left behind, on the departure of the king, in possession of the Orkneys and the Shetland isles. Not content with his newly acquired island territories Jarl Sigurd was ambitious of a wider dominion, and entering into an alliance with Thorstein Olaveson, the confederates employed their united force in invading the northern provinces of Scotland. The whole of the country as far as the banks of the Oikel,[47] embracing the modern counties of Caithness and Sutherland, was overrun and conquered by the allies, two Scottish magnates falling in an unavailing resistance; Meldun, whose wife, the daughter of an Irish king, became with her son the slave of Auda,[48] affording in their altered fortunes a striking example of the strange vicissitudes of the age; and Malbride “with the buck-tooth,” whose singular fate--if the Saga can be relied upon--avenged him after death upon the author of his misfortunes. Sigurd is said to have slain the last-named chieftain in single combat, and with the savage ferocity of the times to have cut off the head of his victim, suspending it in triumph from his saddle-bow, in which position the projecting tooth of the slaughtered chieftain is supposed to have inflicted so severe a wound upon the Jarl’s leg as ultimately to cause his death, and he was buried by his followers upon the banks of the Oikel, at the extreme limits of his conquests.