Meantime, since 875, a succession of jarls had endeavoured to hold, for the kings of Norway, Orkney and Shetland, as well as Cat, which then included Ness, Strathnavern, and Sudrland.[13] The history of these early jarls is not told in detail in any surviving contemporary record, for the Sagas of the jarls as individuals have perished; but there is a brief account of them in the beginning of the _Orkneyinga Saga_, another in chapters 99 and 100 of the _St. Olaf's Saga_, and a fuller one in chapters 179 to 187 of the _Saga of Olaf Tryggvi's Son_, contained in the _Flatey Book_.[14] From these the following story may be gathered. After Jarl Sigurd's death, his son Guthorm ruled for one winter, and died without issue, so that Sigurd's line came to an end. When Jarl Ragnvald of Maeri heard of his nephew's death, he sent his son Hallad over from Norway to Hrossey, as the mainland of Orkney was then called, and King Harald gave him the title of jarl. Failing in his efforts to put down the piracy of the Vikings, who continued their slayings and plunderings, Hallad, the last of the purely Norse jarls, resigned his jarldom, and returned ignominiously to Norway. In the absence at war of Hrolf the Ganger, who became Duke of Normandy and was an ancestor of the kings of England, two others of Ragnvald's sons, Thorir and Hrollaug, were summoned to meet their father. At this meeting it was decided that neither of these should go to Orkney, Thorir's prospects in Norway being good, and Hrollaug's future lying in Iceland, where, it was said, he was to found a great family. Then Einar, the Jarl's youngest son by a thrall or slave woman, and thus not of pure Norse lineage, asked whether he might go, offering as an inducement to his father that, if he went, he would thus never be seen by him again. He was told that the sooner he went, and the longer he stayed away, the better his father would be pleased. A galley, well equipped, was given to him, and about the year 891 King Harald Harfagr conferred on him the title of Jarl of Orkney and Shetland, for which he sailed. On his arrival there, he attacked Kalf Skurfa and Thorir Treskegg,[15] the pirate Viking leaders, and defeated and slew them both. He then took possession of the lands of the jarldom; and, from having taught the people of Turfness in Moray the use of turf or peat for fuel, was known thenceforward as Torf-Einar. He is said to have been "a tall man, ugly, with one eye, but very keen-sighted,"[16] a faculty which he was soon to use.