When Jarl Ragnvald of Maeri, the first of the Orkney jarls, was killed in Norway by two of Harald Harfagr's sons, one of them, Halfdan Halegg or Long-shanks fled from their father's vengeance to Orkney. When Halfdan landed, Torf-Einar took refuge in Scotland, but returned in force, and after defeating Halfdan--who had usurped the jarldom--in North Ronaldsay Firth, spied him as a fugitive, in hiding, far off on Rinarsey or Rinansey (Ninian's Island) now North Ronaldsay, and seized him, cut a blood-eagle on his back, severed his ribs and pulled out his lungs, and, after offering him as a victim to Odin, buried his body there.[17] Incensed at the shameful slaughter of his son, Harald Harfagr came over from Norway about the year 900 to avenge him, but, as was then not unusual, accepted as a wergeld or atonement for his son's death a fine of sixty marks of gold, which it fell to the islanders to pay. On their failure to find the money, Torf-Einar paid it himself, taking in return from the people their odal lands,[18] which were lost to their families until Jarl Sigurd Hlodverson temporarily restored them as a recompense for their assistance in the battle fought by him between 969 and 995 against Finleac MacRuari, Maormor of North Moray, at Skidamyre in Caithness. Whether it was the Orkney jarls or their superiors, the kings of Norway, who owned them in the meantime, the odal lands were finally sold back to those entitled to them by descent by Jarl Ragnvald Kol's son about 1137, in order to raise money for the completion of Kirkwall Cathedral. Odal tenure in Orkney was thus in abeyance for over two centuries, save for a short time, and in any case its inherent principle of subdivision would have killed it, and after its renewal, in spite of its many safeguards against alienation to strangers, it gradually died out under feudalism and Scottish law and lawyers.[19] In Cat it never seems to have taken root. After holding the jarldom for a long term, Torf-Einar died in his bed, as the Saga contemptuously tells us, probably in or after the year 920, leaving three sons, Arnkell, Erlend, and Thorfinn Hausa-kliufr or Skull-splitter, of whom the two first, Arnkell and Erlend, fell with Eric Bloody-axe, king of Norway, in England. The third son, Thorfinn Hausa-kliufr or Skull-splitter, himself about three-quarters Norse by blood, married Grelaud, daughter of Dungadr, or Duncan, the Gaelic Maormor of Caithness by Groa, daughter of Thorfinn the Red, thus further Gaelicising the strain of the Norse Jarls of Orkney,[20] but adding greatly to their mainland territories. Jarl Thorfinn Hausa-kliufr, who flourished between 920 and 963, is described as a great chief and fighter; but he, like his father, died a peaceful death, and was buried at Hoxa, Haugs-eithi or Mound's-isthmus, which covers the site of a Pictish broch, near the north-west end of South Ronaldshay.[21]