Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time; or, The Jarls and The FreskynsGray, James
History
Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time; or, The Jarls and The Freskyns
Gray, James
Caithness (Scotland) -- History; Freskin family; Sutherland (Scotland) -- History
claimed, only to find that Hakon had prepared a force to dispute his
rights. Hakon agreed, however, to give up his claims to Magnus'
half share if Magnus should obtain a grant of it from the Norwegian
king.[12] King Eystein about 1106 gave him this moiety and the title
of Jarl; and the two cousins lived in amity for "many winters,"
joining their forces and fighting and killing Dufnjal,[13] who was one
degree further off than their first cousin, and killing Thorbjorn at
Burrafirth in Unst in Shetland "for good cause." Magnus then married,
probably about 1107, "a high-born lady, and the purest maid of the
noblest stock of Scotland's chiefs, living with her ten winters" as
a maiden. After "some winters" evil-minded men set about spoiling
the friendship of the jarls, and Hakon again seized Magnus' share;
whereupon the latter went to the court of Henry I of England, where he
appears to have charmed everyone, and to have spent a year, probably
1111, in which Hakon seized all Orkney, and also Caithness, which then
included Sutherland, and laid them under his rule with robbery and
wantonness. Leaving Caithness, Hakon at once went to attack Magnus
in Orkney where he had landed; but the "good men" intervened, and an
equal division of Orkney and Shetland and Caithness was made between
the jarls. After some winters, however, they met in battle array in
Mainland, and the fight was again stopped by the principal men
on either side in their own interest, the final settlement being
postponed until a meeting, which was to take place in Egilsay in the
next spring, Magnus arrived first at the meeting-place with the small
following of two ships agreed upon, but Hakon came later in seven or
eight ships with a great force, and, after those present had refused
to let both come away alive, Magnus was treacherously murdered under
Hakon's orders by Hakon's cook on the 16th of April 1116. The dead
jarl's mother, Thora, had prepared a feast in Paplay to celebrate the
reconciliation of the two cousins, which, notwithstanding the murder,
Hakon attended. After the banquet the bereaved mother begged her son's
corpse for burial in holy ground, and obtained it from the drunken
earl after some difficulty and buried it in Christ's Kirk at Birsay.
Twenty-one years after, on the 13th December 1137, Jarl Magnus' relics
were brought[14] to St. Magnus' Cathedral at Kirkwall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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