cairn over him, and left him there.[25] But when this news reached Norway it was taken very ill by Halfdan’s brothers and King Harald, and the King himself ordered out a levy, and proceeded westward to Orkney. When he heard that Harald was coming, Torf-Einar fled to Caithness, but in the end the quarrel was made up between them, on condition that the isles should pay the King sixty marks of gold. The people were so poor that they could not meet the fine, but Einar undertook the whole payment himself, on condition that they should make over to him their allodial holdings, or freeholds. They had no choice but to submit to this, and from that time till the time of Earl Sigurd the Stout the earls possessed the properties; but Sigurd restored most of them to their original owners.[26] Then King Harald went home to Norway, and Earl Einar ruled the Orkneys till his death. It was a bad time for the Orkneys during the stay of Eric Bloodaxe and his sons in England. He ruled from York, which had been the capital of Northumbria ever since the half-mythical days of Ragnar Lodbrok. Every summer Eric and his band of followers from Norway, bold and reckless men like himself, went on a cruise, plundering in the Hebrides and Orkneys, and as far as Ireland or Iceland. Wherever they appeared the people fled before them. In the Orkneys they committed great excesses and were much dreaded. This was in the time of Thorfin Skull-splitter, Torf-Einar’s son, and of Earl Hlodver, his son, the father of Earl Sigurd the Stout, who fell at the battle of Clontarf. Sigurd’s mother was Eithne, or Audna, an Irish princess, daughter of Karval, King of Dublin (872–887). It was she who worked the raven-banner that was carried before the earl at Clontarf, which brought its bearers ill-luck.[27] She was a very wise and courageous woman, and people thought she was a witch on account of her knowledge.