One of Harald’s chief friends and supporters was Rognvald, Earl of Moeri and Romsdal, who was called by the men of his time, “The mighty and wise in council.” This Rognvald was the father of Rollo of Normandy. He had other sons named Ivar, Thorir, Rollaug, Hallad, and Einar, and he had a brother called Sigurd. The family makes a very large figure in the history of those times. In one of Harald’s battles in the west fell Ivar, Rognvald’s son. Harald assigned to Rognvald the newly created Jarldom of Orkney in order to compensate him in some measure for the loss of his son. But Rognvald had already large estates in Norway. He thought that these were quite enough for one man to govern. Accordingly he handed over the Orkneys to his brother Sigurd, who thus became the first Jarl or Earl. Sigurd, the first Earl of Orkney, sometimes called Sigurd the Mighty, was a strong and energetic ruler. When King Harald departed for Norway, the earl at once began to strengthen himself in his new dominions. He first allied himself with Thorstein the Red, son of the Norse king of Dublin, and with the Norsemen in the Hebrides, and then invaded Scotland in an attempt to add to his earldom Caithness and Sutherland. The Scots naturally offered a determined resistance. Their leader was Maelbride or Melbrigda—called Melbrigda Tusk because he had a large projecting tooth—Earl or Maormor of Ross. After the war had lasted for some time, the two earls agreed to meet and settle their quarrel, each taking forty men with him. On the day fixed for the meeting, Sigurd, suspecting, as he said, the good faith of the Scots, mounted two men on each of his forty horses, and came thus to the place appointed. As soon as the Norsemen appeared in sight, Melbrigda saw that he had been trapped, and turning to his men, said, “We have been betrayed by Sigurd, for I see two feet on each horse’s side. The men must therefore be twice as numerous as the horses that bear them. Nevertheless let us harden our hearts and sell our lives as dearly as we can.” Seeing the Scots prepared to die hard in the place where they were, Sigurd divided his force and attacked them at once in front and in flank. The battle was fierce and bloody, but it ended in the total extermination of the small band of Scots. Sigurd, exulting over his fallen foe, cut off Melbrigda’s head and fixed it to his saddle. On his way home, in spurring his horse his leg struck against the great projecting tooth which had given Melbrigda his nickname, and the tooth pierced his leg. Blood-poisoning followed, and a few days later Earl Sigurd died in great pain on the banks of the Dornoch Firth. He was buried at a place now called Cyder Hall (Sigurd’s Howe), near Skibo Castle.