This was by no means the end of Ragnhilda’s wickedness. Ljot had a brother, Skuli, who was not at all satisfied that the former should have the whole earldom. It was an easy matter to make trouble between the two brothers. In the end Skuli left the islands for Scotland, and became Earl of Caithness and a vassal of the Scottish king. Bad feeling continued between the brothers, and was carefully fostered by Ragnhilda. Ultimately they met in arms in Caithness, Skuli with a Scottish army, and Ljot with the forces of the earldom. The Scots were defeated and Skuli slain. Ljot now added Caithness to his earldom, but the Scots again and again strove to reconquer it. Finally a great battle was fought at Skidmire in Caithness. The Norsemen gained the day, but the earl was fatally wounded. There remained one son of Thorfinn Skull-splitter, named Hlodver, who now became earl over an earldom exhausted and impoverished by twenty years of misgovernment and bloodshed, and embroiled in an arduous struggle with Scotland for the possession of Caithness. The Orkney earldom, however, was now on the eve of a great expansion. Under the son and grandson of Hlodver, Sigurd the Stout and Thorfinn the Mighty, the Norse dominion in the west attained its widest bounds, and the earldom of Orkney its greatest importance. For more than half a century, with little or no interference from Norway, the Orkney earls helped to mould the history of Ireland and of Scotland; and until the union of England and Denmark took place under Canute, the Norse Earls of Orkney were probably the most powerful chieftains in the British Isles. It was in the time of Earl Sigurd that Christianity was first introduced among the Norse inhabitants of Orkney. Olaf, Tryggvi’s son, King of Norway, had embraced the new faith, and his methods of promoting the religion which he professed were characteristic of his time and race. The story of the conversion of Earl Sigurd and his followers is thus given in the Saga:— “Olaf, Tryggvi’s son, sailed from the west to the Orkneys; but because the Pentland Firth was not passable, he laid his ship up under the lee in Osmund’s Voe, off Rognvald’s Isle. But there in the voe lay already Earl Sigurd, Hlodver’s son, with three ships, and then meant to go a-roving. But as soon as King Olaf knew that the earl was there, he made them call him to come and speak with him. But when the earl came on board the king’s ship, King Olaf began his speech.” (We pass over his long historical review of the establishment of the Orkney earldom and its dependence upon the kings of Norway, and give only his closing sentences.)