The place where the Orkney Things were held is nowhere more
particularly indicated. Stennis has been suggested, on the supposition
that the great stone circle there would have been thus utilised by the
Northmen. It does not appear, however, that the occasion on which
Havard, son of Thorfinn Hausakliuf, was killed at “Steinsness” was a
Thing meeting there, and this is the only occasion on which Stennis is
mentioned in the whole of the Flateyjarbók. “Tingwale,” in the parish
of Rendale, occurs in the Orkney Land List of 1502. This seems to be
the only trace of the old Thing-völl in Hrossey.
Footnote 301:
Egilsey, in Jo. Ben’s description of the Orkneys (1529) called
“Insularum Ecclesia,” is regarded by Munch as deriving its name not
from the Norse proper name _Egil_, but from the Irish _Eaglais_, a
church. “To this day,” he says, “Egilsey contains a church shown by
its construction to have been built before the Northmen arrived in
Orkney, or at all events to belong to the more ancient Christian
Celtic population. (See under “Egilsey” in the Introduction).
Footnote 302:
These dates are self-contradictory, and utterly irreconcilable. King
Magnus Barelegs fell in Ireland in the year 1103; and it is stated in
the Saga of Sigurd, the Jorsala-farer, that Hákon, Paul’s son, came to
Norway to King Sigurd “a year or two after King Magnus’s fall.” The
King gave him the earldom and government of the Orkneys, and he went
back immediately to Orkney. Then it is added that four years after the
fall of King Magnus—that is, in 1107—King Sigurd set out on his
pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Now, it is mentioned in this Saga (chap.
xxxiii.) that Earl Magnus went to Norway to see King Eystein, “for
King Sigurd had then gone to Jerusalem.” This must have been after
1107. King Eystein gave him his patrimony, one-half of the Orkneys. If
his visit to Norway was in the year after King Sigurd’s departure, as
seems likely from the narrative, or in 1108, and “he had been seven
winters Earl in the Orkneys along with Earl Hákon,” this would bring
the date of his death exactly to the year assigned in the Iceland
Annals appended to the Flateyjarbók, or to 1115. The entry in the
“Annalar” for that year is: “Pindr enn heilagi Magnus jarl i
Orkneyium.” Torfæus dates this event in 1110. The Saga of St. Magnus
says he had been twelve winters Earl of the Orkneys jointly with
Hákon, counting evidently from the vacancy of earldom in 1103 by the
accession of Sigurd, Magnus’ son, then Earl of the Orkneys, to the
throne of Norway. This also gives the date 1115.
Footnote 303:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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