In the year 1150 Jarl Rögnvald of Orkney and Shetland, while visiting Norway, became imbued with the idea of leading a Crusade to the Holy Land; and two years later he set out from Orkney for Jerusalem, arrived there after many adventures, returned by way of Constantinople to Apulia, and travelled thence on horseback to Denmark.[7] The Orkneyinga Saga records the journey: “From there they sailed west to Púll (Apulia). Earl Rögnvald, Erling, Bishop William, and most others of their noblest men left their ships there, procured horses and rode to Rómaborg (Rome), and then from Róm until they came to Denmark. From there they went to Norway where the people were glad to see them. This journey became very famous, and all those who had made it were considered greater men than before.”[8] It remains a matter of wholly uninformed conjecture whether these war-worn travellers were so bound in affection and admiration to the equine companions of their journeys and adventures that, instead of leaving them in Denmark, they brought them home to Orkney and Shetland, just as in our day British soldiers brought back to our shores the Basuto ponies that had won their hearts on the African veldt. It is a question to which there is no answer. We come scarcely nearer to anything that can be accounted as proof when we bring the Shetland pony within the orbit of the vivid and entrancing drama of the Spanish Armada. Legend has always borne that the Armada, steering its stricken course round the North of Scotland and through the Irish Sea, left horses scattered along the coasts in Shetland, Lewis, Mull, Galloway, and on the Irish shores. The records taken at close quarters come tantalisingly near to evidence; but they never quite reach that level, so far as Shetland is concerned. It is beyond doubt that a Spanish ship, the _Gran Grifon, Capitana_ (flagship), was wrecked on the Fair Isle, and that this was the flagship of the Armada de Urcas, commanded by Gomez de Medina.[9] But “John de la Conido of Lekit in Biskey marriner,” under examination, “saith after the English Fleet parted from them, the Spanish Fleet cast out all the horses and mules into the sea to save their water, which were carried in certain hulks provided for the purpose.”[10] These hulks (urcas), therefore, contained the horses of the Armada; and the fact that their flagship was wrecked on the Fair Isle seems to bring the Spanish horses to the very coast of Shetland.