By Fiona Grahame

Sigurd Eysteinsson, Earl of Orkney, was a warrior of great strength and of several firsts who is considered to be one of the three most powerful Norse Earls of Orkney. This is his fantastical story as far as we know, how much is true is up to you the reader.

King Harald Finehair was a Norwegian King who conquered Orkney, Shetland and the Hebrides as a lesson to the Norse men ruling in the islands of his displeasure at their escapades which he considered had got out of his control.

Harald was the first King to claim all of Norway and a great warrior of the 9thC. His conquests and taxation system in Norway led many chiefs and their followers to emigrate across the sea to lands in the British Isles, and perhaps even  to Iceland. He acquired wealth through his control of coastal trade but ruled indirectly through lesser chieftains in areas other than his own tightly controlled home district, in the southwest of Norway. He developed provincial administrations through chieftains.

On the campaign to re-establish his control over the Northern and Western Isles of Scotland he took with him the Norse Earl Rognvald and his brother Sigurd. During the bloody fighting Rognvald’s son Ivarr was killed and in compensation for losing his son, King Harold, granted Rognvald the islands of Orkney and Shetland.

Rognvald, in turn, gave over the islands to his brother Sigurd who decided to make his base there. King Harold made Sigurd Earl of Orkney, the first to be given that title.

According to the Orkneyinga Saga Sigurd became a great ruler which he did by forging alliances and successfully raiding south bringing back riches and plunder to Orkney.

One of these alliances was with Thorstein the Red, son of Ireland’s Olaf the White and Aud the Deep Minded. Olaf the white was King of Dublin and Northumbria during the 9thC and a true Viking sea-king using the sea routes to plunder, raid and conquest. He was the most powerful Viking ruler in Ireland at this time.

To form an alliance with Thorstein and Olaf illustrates just how powerful Sigurd had already become.   Together, Sigurd and Thorstein conquered most of Argyll, Moray and Ross. Sigurd was confident enough to establish a base in the south of his Moray lands.

Using Moray as a base was ideal for securing passage through the Great Glen giving Sigurd access to the west and for Thorstein to plunder from Ireland into Scotland. It was also a region valuable for timber, for raiding further south and the more fertile crop growing lands.

Thorstein was killed in battle during this time but his burial place is unknown. 

This was a region ruled over by the mighty Pictish/Scots warrior Maelbrigte Tusk, so called because of a large protruding tooth. After much fighting Sigurd and Maelbrigte agreed to come together to arrange a cessation of the conflict. Each was to have 40 men with them. Sigurd, however, took 80. Maelbrigte kept his side of the bargain and arrived with  40.

To cover up the fact that he had 80 warriors, Sigurd had each pair of men mount one horse, so that from a distance it would appear as if only 40 were accompanying him. Maelbrigte, however, spotted this and declared to his men:

‘Sigurd has made fools of us. I can see two men’s legs on the flanks of each horse.’

Half of Sigurd’s men dismounted leaving the other half on horseback who advanced on Maelbrigte’s company, leaving the other group to outflank the Scots. The Norse warriors slaughtered the Scots and to mark their victory they beheaded the fallen and slung the heads of their foes across their saddles. This is the first recorded battle in the history of Orkney.

The tale goes, however, that on the journey back to his Moray base, as he was spurring his horse on, the calf of Sigurd’s leg struck against a protruding tooth from the mouth of Maelbrigte’s decapitated head. Thinking nothing of this the Orkney Earl rode on but the wound festered and ached. Succumbing to the blood poisoning from the swelling wound Sigurd I died an agonising and slow death, killed by his fallen enemy.

The story of death by the ‘avenging head’ , in this case Maelbrigte’s tooth, is part of Irish Gaelic folklore and whether Sigurd met his death this way we do not know, but die he did after the battle.

Sigurd I was buried in a mound on the banks of the River Oykel, on the edge of the land between his domain and that of the Scots. The Earl’s burial place has never been found.  

Only a few miles away from that location and several generations later in 1650, hundreds of Orcadians were to meet their death at the Battle of Carbisdale and in its aftermath as part of the Duke of Montrose’s Royalist forces.

Sigurd the Mighty was the first in a line of Earls who were to rule Orkney and Shetland for 600 years. The hold over his lands south and into Moray did not last but the Norse were able to make secure those in Caithness and Sutherland. This established the Earls of Orkney with the links to those lands which led eventually to the joint Earldoms

This story was first published in iScot Magazine.