Ivar of Limerick, who showed his gratitude to "Mac Harold" by assisting him, although in vain, was defeated and put to flight. As King of Man and the Isles there appears now a Gødred (Goğruğr), son of Harold; which patronynical designation makes it very probable that he was a brother of the former "Mac Harold." Seeing that the names of Harold and Gødred occur very frequently in the royal line of Limerick, and that Ivar of Limerick was so closely connected with "Mac Harold," we think it very likely that the royal line of Man was a branch of the same.38 Gødred is frequently mentioned in the sagas, as well as in the Irish and British annals. In 979 he supported the Welsh Prince Constantine the Black against his cousin Howel, but was twice defeated with considerable loss; the third time, however, he came in the opportune hour, when Meredith, the son of Owen, had obtained the dominion after great struggles. Profiting by the state of exhaustion in which Meredith found himself, he attacked Anglesey, slaughtered 2000 men, captured the brother of Meredith.
The terrified Meredith fled to Cardigan, leavisig Gødred, it would seem in the possession of Anglesey. His success, however, was not of long duration, a more powerful star having risen on the western horizon. This was Sigurd (Siward), Earl of Orkney and Caithuess, son of Earl Hloğver (Lewis), by an Irish princess and great grandson of the famous Turf-Einar, the third earl and founder of the dynasty. Sigurd, having succeeded to the earldom in 980, at his father's demise, aspired, as it seems, to nothing less than the subjugation of all islands, coasts, or lands in the West, where the Norwegians had made settlements. Selecting his warriors from different parts of the North, he made every yeare attacks upon Scotland, the Sudreys, and Ireland, and succeeded not only in keeping Caithness, which the Maormor of Moray, Finnlaich (the father of the famous Macbeth) strove in vain to take, but ultimately in conquering and possessing for a the Sutherland, Ross, Moray, and Argyll. The Isles, or Sudreys proper, which, shortly before his accession, are stated to have paid tribute direct to Norway, came very soon under his sway, and were governed by a tributary earl called Gilli 43 in the sagas, who resided in Colonsay, and in 989 married his sister.
In 982 Sigurd made a successful attack upon the Isle of Man, and extorted from the inhabitants a heavy ransom to be paid in pure silver; of which, however, only a small part came into his hands, because the collectors having suffered shipwreck on an uninhabited island near the Irish coast, could not get away otherwise, than by purchasing from an Icelandic merchant, coming from Dublin, the boat of his ship, for the greater part of the collected silver. That Gødred the son of Harold, who pretended to be King of Man and all the Isles, would necessarily sooner or later come into conflict with Sigurd or his vassals, is not surprising. In the yeare 987, after having fought a successful, but very bloody battle with a fleet of Danish pirates, who had attacked Iona on Christmas night, and killed the Abbot with fifteen monks, he was himself, in his turn, attacked and vanquished by a little fleet under the command of Earl Sigurd's men. In 989 he was again vanquished by the same warriors, and lost his son Donald in the battle.
Shortly afterwards, before the end of the year, he was killed by the Dairiadic Scots, according to the Irish annals.d For a long tinse afterwards Earl Sigurd seenis to have been in undisputed possession of the Sudreys, yet, as it is distinctly stated, tributary to the powerful ruler of Norway, Earl Hacon, as long almost as this prince lived. Beyond the annual tribute, however, no other sign or service of vassalage seems to have been enforced, and Sigurd ruled in fact as an independent and powerful monarch. He strengthened himself greatly by marrying a daughter of the Scottish King Malcolm (of the Moray dynasty, nephew of Finnlaich). A little before the death of Earl Hacon, he was unlucky enough to fall in with King Olaf Tryggvason, in the bay of Ronaldsvoe, when on his way from Dublin to get the Norwegian crown, who now availed himself of the opportunity–Sigurd being the weaker part–to take the earl prisoner, and restored him to liberty only on condition that he swore him fealty as his liege subject, and embraced Christianity with all his men! Olaf, however, did not reign for more than five years; after his fall in the battle of Swalder, A.D. 1000, Norway was divided among the victors, the Kings of Sweden and Denmark, and Earl Eric, son of Earl Hacon, and as there is no mention to be found of Sigurd's having acknowledged the superiority of any of these princes. It is very likely that during this interregnusm he ruled as an independent sovereign; his brother in law, the Earl of the Sudreys, continuing on the best terms with him, and consequently doubtless paying him tribute every year.
The interregnum ended by the accession of Olaf, the son of Harold, afterwards St. Olaf, to the Norwegian crown in 1015; - but shortly before that the Earl Sigurd fell in the great battle of Clontarf.; near Dublin (on the 23d of April, 1014), against Brian Boroimhe. He left four sons, three begotten before his marriage with the Scottish princess, now full-grown men; the fourth, Thorfiun, grandson of the Scottish king, still a child. These three divided Orkney and Shetlanid between themselves; but no mention is made, on this occasion, of the Sudreys. It may be that Earl Gille continued in his allegiance even to the sons of Sigurd; it may also be probable that King Cnut, who claimned for himself the right to the Norwegian crown, even tried to enforce the obedience of the Sudreys. It is told in a very old abridgment of the Norwegian history, written about 1180, only 166 years after the death of Earl Sigurd, that when King Olaf, on his arrival in Norway, captusred Earl Hacon, son of Eric, nephew of King Cnut, he made him swear that he would never return to Norway, and gave him the Sudreys, and assisted him to establish his power there. The last is not true, as far as regards Olaf; but it is not unlikely that King Cnut may have helped Earl Hacon to get possession of the Isles, especially as it is certain that Earl Hacon, when he made his last fatal voyage to Norway in the winter of 1029-30, went down and was drowned in the Pentland fith, which seems to imply, that lie did not come from the eastern parts of England, but from the west. Be this, however, as it may, there can be no doubt, that Thorfinn, Earl Sigurd's fourth son, who, like his father, because one of the most powerful princes in those parts, extended his rule also to the Subreys.
The Orkneyinga saga says so expressly. Outliving his elder bothers, he because the Lord of Orkney and Shretland; Caithness was givems him by his maternal grandfather, King Malcolm Mac Maibrigid, and after the death of Malcolm in 1029,a he sustained a successful war with King Malcolm Mac Kenneth, of the southern dynasty, conquered Sutherland and Ross, and made himself lord of Galloway, in the widest sense of this denoomination, viz. from Solway to Carrick, where he resided for long periods, and whence he made successful inroads, sometimes on Cumberland, the English possessioms of Duncan, King Malcolm's grand-son and future successor, sometimes upon Ireland, of which he is said to have conquered a part. As lord of Galloway, it was very convenient for Thorfiun to make, as it is stated, frequent expeditions to Ireland and the Sudreys, and he mght easily maintain his superiority over at least a part of the latter.
It cannot but have contributed greatly to the power of Thorfinn that in 1040 the famous Macbeth, soss of Finnlaich, established himself on the Scottish throne, having killed the above mentioned Duncan in a battle a we might even take it for granted that Thorfinn lent his aid to his kinsman Macbeth, and was subsequently rewarded with new extensive possessions; indeed, Thorfinn, according to the Orkneyinga Saga, possessed, besides the Sudreys and part of Ireland, not less than nine earldoms in Scotland (most likely Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, Moray, Buchan, Atholl, Lorn, Argyll, Galloway), and it has been all but proved by a modern author, who combines a rare exteist of knowledge with no less sagacity, that what is called the dominion of Macbeth in Scotland was in reality the sway or influence exercised by Earl Thorfinn and the Norwegians of Orkney.b Afterwards, when Malcolm Ceanmor, the son of Duncan, aided by his relation, Earl Sigurd of Northumberland, vanquished Macbeth (1054), and drove him back towards the north, where at last he was killed in the battle of Lumuphanan (1057),––Thorfinn likewise seems to have met with no inconsiderable reverses, nay, there is even good reasosin to believe that he took part in the battle of 1054 c (which was fought somewhere in Lothian or Fife), and lost there a son, named Dolgfinn! Seeing that Malcolm, no doubt by means of continual aid from England, was enabled even to crush Macbeth's successor Lulach of Moray, likewise a relation of Thorfinn, and (1058) to establish himself firmly on the throne, we may infer that Thorfinn shared the fate of his relatives, and was compelled to yield at least his possessions in the south of Scotland. But how far he lost also the Sudreys, or his part thereof, it is impossible to say with anything like certainty.
From the Irish annals, compared with the Welsh and Cornish ones, that in the yeare 1058 King Harold of Norway sent a fleet under the command of his son Magnus, with men from the Orkneys, Sudreys, and Dublin, to attack the western part of England, but without success.c From this it would appear too, that Thorfiun, feeling himself too weak to oppose the united force of Malcolm and the English, applied to his lord paramount, King Harold, for aid; and it would appear that then, at least, the Sudreys formed still a part of Thorfinn's dominions. The Norwegian prince Magnus, a near relation to Thorfinn's wife Ingebjorg, being then only a child, and consequently not fit to command in person, it is to be supposed that he was sent partly because of this very relationship partly in order to be proclaimed king in the countries which were to be conquered. Although this expedition was not successful, as far as regards England, we must, however, suppose that the Norwegian superiority was immaintained at least in the Isles. The strife between Thorfinn and Malcolm no doubt continued till the death of the former (1064), when his widow Ingebjorg, the mother of his two young sons and successors Paul and Erlend, married Malcolm, which evidently indicates that a peace must have been concluded.a That the young earls continued to keep the Sudreys, seems therefore most likely; this, at least, is the most natural way to account for the appearance of Gødred Crowan, as we learn hereafter, in the Norwegian army at Stanfordbridge.