Olav the White
In 852, Olaf the White, the Ainhlabh of the Irish chronicles, descended from the same family as Harold Harfagri, the Fair-Haired, afterwards King of Norway, conquered Dublin, with the adjacent territory, and founded this, the most renowned, most powerful and most lasting Norwegian kingdom in Ireland. Olaf was married to Aude, daughter of the mighty and valiant Norwegian baron Ketil Flatnef (flat-nose) from Sogn. This Ketil, it is said in some Sagas (as the Landnama), was sent by King Harold of Norway to chastise some Vikings who had taken up their abode in the Isles, dthough previously expelled by the king himself, and having executed his commission he made himself independent there; according to another and far more probable version of the story (that of the Laxdoela Saga), Ketil emigrated from Norway to the Isles because he was obnoxious to the king, and could not resist him in his own country. The marriage of his daughter with Olaf of Dublin, which must have taken place about 850, as their son was grown a man in 870, is sufficient to show that Ketil, although perhaps still chiefly resident in Norway, must have been a man of great consequence in those parts long before the king himself went there to expel the Vikings; 2 perhaps even he helped Olaf to make his conquests.
All the Sagas, in which these events are mentioned, agree that King Harold Fair-hair made himself a great expedition to the islands near Scotland and lreland against the Vikings there settled, who continued to infest the seas occasionally, even making attacks upon Norway, their mother country, and that in this expedition he conquered Shetland (Hjaltland), the Orkneys, the Sudreys (Hebudes), and even Man, killing or expelling the Vikings, who were not strong enough to make any serious resistance. From this expedition onwards, which seems to have taken place in the yeare 870, the later Norwegian kings derived their right or title to these islands, and as even now some stanzas remain of a poem in which these events were celebrated by the king's chief court-poet, who perhaps accompanied his master on this expedition, there can be no possible doubt of the thing having really taken place. The colonisation of Iceland, beginning about this time, and being chiefly effected by powerful Norwegian families, who did not come directly from Norway, but from the Sudreys, where they had lived for some years after their expatriation, and among whom the very Ketil Flatnef here mentioned occupies a prominent place, makes it almost certain that the immediate reason for the second transmigration of these men, with their whole families, was no other than King Harold's expedition. And, consequently, even that colonisation bears a strong evidence as to the truth of the ancient tale.
The real Chronicles of Man, or the entries belonging to the history of this kingdom, only commence with the yeare 1066 (1047). The first lines touching the death of King Edward the Confessor are still due to the Chronica de Mailros, the rest, however, is original. Here, therefore, Camden has also commenced his abridgment. The first King of Man here mentioned, viz. Gødred son of Sytric, is not, however, the first known in history, but it was not the author's plan to carry the history farther up than to Gødred Crowan, whom he probably supposed to be the founder of the reigning dynasty. Perhaps he did not even know of any King of Man previous to Gødred the son of Sigtrygg, although the Icelandic family-sagas, as well as the Irish annals, speak of kings either in Man or in the Isles for more than a century earlier than the two Gødreds here mentioned.
The great Norwegian invasion, which lasted from the end of the eighth to the middle of the ninth century, and caused the erection of Norwegian kingdoms in Ireland, comprised also the islands between Ireland and Scotland, and these were even more completely subdued and subjected to the Norwegian rule than any part of Ireland itself. Indeed, the Island of Man, and the southernmost islands west of Scotland, are to be regarded as the centre of the Norwegian settlements in these parts of Europe. From these islands, eminently fitted to serve as a stronghold for these hardy Vikings, whose strength consisted almost entirely in their large and well constructed ships, the tide of invasion flowed to the west, to the north, to the east, and passing through Cumberland and the territory of the Strathclyde Britons it even reached to the eastern parts of Britain, where it met with another current from the North, that of the Danes, with which it easily coalesced, although traces are not wanting of their early encounters in a manner far from friendly. Man, as well as the rest of the islands, seems for the first period either to have been subjected to the Norwegian kings of Dublin, or to have been ruled by several chieftains or vikings, who did not adopt the title of kings. In 852, Olaf the White, the Ainhlabh of the Irish chronicles, descended from the same family as Harold Harfagri, the Fair-Haired, afterwards King of Norway, conquered Dublin, with the adjacent territory, and founded this, the most renowned, most powerful and most lasting Norwegian kingdom in Ireland.
Olaf was married to Aude of Dublin, daughter of the mighty and valiant Norwegian baron Ketil Flatnef from Sogn. This Ketil, it is said in some Sagas (as the Landnama), was sent by King Harold of Norway to chastise some Vikings who had taken up their abode in the Isles, dthough previously expelled by the king himself, and having executed his commission he made himself independent there; according to another and far more probable version of the story (that of the Laxdoela Saga), Ketil emigrated from Norway to the Isles because he was obnoxious to the king, and could not resist him in his own country. The marriage of his daughter with Olaf of Dublin, which must have taken place about 850, as their son was grown a man in 870, is sufficient to show that Ketil, although perhaps still chiefly resident in Norway, must have been a man of great consequence in those parts long before the king himself went there to expel the Vikings; perhaps even he helped Olaf to make his conquests.
All the Sagas, in which these events are mentioned, agree that King Harold Fair-hair made himself a great expedition to the islands near Scotland and lreland against the Vikings there settled, who continued to infest the seas occasionally, even making attacks upon Norway, their mother country, and that in this expedition he conquered Shetland (Hjaltland), the Orkneys, the Sudreys (Hebudes), and even Man, killing or expelling the Vikings, who were not strong enough to make any serious resistance. From this expedition onwards, which seems to have taken place in the yeare 870, the later Norwegian kings derived their right or title to these islands, and as even now some stanzas remain of a poem in which these events were celebrated by the king's chief court-poet, who perhaps accompanied his master on this expedition, there can be no possible doubt of the thing having really taken place. The colonisation of Iceland, beginning about this time, and being chiefly effected by powerful Norwegian families, who did not come directly from Norway, but from the Sudreys, where they had lived for some years after their expatriation, and among whom the very Ketil Flatnef here mentioned occupies a prominent place, makes it almost certain that the immediate reason for the second transmigration of these men, with their whole families, was no other than King Harold's expedition. And, consequently, even that colonisation bears a strong evidence as to the truth of the ancient tale.
The Orkneys, with Shetland, King Harold gave as an hereditary earldom to Earl Raguwald (Reginald) of More, in Norway, whose son Turf-Einar, was the founder of the illustrious Orkneyan dynasty, which continued in the unbroken male line for 300 years, when female succession brought the Atholl dynasty in from Scotland in its place, which, again, was followed by the Angus dynasty, and this at last by the family of St. Clair; all subsequent dynasties, however deriving their right from their relation to the original Norwegian line. The Sudreys, including no doubt the Isle of Man, he confided to the care of an earl named Tryggvi, and, he having been killed, to another earl named Asbjorn Skerjablesi. It is, however, obvious that the position of these earls must have been very precarious and dangerous, as they were far off Norway, and exposed to incessant attacks from the Vikings. Both of them came also to an untimely death; Tryggvi was first killed, as stated above, then Asbjorn was attacked by two relations of Ketil Flatnef, who killed him, captured his wife and daughter, and sold the latter as a slave. There are no traces of King Harold having sent a third earl to the islands. Perhaps even the death of Asbjorn Skerjablesi took place when the king was already grown old and not fit for expeditions like the former.
The immediate successors of King Harold did not, as far as we can see, maintain the suzerainty over the remote Sudreys and Man, and it is most probable, that the latter at least formed a part of the dominions of the successors of Olaf the White on the Norwegian throne of Dublin, who were unquestionably now the most powerful rulers on these seas. Olaf's and Aude's son, Thorstein the Red, even conquered a part of Scotland, as the Landnama tells us.
We can, namely, trace the power and influence of these kings beyond the sea to the coasts of Cumberland, and across the country to Northumberland; where the Danes had made extensive conquests, and a branch of the royal Danish line, descended from the great conqueror Ragnar Lodbrok, had established its throne at York. When this branch was extinguished about 920 and the subordinate Danish chieftains had submitted to Edward, son of king Alfred, the kingdom of York was given in fief by the English kings to princes from Dublin belonging to the royal race of Olaf the White. This, although not expressly stated, is still evident from various reasons. For when Raguwald (Reginald) probably a son of Gušrošr son of Hardecnut (+ C. 894) was dead about 924, there appears as his successor a king named Sigtrygg, who, immediately after the accession of Athelstane to the throne, went to him at Tamworth (Jan. 26, 926), did homage to him as his liege vassal, and was married to Athelstane's sister, but died next year, when Athelstane expelled his two sons (as it would seem by a former marriage, or illegitimate), Olaf (Anlaf) and Gušrošr (Gušred), and made himself master of Northumberland; and the Irish annals show that in the yeare of 920, just before the appearance of the Sigtrygg here mentioned at York, Sigtrygg, King of Dublin since 917, was expelled from this place; from this coincidence it is therefore to be inferred that he went over to Northumberland and profited by the disturbances after the extinction of the royal line, and got possession of this country.
Moreover, the name of Sigtrygg, being common and characteristic to the royal line of Dublin but foreign to the Danish line of York, there consequently is no great probability that king Sigtrygg's belonged to it, or, if that were really the case, he must at least have been descended from the Dublin kings on the maternal side. The well-known ecclesiastical Annalist, Mag. Adam of Bremen, says it is true that Gušred, the son of Hardecnut, was succeeded by his three sons, Olaf, Sigtrygg, and Reginald but his authority is of no weight, as it is evident that he has known and used the Chronicon Saxonicum, and, in his uncritical way, believed all those kings, who were next mentioned as kings of York, to have been sons of that Gušred.