The Western Islands the original population was never entirely absorbed by the Norwegian settlers as in Orkney and perhaps in Shetland. Norwegian settlements were made in many parts of the Western Islands, and that the predominant influence was on the side of the Norwegians, but only to assert that the Gaelic population was by far the largest, and that the chief language spoken there was always the Gaelic, although, of course, the Norse must have come to be pretty well understood by most of the inhabitants.
CALF OF MAN In the interior the physical features bear much resemblance to the Southern Uplands of Scotland. The hills are steep, but not generally craggy, and are arranged in long grassy or heather coverered ridges running with the longer axis of the Island, with broad intervening valleys. The highest of these ridges commences in the vicinity of the eastern coast near Ramsey, and is practically continuous to the south-western coast north of Port Erin, but is broken across in one place by a deep transverse valley, which intersects the Island between Peel and Douglas. The Island is irregularly oblong in shape, with its longer axis running N.N.E. to S. S.W., which is the direction of strike of the slate-rocks. Rising from the middle of the Irish Sea, within sight of each of the three Kingdoms, intimately linked with those of' the rest of Britain, this interesting Island presents in its geological structure features that connect it alike with England, Scotland and Ireland.
Ketil Flatnef. had been in the Sudreys and enjoyed a great reputation long before the expedition of Harold, about A.D. 870, from the circumstance, that the fall of Thorstein the Red, the son of his daughter Aude of Dublin and king Olaf the White must have taken place about A.D. 874, who, as he then left several children, cannot have been born (and consequently the marriage between his father and mother contracted) later than about 852. The Ketil's 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.
When Olaf conquered Dublin at this time, Ketil Flatnef must already have visited those parts if Olaf did not marry his daughter in Norway. A close connection existed for many years between Ketil and the powerful Norwegians in the west. Ketil was a son of the mighty baron Björn Buna, in the province of Sogn, in Norway, and had two brothers, named Hrapp and Helgi. He had two sons, Björn and Helgi Bjóla (a surname adopted, as it seems, in the west), and several daughters, of whom Aude, called the deep-wealthy, the wife of king Olaf. The mother of Ketil Flatnef was sister to a great lord, named Vemund gamli (the old), who likewise lived in the province of Sogn in Norway. The son of Vemund, Vedorm, the cousin of Ketil, had a son, called Holmfast, and a nephew, called Grim, who made an expedition together to the Sudreys, probably with the intention to aid or revenge their relatives, and killed the above-mentioned Earl, Asbjörn, carrying away his wife and daughter as captives. This was perhaps the cause why his father Vedorm durst not stay any longer in Norway, but fled to the then almost uninhabited district of Jamtaland, east of Throndheim.
The captive damsel, called Arneida, continued to live in his family as a slave. Once he was visited by a Norwegian from Verdal in Throndheim, called Ketil, who had already settled in Iceland, but now made a short trip back to his native country. He bought Arneida from Vedorm, adding a third to the price which the latter demanded, thereby showing how strong a liking he had taken to her. Before leaving Norway with him, she was lucky enough to find a chest filled with silver coins, which had been hidden in the earth; she showed it to Ketil. She chose to marry him, and when he had returned to Iceland he honoured her by calling his dwelling place Arneišarstašir.This description can hardly mean any country but Iceland, and coincides exactly with the unpretending and simple narrative of the Icelandic recorders.
The Irish priests and monks (Papar), or the Papes, as they called them, had sufficiently learnt to know in Ireland and the Sudreys, as well as in Orkney and Shetland, where islands, called Papey, and districts called Papyli, bear sufficient witness of their existence. According to the oldest Icelandic writer, Ari, the Papes even continued to reside in Iceland till the arrival of the Norwegians, and left it only because they would not live together with pagans. Some of these hermit settlements continued in remote or sheltered places down to that time, while generally, as that mentioned by Dicuil, they had been abandoned soon after they had been formed. The tradition was, that pagans could not inhabit the district, but that Ketil, being Christian, found no difficulty, and fixed his residence on the place called kirkjubor (church-town). This name, however, seems to involve that he found already a church there, and maybe also the ecclesiastics, who hitherto might have found means to prevent the pagans from molesting them. According to another tradition, Ketil built a church himself. He got the nickname fiflski (the foolish) perhaps from the pagans, who regarded his Christian zeal as a kind of foolishness.