The history of the Norwegian settlements in the Western Isles is but shortly and superficially told in our ancient Sagas. When it is said that they were colonised by emigrants, discontented with king Harold's strong rule, this is only partly true, for we learn from the Irish annals that Vikings from the north showed themselves there, and made depredations, as far back as 793.
Norsemen, who made their final settlements farther from the Scottish islands, these may be traced or at least supposed to have formed a favourite and much frequented haunt in the beginning of their career. It may now be regarded as pretty well ascertained that the chief bulk of northern settlers who occupied Normandy belonged to the Danish branch, but were called Nortmen or Normans, because they issued originally from the southern part of Jutland, while still ruled by kings of Norwegian origin, and even sometimes called Nortmannia.
As for the Orkneys, Shetland and the Faereys, their proximity to Norway makes it more likely that they were peopled immediately from this country than by Norsemen previously settled in the Western Islands. Yet that even there many of the colonists may have belonged to the latter class is probable, at least from the circumstance that the general road to Iceland in the oldest times lay by these different groups of islands, each of them being about a day's sail from the other, and thereby enabling the sailors conveniently to shape their course. It is expressly stated of Aude of Dublin, daughter of Ketil Flatnef, head of the noblest and most powerful family who settled in Iceland, that she took this course, leaving one grand-daughter in Orkney, married to the Earl or Maormor of Caithness, another at the Faereys. Yet it is very probable that the chief in flux of emigrants came in the time of king Harold, especially in the first half of his long reign, when his conquests were newly made, and when, indeed, also the emigration to Iceland became frequent.
All the Sagas which mention these events agree in this point, that the discontented emigrants, who had assembled in the Western Islands as well as in the Orkneys and Shetland, did at last feel themselves strong enough to take revenge, running over to Norway and ravaging its coasts, thereby compelling king Harold to make a great expedition personally to the western seas, in which he conquered Orkney, Shetland, the Western Islands, and even Man, thereby establishing for the first time the dominion of Norway in these parts, and leaving an hereditary claim upon them to his descendants.
Rollo or Gangu-Rolf, the son of the Norwegian Earl Ragnvald, did not succeed to the command of the whole fleet or union of piratical emigrants till more than a generation after it had for the first time left the shores of the Eider. But as a Norwegian, and a powerful one too, Rollo had no doubt frequented the Scottish isles and shores in his youth, before joining the great Danish fleet from Northmannia. And there is an evidence thereof in the fact, that in the afore said Landnáma, a daughter of the same Rollo is mentioned, named Kathleen, who was, again, married to, or had a daughter by, the Scottish, or perhaps rather Irish king Beolan, at a time when Rollo must have been very young.
Kathleen, and her marriage with Beolan, is enough to prove that she must have been born and lived in Ireland, or somewhere in the Isles, and that it was here Rollo became acquainted with her mother. And Rollo was certainly not the only Norwegian among the Normandy settlers who had begun his emigrating career with an expedition to the Isles of western Scotland.
In these last-named islands, moreover, we find the same culture of sheep, characteristic of Scottish influence, as in Iceland. We know, even, that the sheep there are, or were, of the Scottish race, as Dicuil tells us that about thirty years before the Norwegian emigration the islands had been inhabited by some Scoto-Irish Culdees, who brought sheep with them, but were compelled to flee through fear of the northern Vikings. These sheep, multiplying to an enormous number, afterwards gave to the Islands their present name, i. e. Sheeps lslands.
Some of them say that Harold left the powerful Norwegian Ketil Flatnef (flat-beak) as his lieutenant there, but that afterwards Ketil threw off his allegiance; others, that Ketil, having emigrated from Norway in disgust with the conquests of Harold, took up his abode in the Sudreys, whither the greatest part of his relations and friends soon repaired, and where he died. This is the more likely version of the two, and as the tale that Ketil really exercised some authority in the Islands, does not appear to be unfounded in tradition, it is to be supposed that he established his authority, or succeeded in gaining to himself a lordship there in opposition to king Harold, which supposition is strongly confirmed by the fact that his daughter, the above mentioned Aude, was married to the celebrated Olaf the White (Amh-labh), the first Norwegian king of Dublin (+c. 872).
The circumstance, however, that nearly all those friends or relations of Ketil left these parts for Iceland, where even his own daughter Aude, after the fall of her son Thorstein the Red, finished with taking up her abode, shows that they could not resist the power of Harold, who, as it is expressly told, appointed an earl as his lieutenant in the Isles, named Tryggvi, and, when Tryggvi was killed, another, named Asbjörn, with the surname of Skerjablesi. This Asbjörn, how ever, was likewise killed, by two relations of Ketil Flatnef, as shall be mentioned hereafter. Whether Asbjörn got a successor or not is not mentioned; we are rather inclined to believe that in the later times of king Harold's reign, when his sons made war among themselves, and still more after his death, the allegiance of the Sudreys became very slight, or was entirely thrown off; there is at least no mention to be found that king Hácon the Good, the son of Harold, although a powerful and enterprising monarch, did ever receive tribute or homage from these islands. Or, if the dependency was enforced, this was rather done by the powerful Earls of Orkney, who, being nearer at hand, might easier do it, and indeed, as will be seen from our Notes to the Chronicle, for some time at least held the islands, or part of them, as an arriere fief For these subsequent events, we refer the reader to our notes; here it was our intention only to show the foundation of the Norwegian power in these parts.