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Introduction
In a volume like the present one, highlighting
cultural and geographical connections between
Scotland and the Nordic World, the Icelandic sagas
will unavoidably be there as a point of reference for
any statement on the early history of such connections.
The present contribution does not, however,
aim at yet another sifting out of the sagas’ evidence
per se for the history of political and cultural interaction
across the North Sea. Not that there is anything
wrong with such efforts. The focus of the present
volume—Orkney—taken into consideration, it
might nonetheless be of some interest to take a look
at a selection of saga texts in order to investigate
if or to what extent this particular locality between
Scotland, Iceland, and Norway plays a literary role
in these narratives beyond that of being a mere point
of geographical reference in the minds of saga authors
and saga audiences.
The present contribution will focus upon the two
saga genres that are commonly, and even in saga
studies, seen as the main ones—the kings’ sagas and
the sagas of Icelanders, also known as family sagas.
Heimkringla (the history of the kings of Norway)
is the main text of the former group of sagas, and
Brennu-Njáls saga is the primary text of the latter.
Supplemented with other texts within the two
groups, the findings of the present reading should be
sufficiently representative to allow for generalization.
How, then, we may ask, is Orkney represented
in the types of texts we have chosen to investigate
here? What literary purposes, if any, do references to
these islands serve in saga literature?
Orkneyinga Saga
There is, of course, one particular saga which
stands apart from all other sagas where references
to and awareness of Orkney are concerned, with
Orkney being depicted from within, as it were, in
this saga having the history of Orkney as its subject
matter. We shall, in consequence, not use much time
on the Orkneyinga saga in this particular context,
but rather concentrate upon sagas in which Orkney
is seen from the outside. The importance of Orkneyinga
saga and the use of it to create an Orcadian
identity even in more recent history, should, however,
not be forgotten. This aspect of its importance
can be illustrated, e.g., by the following quotation
from a literary narrative that at least many Orcadians
will recognize, about a young boy called John Fiord,
or Eagle John Fiord:
“Once, when he was ten, he read in the lamplight
a book called The Orkneyinga Saga, a
new translation from the Icelandic […] The
matter was that a light had broken upon the
boy, reading that thick book the night before.
Orkney: surely Orkney was and always had
been and always would be a backwater in the
great ebb and flow of the ocean of world history.
A few islands where yokels and fishermen,
generation after generation, eeked [sic]
out a living! Not a bit of it. Those humble
people were descendants of jarls and vikings
and sea-kings. In medieval times—and that
wasn’t so long ago, considering the vast span
of human history—the earldom of Orkney
was one of the chiefest centres, politically, in
Europe.” (Mackay Brown 1987:50–51)
Rather an advanced way of reasoning for a tenyear-
old boy, one might think. But even so! This
aspect of its reception may well be traced all the way
back to the period of this particular saga narrative’s
genesis. As has implicitly been suggested by Preben
Meulengracht Sørensen (1993), the accentuation
Orkney: A Literary Motif in the Sagas?
Jan Ragnar Hagland*
Abstract – For anyone who deals with cultural and geographical connections between Scotland and the Nordic world, the
Icelandic sagas will unavoidably be there as a point of reference for any statement on the early history of such connections.
In the present contribution, a selection of saga texts is made in order to investigate if or to what extent Orkney, as a locality
between Scotland, Iceland, and Norway, plays a particular literary role in these narratives, beyond that of being a mere
point of geographical reference. How is Orkney represented, it is asked, and what literary purposes, if any, do references
to these islands serve in saga literature? The results of the investigation indicate that the literary function of references to
Orkney in the narratives studied surpasses that of a geographical outline of an itinerary. These references may also be seen
as turning points, signalling the advent of a change in these narratives, thus giving reason to answer in the affirmative the
question posed in the title of the present article.
Across the Sólundarhaf: Connections between Scotland and the Nordic World
Selected Papers from the Inaugural St. Magnus Conference 2011
Journal of the North Atlantic
*Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Dragvoll. NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway; jan.ragnar.hagland@
ntnu.no.
2013 Special Volume 4:148–153
149
J.R. Hagland
2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
of an Orcadian identity can be observed in the saga
text as such, in as much as the initial story of Gói
and Hrólfr of Bjarg, the origin-myth of the Orcadian
earls, seems to be intended as a counterpart of the
otherwise prevailing origin-myths of the royal dynasties
of Scandinavia: The mythical origins in the
Orkneyinga saga may be there to provide an explanation
of the special status of the Earls of Orkney in
relation to the Norwegian kings. The origin-myths
of the Orcadian earls, then, may be seen as a literary
expression of their independence in relation to those
kings, the kings to whom they owe their title as earls,
but by no means their aristocratic status, Sørensen
argues (1993:220–21). To a certain extent, then, the
Orkneyinga saga could be seen as a counterpart to
Heimskringla where the history of the Orkney earls is
concerned, a saga in which, of course, the awareness
of these islands in the minds of any audience makes
the Orkneyinga saga special in the corpus of medieval
saga literature. Therefore, we shall not consider
this particular saga further for the present purpose.
Kings’ Sagas
There are, needless to say, differences between
the kings’ sagas and the sagas of the Icelanders when
it comes to the literary use, the depiction or sometimes
the mere mentioning, of Orkney. In the sagas
about the Norwegian kings, such as Heimskringla,
Fagrskinna, and Morkinskinna, there is, for instance,
what we may call an implicit Norwegian
perspective involved when it comes to this particular
location and the way in which the narrated events
are placed or fixed to it. This perspective is apparent
even when the saga author is known to be Icelandic,
as is the case with Snorri Sturluson and Heimskringla.
In the sagas of the Icelanders, the events are, not
surprisingly, usually seen from the other side of the
ocean, as it were—from Iceland rather than Norway.
We shall return to that later.
In Heimskrigla, chronologically structured according
to the line of kings in medieval Norway,
Orkney is frequently mentioned, much of the time
more or less just in passing, from the history of
Harald Hairfair onwards. Orkney is first referred to
in ch. 19 of this particular section of Heimskringla,
in which chapter it is told about the unrest caused by
Haraldr’s efforts to subdue all the land of Norway
and the subsequent settlement of the the Faroes and
Iceland. At that time, it said:
Þá var ok mikil ferð til Hjaltlandz, ok margir
ríkismenn af Nóregi flýðu útlaga fyrir Haraldi
konungi ok fóru í vestrvíking, váru í Orkneyjum
eða í Suðreyjum á vetrum, en á sumrum
herjuðu þeir í Nóreg ok gerðu þar mikinn
landzskaða (Finnur Jónsson 1911 [1966]:53).
There was a great exodus to the Shetlands,
and many of the nobility fled King Harald
as outlaws and went on Viking expeditions
to the west, staying in the Orkneys and the
Hebrides in winter, but in summer harrying
in Norway where they inflicted great damage
(Hollander 1964:76).
This first reference to Orkney, and to the Shetlands
and Hebrides for that matter, is made with
no further ado or introduction—a geographical
reference apparently conceived of by the narrator
as common knowledge to all. Seen from a compositional
point of view it is, nevertheless, interesting to
note that the introduction of Orkney and the relation
of these islands to Norwegian history is found in
the middle of this big collection of sagas about the
Norwegian kings—in Saint Óláf’s Saga, in which
Orkney is presented as follows:
Svá er sagt, at á dögum Haraldz ins hárfagra,
Nóregs konungs, byggðusk Orkneyjar, en áðr
var þar víkingaboeli. Sigurðr hét inn fyrsti jarl
í Orkneyjum, hann var sonr Eysteins glumra
ok bróðir Rögnvaldz Moerajarls … (Finnur
Jónsson 1911[1966:265).
We are told that in the days of Harald Fairhair,
king of Norway, the Orkneys were settled,
which before had been a haunt of Vikings.
Sigurth was the name of the first earl in the
Orkneys. He was the son of Eystein Glumra
and the brother of Rognvald, earl of Moer …
(Hollander 1964:50–51).
This apparently late or postponed introduction
in the saga narrative makes sense when we take into
account the commonly accepted view that initially
there was a saga of Óláfr Haraldsson, or Saint Óláfr,
onto which the histories of the kings before and after
Óláfr were added so as to constitute the entire Heimskringla.
Seen from the saga composer’s point of
view, then, we may think, there was no need to make
any introduction as to the relevance of Orkney when
references to this place first occur in the enlarged
version of kings’ sagas. In his mind, it was a locality
already introduced and known to the audience within
the narrative. Instances such as this in the text of
Heimskringla are there also to underpin the common
view of the chronological steps in the genesis of this
particular text.
Orkney does, as we have touched upon already,
frequently occur, particularly in Heimskringla,
but also in other collections of kings’ sagas such
as Fagrskinna and Morkinskinna, and recurrently
so in variants of the following sentence: “fór hann
fyrst til Orkneyja” (First, he went to the Orkneys) in
Hollander’s (1964:98) translation of Heimskringla
J.R. Hagland
2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
150
(The History of Hacon the Good, ch. 3). Just a few
more examples will suffice to illustrate the point in
question: Heimskringla’s Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar,
ch. 16, “fara [þeir] fyrst til Orkneyia ok dvöldusk þar
un hrið” (Finnur Jónsson 1911 [1966]:115) (going
first to the Orkneys, where they remained for a while
[Hollander 1964:154]); Heimskringla’s Saga about
Magnús berrfoett, ch. 8, “helt hann liði því vestr
um haf ok fyrst til Orkneyja” (Finnur Jónsson 1911
[1966]:522 ) (With this force he sailed west across
the sea, first to the Orkneys [Hollander 1964:674–
675]); Fagrskinna, ch, LXIII, “Nu sigldi Haraldr
konongr fyrst til Orknoeyja” (ÍF 29:278) (Now King
Haraldr first sailed to Orkney[Finlay 2004:221]);
Morkinskinna, ch. LIII, “Haraldr konungr siglir fyrst
vestr til Orkneyia” (Ármann Jakobsson og Þórður
Ingi Guðjónsson (Eds.) 2011:303) (King Haraldr
[Hardrule] sailed first west to Orkney [Andersson
and Gade 2000:264].)
We also find it in Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar,
which is often thought to stand close to the kings’
sagas. Egils saga, ch. 59, “fóru fyrst vestr um haf til
Orkneyia” ( ÍF 2:176) (First they went west across
the sea to the Orkneys [Fell 1975:103].)
A closer look at the contexts in which these references
occur to voyages to (and from as we shall see
eventually) Orkney brings to light something more,
some textual meaning beyond the mere geographical
references implied. A closer look at the first reference
mentioned above—the one from ch. 3 of The
History of Hacon the Good in Heimskringla—may,
I hope, help us see the contours of something more
general than a mere geographical reference onto
which the flow of narrative is pinned: It is told as
follows about Eiríkr, also known as Eric Bloodaxe:
En er hann sá engi efni til mótstöðu í móti her
Hákonar, þá siglði hann vestr um haf með því
liði, er hann vildi fylgja (Finnur Jónsson 1911
[1966]:71).
And when he saw he had no means to resist
Hákon’s army, he sailed west across the sea
with such troops as wished to follow him
(Hollander 1964:98).
And then, the saga goes on to tell:
Fór hann fyrst til Orkneyja ok hafði þaðan
með sér lið mikit; þá siglði hann suðr til
Englandz ok herjaði um Skotland, hvar sem
hann kom við land. (Finnur Jónsson 1911
[1966]:71)
First, he went to the Orkneys, and from there
he led away a great force. Then he sailed
south to England, harrying along the Scottish
coast wherever he touched land. (Hollander
1964:98)
This voyage ends up in Northumbria, where
Eiríkr made an agreement with King Athelstan to
hold Northumbria and protect it against Danes and
other Vikings as the saga tells us, and so on. The
reference to Orkney is, of course, there to account
for Eiríkr’s itinerary from the homeland to his new
position in the world across the sea, in Northumbria.
Not much is said about Orkney. It is mentioned in
passing as a place for strengthening and reorganizing
Eiríkr’s combat power: “ok hafði þaðan með sér
lið mikit” (and from there he led away a great force).
Apart from that, Orkney is depicted as just a transitional
place—a turning point, perhaps, to a new
chapter in Eric Bloodaxe’s political life. The transitional
function of this narrative part is underscored
by the temporal adverb fyrst, “first”: “... fór hann
first” – (He went first to the Orkneys): First Orkney,
then the final goal, as it were.
And this is not a one-off when it comes to the
function of references to Orkney in these narratives.
If we look at the kings’ sagas and the sagas of
Icelanders at large, a common pattern seems to occur.
In the History of Óláfr Tryggvasonr (ch. 16) in
Heimskringla it is told that Queen Gunnhildr and her
sons, after having failed to gather an army against
earl Hákon, took again the same plan as before, to
sail west over the sea with such men as would follow
them, the saga says. And then they “fara fyrst til
Orkneyia ok dvöldusk þar um hríð” (Finnur Jónsson
1911 [1966]:115) (They went first to the Orkneys
and stayed there for a while [Hollander 1964:154].)
The only thing worth telling, it seems, about Orkney
is that Arnviðr, Ljótr and Skúli, the sons of Þorfinn
Hausakljúfr, were now earls there. Again the literary
function of the reference to Orkney in the narrative
seems to be something beyond that of the mere
geographical outline of an itinerary. It may also be
seen as a turning point in the narrative to signal the
advent of a change, of something new; this time, it
is evidently the son of Gunnhildr, Ragnfrøðr, who
matters. He sailed eastwards from Orkney after
having spent the winter there, the saga tells us, and
gained some sort of foothold in Western Norway in
his combat for power against earl Hákon.
We shall not here go through all the instances in
the kings’sagas where references to Orkney such as
these occur. Their recurrent appearance in the sagas
makes them acquire the status of a common literary
motif—or perhaps we should call it a topos or
a locus in literary terms. That is, however, probably
of minor importance. It is pertinent, nonetheless,
to point to one more instance in the Heimskringla
in which the literary reference to Orkney evidently
serves the function of implicitly marking a transition,
a foreshadowing of something important in
the text. This foreshadowing can be so even if this
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2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
function is not signalled by any overt variant of the
expression “He went first to the Orkneys”: Ch. 47 of
Heimskringla’s Saga of Óláf Tryggvason tells about
Óláfr’s return to Norway, from Dublin, in part at the
cunning instigation of Þórir Klakka. Óláfr began, as
a result of this, longing to go to the kingdom of his
fathers. He sailed first to the Hebrides, about which
islands nothing is told―”síðan sigldi hann til Orkneyia“
(Finnur Jónsson 1911 [1966]: 39) ([f]rom
there, he sailed to the Orkneys) it is told [Hollander
1964:188f.]), where earl Sigurðr Hlöðvissonr was in
power. Óláfr almost by chance comes upon the earl,
and then, it is told:
Þá lét hann jarl kalla til tals við sik; en er jarl
kom til tals við konung, þá höfðu þeir áðr fátt
talat, áðr konungr segir at jarl skyldi skírask
láta ok alt landzfolk hans, en at öðrum kosti
skyldi hann þá deyja þegar í stað, en konungr
kvezt mundu fara með eld ok usla yfir eyjannar
ok eyða land þat, nema folkit kristnaðisk
(Finnur Jónsson 1911 [1966]:139).
He requested him to come and confer with
him. And when the earl came it was not long
before the king commanded him to accept
baptism, together with all his people, or
else suffer death at once; and the king said
he would devastate the islands with fire and
flame, and lay the land waste unless the people
accepted baptism (Hollander 1964:189).
As we can well imagine, such was the position of
the earl that he chose to take baptism; he was then
baptized and so too were all the people who were
there with him. And so on. This is, evidently, an important
first step in Óláfr Tryggvason’s severe missionary
activity—with the sword. After the Orkney
episode, the saga goes on to tell us:
Siglði Óláfr þá austr í haf ok siglði af hafi
útan at Morstr, gekk þar fyrst á land í Nóregi
ok lét hann messu þar syngva í landtjaldi. En
siðan var í þeim sama stað kirkja gör. (Finnur
Jónsson 1911 [1966]:139)
Then Óláf sailed east across the sea and
sighted land at the Island of Morstr, which
was the first place for him to come ashore
and where he had mass sung in a tent. In after
times a church was built in that same place.
(Hollander 1964:189)
This is, then, the great transition, the beginning
of Christendom in Norway, on which we need not
elaborate in any detail here. It is worth mentioning,
however, that up to this day, the Church of
Norway has used this very incident related by the
saga to symbolize the introduction of Christianity
in Norway. According to the chronology of the
saga narrative, the mass sung at Moster happened
in 995. In 1995 the Church of Norway celebrated
the millennium of Christianity in Norway at Moster.
The important point to note here is, again, that this
enormous cultural transition is anticipated in the
saga narrative by the events that took place in Orkney
immediately prior to the symbolic mass sung
at Moster, the literary symbol of the introduction of
the new faith in King Óláfr ’s homeland.
Sagas of Icelanders
We shall leave the kings’ sagas and direct our
attention also to the great corpus of Icelandic family
sagas, or sagas of Icelanders, as they are now commonly
called. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Orkney is
referred to in some, but not all of these texts, and
generally to a far lesser extent than in the kings’
sagas. Even so, it seems that references to Orkney
carry much of the same symbolic value as they do in
the sagas of the Norwegian kings. Egils saga Skalla-
Grímssonar, tells, as already touched upon, how
Eric Bloodaxe saw no other choice than to flee the
country because of Hákon the Good’s supremacy—
much in the same way as does Heimskringla. That is
to say, using Orkney for an intermediate stop, giving
the reference to these islands exactly the same literary
function as in the kings’ sagas. It has been argued
that Egils Saga was written by Snorri Sturluson.
This is, of course, a very complex problem, about
which we shall not make up our minds here and now.
The literary use of Orkney in Heimskringla and in
Egils Saga may, all the same, be a possible argument
in a discussion about a literary relationship between
the two.
In the sagas of Icelanders, references to Orkney
occur in narrative passages about saga protagonists
going either way across the North Atlantic—crossing
both to and from Iceland. And it is possible, it
seems, to conceive of these references as literary
signals or foreshadowings of new and important
events whenever they occur in the texts. Even if not
as obvious as in the kings’ sagas, we see this, e.g.,
in Laxdoela saga when, in the beginning of the long
narrative, it is told about Unnr the Deep-minded, on
her way to her dominant position as mater familias
in Iceland, that, her preparations in Scotland completed,
Unnr sailed to the Orkneys, where she stayed
for a short while. Long enough, we might add, to enable
her to arrange marriages, the offspring of whom
in the end produced Earl Þorfinnr, from whom all the
earls of the Orkneys are descended, as claimed by
the saga (IF 5:8). The same pattern is repeated for
the Faroes until she finally settles in the Breiðafjörðr
area in Iceland with as much land as she wished (ÍF
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2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
152
5:9) The literary function of the reference to Orkney
may well be said to foreshadow Unnr’s important
position as head of the family in the Laxárdalr area.
This pattern, however, is not so easy to discern when
reading or listening to each saga narrative in isolation.
We see it more clearly when bringing together
a greater variety of sagas. Sagas as different as, for
instance, Kjalnesinga saga (ch. 12, ÍF 14:27) telling
about the protagonist Búi on his way to Norway,
Fóstbroeðra saga (ch. 13, ÍF 6:190), and Gunnlaug
saga ormstungu (ch. 8 and 12, ÍF 3: 76 and 99), all
display the pattern which we have tried to pinpoint
above. It seems, in short, as if the references to
Orkney in the world of saga narratives acquired,
after a while, the function of a literary topos—or a
common literary motif in more general terms.
If we are to choose one saga in particular in
which Orkney functions as the kind of literary motif
we have tried to identify here, there is, as in many
other instances, no getting around Njal’s saga or
Brennu-Njáls saga as it is called in Icelandic (ÍF
12). In this particular saga, there are, in the present
reading of the text, two main sets of narrated events
which involve Orkney and display the literary function
that occupies us here. In this saga, in which the
chain of events are painted on a broader canvas than
any other saga of Icelanders, the Orkney episodes
are depicted more elaborately than in the corpus
of sagas of Icelanders at large. Orkney is not just a
place mentioned in passing in Brennu-Njáls saga.
It is a place in which the depicted events acquire,
in themselves, importance for the ensuing narrative.
The first set of events relating to Orkney in
Brennu-Njáls saga (ÍF 12, ch. 84 and ch. 89) tells
about the first encounter the sons of Njáll, Helgi
and Grímr, have with Kári Sölmundarson, an extremely
important character to the remaining saga
plot—how they fought the sons of king Moldan in
the fjords of Scotland. After the victorious fight, the
saga tells that “leggja þeir skipin öll út undir eyjar”
(IF 12:205) (they sailed the ships into the shelter of
the islands [Cook 1997: 97]), the islands being, of
course, Orkney. One main saga manuscript adds the
more or less conventional phrase “ok hvildusk þar
um hrið“ (ÍF 12: 205) (and rested there for a while)
when references to Orkney are concerned. That is to
say: implicitly pointing forward to further important
action. The involved characters stayed the winter in
Orkney with the earl—a period of time during which
a series of significant events happen. These are all
there to deepen and clarify the literary significance
of these islands. Again Orkney is there in the narrative
to point forward to crucial events in Norway,
involving Earl Hákon at Hlaðir and others. These
events are framed by a second stay in Orkney on the
characters’ return to Iceland (ch. 89), thus pointing
forward to and structuring further important action
in the saga narrative.
The second set of events that involve Orkney
in the way that interests us here are depicted in ch.
153–157, telling how, after the burning of Njáll and
his household, Flosi Þórðarson and Kári Sölmundarson
both leave Iceland and how their paths dramatically
cross in Orkney. Even if it will lead too far here
to recapitulate the events in any detail, we see in the
context of the whole narrative how the events relating
to Orkney point in various directions to new and
important action in the saga: in the first place to the
so-called Brian’s Battle in Ireland, usually thought of
as the Battle of Clontarf, but also further on towards
the final solution of this long and complex narrative,
that is to say towards the final conciliation of Flosi
and Kári—the final solution to a long series of killings
and revenges and the regaining of something
that may imply a lasting peace. The important thing to
notice, however, is again that these aspects of the text,
at their designed places in the narrative, are signalled
or foreshadowed by using Orkney as a recurring literary
motif, again substantiating the function of this
locality as a literary motif in this type of narrative.
Indirectly these examples may be taken to reflect a
general awareness of Orkney and an appreciation of
the islands as an important place in the minds of saga
audiences, the ultimate reasons behind which seem,
however, to be open to discussion in broader contexts
than that of literary studies alone.
Conclusion
Where does all this take us in the present context,
occupied as we are in highlighting cultural
and geographical connections in the North Atlantic
area? Do these few observations on literary
aspects of references to Orkney in saga literature
mean anything, for instance to the history of such
connections? I think they do, to a certain extent at
least. The fact that Orkney is there as a frequent
point of reference in the minds of Icelandic-Norse
story tellers and audiences underscores the political
and cultural importance of these islands. Orkney
was important to the extent that it was possible
to make this geographical area in the North Sea a
literary motif in the structuring of these great medieval
narratives, giving us every reason to answer
in the affirmative the question posed in the title of
the present contribution. In the world of the sagas,
Orkney was not at all “a backwater in the great ebb
and flow of world history,” to quote George Mackay
Brown once again. That is, I think, an aspect of
mental history worth bearing in mind.
153
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2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
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