{"id":18691,"date":"2023-09-11T20:07:26","date_gmt":"2023-09-12T00:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=18691"},"modified":"2023-09-11T20:07:26","modified_gmt":"2023-09-12T00:07:26","slug":"orkneyinga-saga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=18691","title":{"rendered":"‘Orkneyinga Saga’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This book review <\/strong>will, on closer examination, turn out to be a sort of bait-and-switch, a partial review embedded in an author\u2019s journal post. I\u2019m still plot-wrestling, and I continue in PAUSE mode, learning the geography and trying to figure out what happens next as I send Erling Skjalgsson home from England by way of the Orkneys (and possibly the Shetlands. Haven\u2019t worked that out yet).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I told you, I realized the other day that Erling\u2019s journey home to Norway has to bring him into a confrontation with Jarl Thorfinn the Mighty of Orkney, who had a problematic relationship with King (Saint) Olaf Haraldsson, Erling\u2019s enemy. Thorfinn had submitted to Olaf as his overlord, but he felt Olaf had broken their understanding by awarding part of the jarldom to his brother Brusi. He might very well be willing to listen to Erling\u2019s suggestion that he transfer fealty to King Knut of Denmark\/England.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, I discovered a further complication. In reading the Penguin edition of Orkneyinga Saga<\/a><\/em>, the saga of the earls (jarls) of Orkney, I was reminded that Thorfinn ruled not only the Orkneys and Shetland. He also ruled Caithness, the northeastern part of Scotland, an area heavily settled by Norwegians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Caithness brings us close to Moray, which was the home of Macbetha \u2013 whom I included, you\u2019ll recall, under the name Macbetha, in my last Erling book, King of Rogaland<\/a><\/em>. Macbetha, who wouldn\u2019t have been king yet at this point, would almost certainly have been an enemy of Thorfinn\u2019s. (Though I always think about Dorothy Dunnet\u2019s novel, King Hereafter,<\/a><\/em> which is based on the theory that Thorfinn and Macbeth were the same person. She notes that the annals telling about Macbeth never mention Thorfinnn, and Orkneyinga Saga<\/em> never mentions Macbeth [well, it mentions an earlier King Macbeth, but he\u2019s a different guy]. In the saga, Thorfinn does fight a mysterious Scottish king named Karl Hundarsson, whom some historians have identified as Macbeth.) Anyway, it would be impolite to my readers not to reunite them with Macbetha while we\u2019re in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how will I work all this out? I\u2019m thinking about it. I have some ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any case, I\u2019ll review the portion of Orkneyinga Saga<\/em> that I read. I confess I didn\u2019t finish it (this time through), because it covers a lot of history much later than the period I\u2019m dealing with. Some of it, I should note, is very intriguing, especially the conscientious objection of (Saint) Magnus Erlendsson during a raid on Wales, and his subsequent martyrdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But my concern was with the career of Jarl Thorfinn. Thorfinn is an intriguing character, bigger than life. Sometimes he\u2019s sympathetic, sometimes emphatically not. His climactic conflict with his charismatic nephew, Rognvald Brusisson, involves some very nice plotting (indicating \u2013 probably \u2013 a fair amount of fictional embroidering) and dramatic irony. One also notes the appearance of the name \u201cTree-beard,\u201d very likely where Tolkien found it. The saga also includes one of our sources for the disputed practice of the \u201cBlood Eagle,\u201d a cruel method of execution which showed up in the History Channel \u201cVikings\u201d series. (I myself incline to the view that there never was such a practice, but that it came from the saga writers misunderstanding a poetic metaphor.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orkneyinga Saga<\/em> is one of the most striking and vigorous of the sagas. It\u2019s not up to Snorri Sturlusson\u2019s literary standards, but it still packs a punch and lingers in the memory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book review will, on closer examination, turn out to be a sort of bait-and-switch, a partial review embedded in an author\u2019s journal post. I\u2019m still plot-wrestling, and I continue in PAUSE mode, learning the geography and trying to figure out what happens next as I send Erling Skjalgsson home from England by way of … Continue reading ‘Orkneyinga Saga’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,10,15,17],"tags":[4882,4879,4878,4880,1730,4874],"class_list":["post-18691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-nonfiction","category-reviews","category-writing","tag-caithness","tag-dorothy-dunnett","tag-jarl-thorfinn-the-mighty","tag-king-hereafter","tag-macbeth","tag-orkneyinga-saga"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18691"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18693,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18691\/revisions\/18693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}