How Orkney became the centre of Viking Age violence

Summary

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HistoryExtra Podcast – Episode Summary

Episode Title: How Orkney Became the Centre of Viking Age Violence

Date: May 24, 2026
Host: James Osborne
Guest: Judith Jesch (scholar, Old Norse literature)
Main Theme:
An exploration of the Orkneyinga Saga ("Saga of the Earls of Orkney"), its composition, historical context, and what it uncovers about the violence, politics, and interconnectedness of Orkney and the wider Norse world in the Viking Age—featuring insights into literary motifs, the role of women, recurring themes of betrayal and ambition, and how place and poetry shaped the saga's legacy.

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Major Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Nature of the Orkneyinga Saga

[01:31–04:07]

• Manuscript & Compilation:
  • Saga survives in manuscripts from c. 1300; compiled around 1200, likely in Iceland by someone familiar with northern Scotland.
  • Contains both prose and much earlier poetry, some from the 10th century.
• Purpose of the Saga:
  • Served historical, entertaining, and political functions.
  • “[The Icelanders] considered themselves… the historians of the northern world.” —Judith Jesch [03:15]
  • Recording the history of Norwegian-ruled areas, entertainment for an audience, and political legitimation.

2. Orkney’s Role as a ‘Hub’ in the Viking World

[04:07–07:01]

• Orkney, Shetland, and Caithness were significant for strategic, geopolitical, and cultural reasons.
• The islands served as “a stopping off point” for raids and settlement—also as a connector between Norway, Iceland, Ireland, England, and the wider British Isles.
  • “If you travel by swift Viking ship, it’s really only a couple of days from Norway to northern Scotland...” —Judith Jesch [05:08]
• Exchange and movement weren’t solely north-to-south; cultural influences came from continental Europe and further south into Orkney as well.

3. Translating the Saga: Goals and Challenges

[07:01–11:21]

• Judith aimed to create a new, modern translation distinct from four previous English versions, especially the Penguin Classic (1979).
• Style choices:
  • Old Norse sagas use repetition, tense shifts, and coordinating sentences, which Judith preserved for authenticity.
  • Orkneyinga Saga’s natural spoken quality—intended to be read aloud, not quietly (“...if you find it heavy going, just read it out loud.” —Judith Jesch [10:42])
• Oral tradition’s influence remains deeply embedded in the narrative style.

4. Structure and Focus of the Saga

[11:21–14:29]

• Starts in mythic Norway; earliest chapters are brief, vague, distant in time—later chapters become specific, detailed, and contemporary as the saga nears its time of writing.
• Saga is a catalogue of earls, focusing on their feuds—especially intra-family and political conflicts.
  • “You have 100 years of history in a few pages, and then… single years in many more pages.” —James Osborne [14:16]

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Memorable Episodes from the Saga (with Analysis)

A. Sigurd the Stout and the Raven Banner

[15:49–17:36]

• Sigurd seeks advice from his magically-skilled mother before battle.
• She gives him a blessed-but-cursed banner: victory is assured, but all who carry the banner die.
  • “If I thought you would be worried about dying, I would have brought you up in my wool basket.” —Sigurd’s mother, mocking his courage [16:16]
  • The motif of “goading” men to violence is highlighted.
• Role of Women:
  • Women are depicted as instigators: giving advice, magical objects, and pressuring men to uphold honor and pursue feuds.
    • “You almost get a sense from the sagas that if it was just up to the men… they couldn’t be bothered. But it’s the women that make sure that they… redeem their honour.” —Judith Jesch [18:01]

B. Feud of Thorfinn and Rognvald

[21:45–26:57]

• Thorfinn (uncle) and Rognvald (nephew) begin as co-earls but fall into a vicious conflict—an archetypal Norse saga rivalry.
• Inheritance is via all sons, with co-rule (no primogeniture); partitions of land lead to repeated disputes.
• The king of Norway acts as a distant arbiter, but his solutions (dividing the earldom three ways) are temporary.
• Dramatic Moment: Rognvald burns Thorfinn’s hall; Thorfinn escapes with his wife, leading to Rognvald’s defeat and death.
  • “He [Thorfinn] smashes out of the wooden burning walls with his wife in his arms…” —James Osborne [25:25]
• Aftermath Pattern: The victor, after conflict, reforms and becomes a ‘good’ ruler, echoing cyclical Norse themes.

C. Poetry as Historical Record

[27:04–30:21]

• Skaldic poetry, especially by Arnor, preserves events and personalities—providing contemporaneous, almost eyewitness, details.
  • Example: Arnor’s praise poem for Thorfinn:
    • “The bright sun will become black. The ground will sink into the dark ocean…” —Judith Jesch [30:00]
• Skalds were both recorders and participants, often personally conflicted due to divided loyalties.

D. The Death of Magnus Erlendsson

[30:49–34:30]

• Magnus and cousin Haakon are joint earls but fall out.
• Magnus is betrayed at a supposed peace meeting (ominous signs—his ship hit by a freak wave).
• Offers exile, imprisonment, or mutilation, but Haakon’s men demand death; Magnus is killed by Haakon’s cook at Magnus’s own request to spare his killer guilt.
  • “I don’t want to be hit with an axe. I’m a chieftain. I want to be killed with a sword.” —Magnus [34:02]
• Like Thorfinn, Haakon then reforms after eliminating his rival—a recurring saga motif.

E. Recurring Themes: Betrayal, Ambition, and Political Structure

[34:30–36:43]

• Saga consistently explores political failures of co-rule: betrayal among equals is almost inevitable, especially among close kin.
• Not always clear-cut “goodies” and “baddies”: “The baddies aren’t totally bad and the goodies aren’t totally good.” —Judith Jesch [35:35]
• The saga is less a moral treatise than a study of political realities and structures.

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Place, Geography, and Landscape as Living History

[36:46–39:47]

• The saga is rich in geographical specificity; modern visitors (“with the saga in hand”) can visit many places named and described in the medieval text.
  • “You can just drive around with the saga and visit the places. In addition… you have relics, ruins, buildings still standing that are mentioned in the saga.” —Judith Jesch [38:11]
• Orkney retains more overlay between saga, names, and physical remains than even Iceland, deepening both authenticity and public engagement.

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Notable Quotes & Time Stamps

• “[The Icelanders] considered themselves… the historians of the northern world.”
  — Judith Jesch [03:15]
• “If the word has to appear five times in a sentence and it’s the same word, it’s still the same word.”
  — Judith Jesch (on Old Norse style) [09:13]
• “They weren’t meant to be read quietly in your study.”
  — Judith Jesch (on sagas) [10:38]
• “You almost get a sense from the sagas that if it was just up to the men… they couldn’t be bothered. But it’s the women that make sure that they… redeem their honour.”
  — Judith Jesch [18:01]
• “The bright sun will become black. The ground will sink into the dark ocean...”
  — Judith Jesch (reading Arnor's poem) [30:00]
• “The baddies aren’t totally bad and the goodies aren’t totally good.”
  — Judith Jesch [35:35]
• “This is a saga about the failure of a particular political system.”
  — Judith Jesch [36:41]
• “You can literally live the saga in interesting ways, even more so than in Iceland.”
  — Judith Jesch [39:30]

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Orkney as a Viking Cauldron: The saga presents Orkney as a hub of vibrant Norse culture and political violence—its strategic location and kinship politics shaped its violent feuds.
• Saga as Living Document:
  • Part historical record, part entertainment, and part political statement, the Orkneyinga Saga gives a nuanced, sometimes contradictory, and gripping account of how violence shaped dynasties.
• Themes of Violence, Betrayal, and Reform: Power struggles, betrayals (often between kinsmen), and the eventual reform of victors illustrate the era's cycle of ambition and legitimacy.
• Place as Memory: Orkney’s enduring names, ruins, and landscapes allow modern readers and visitors to walk the saga’s world in tangible ways.
• Literary Craft: Translation choices and preservation of spoken, oral tradition connect listeners to the story’s original audience.

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Recommended Action

Read Judith Jesch’s translation and, if possible, visit Orkney and northern Scotland to experience the saga in situ—see firsthand how landscape, myth, and history intertwine.

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Transcript

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For much of the Viking age, the Orkney archipelago served as a vibrant hub of Norse activity. But these islands were also plagued by violence, not least between the Earls of Orkney themselves as they vied for control. On this episode of the History Extra podcast, Judith Yesh speaks to James Osborne about her new translation of the saga of the Earls of Orkney, tracing centuries of conflict, and shares her insights into what this text tells us about the Norse peoples who lived there.

[James Osborne]

Judith, I'm really excited to be here talking to you today because we are discussing Orkney Inger Saga or the Saga of the Earls of Orkney, which is an Old Norse text that you have done a new translation of. To start with, can you tell me when the original Old Norse text was written, who by, and perhaps why?

[Judith Jesch]

The short answer to that question is no, but I can tell you some

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

things which give us a sense of where it all came from.

[Judith Jesch]

The oldest surviving manuscript text of the

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

saga is from about 1300 or maybe

[Judith Jesch]

a little bit earlier. We think, however, that it probably was first compiled around 1200. The saga, as well as being a long prose narrative, also contains a lot of poetry which would have been composed

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

at the time of the events described in the saga. So some of them going back to the 10th century, but those weren't written down probably until they were put in the saga.

[Judith Jesch]

So all this was put together around

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

1200, probably in Iceland by an Icelander, but an Icelander who either knew northern Scotland quite well or at least had information from people who'd been there and knew the place quite well.

[James Osborne]

And do we know why this text would have been composed and written down? Because when I'm reading it, I'm struggling to tell whether or not this was written down purely for the purposes of recording history or entertainment, or whether there was a political dimension to the reasoning.

[Judith Jesch]

I think probably all three of those. It's fair to say that the Icelanders were considered, and probably considered themselves, the

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

kind of historians of the northern world. And they wrote a lot of sagas, not only about events in Iceland, but also about the kings of Norway, for

[Judith Jesch]

example, and Orkney was subject to the

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

kings of Norway as a part of the Norwegian realm. So therefore they would have considered. Considered that probably as a part of that project, writing about the history of Norway.

[Judith Jesch]

And I'm sure it's written with historical

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

intent, even if not every single thing that is mentioned in the saga actually happened.

[Judith Jesch]

But they wrote history in an entertaining way.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

I think that's very much part of their project as well.

[Judith Jesch]

At the time around 1200 when it

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

was compiled, we have to think of a kind of triangle of Iceland, Orkney and Norway, and people were whizzing back and forth between those three. They knew each other, they spoke the same language, they had the same cultural heritage, so it was a part of their history as well.

[James Osborne]

So while we're talking about that, can you explain Orkney's significance within that triangle you mentioned? Why is Orkney so important in the context of the Viking age?

[Judith Jesch]

Well, we tend to think of Orkney and Shetland as today, as part of

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

Scotland, but let's say in the late Viking age, in the 9th 10th century,

[Judith Jesch]

Scotland was only just developing as a

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

nation and the Vikings had arrived. Another interesting question of when.

[Judith Jesch]

Don't really know for sure, but let's

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

say not later than 900, possibly earlier.

[Judith Jesch]

They'd come from Norway.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

A lot of them settled throughout northern Scotland. Some of them went on to settle Iceland.

[Judith Jesch]

And so the world of northern Scotland

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

was a part of this northern world ruled by Norway at the time. And a lot of people think of

[Judith Jesch]

it as quite remote because we travel

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

very much either by land or by air, but they traveled by boat. And if you travel by swift Viking

[Judith Jesch]

ship, it's really only a couple of

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

days from Norway to northern Scotland, then another few days to Iceland. It's all, you conclude, the pharaohs in that as well, they were back and forth all the time.

[James Osborne]

So I guess if we think about it in the context of it being really important in its relation to Norway and Iceland, it then also, the location of Orkney provides really easy access to the British Isles as well, doesn't it? Down the west coast, you have access from Orkney to the Hebrides, Ireland, the Isle of man, the coast of Wales, and then down the east coast you also have access to all those areas. So like Grimsby is mentioned in the text, isn't it, for example? So it seems like a really opportune place where Vikings might want to position themselves so they might raid from as well.

[Judith Jesch]

Yes, and that's the traditional explanation, that

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

northern Scotland in general as a good stopping off point for a raiding further south. But then, you know, raiding is perhaps the beginning of it all. But then those contacts continue even after raiding, it becomes less of a thing.

[Judith Jesch]

And it works both ways. There's a church on Egilsey which is

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

dedicated to St Magnus, which has a round tower. And for a long time people thought it was a round tower, like the round towers you get in Ireland. But then along came an architectural historian called Eric Fernie, and he actually showed

[Judith Jesch]

that the structure of this round tower is much more like some round towers

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

that you find in southeast England and on the European continent. So movement is going in both directions. Things are coming up from the south to Orkney as well as kind of Vikings heading south from there.

[James Osborne]

So I guess that shows how connected Orkney was to this entire kind of North Sea zone. Like it was really connected to Ireland, England, Scotland, Iceland, Norway. Like it's really this central node within that system.

[Judith Jesch]

I think you can call it a hub.

[James Osborne]

A hub, great. I think that's better than a node. Before we get into the meat of the saga, I would also like to touch on your approach to translation. There have been translations in the past. I'm familiar with a previous version myself. How did you approach a new translation? I'm interested in whether or not you were consciously considering the other translations or whether or not you were taking a blank slate approach. And I'm also interested in whether or not you felt there were certain parts of the text on which you had to compromise in the act of translation.

[Judith Jesch]

When I was preparing the translation, I avoided looking at the other four other translations into English, let alone other languages. But the most recent one is nearly 50 years old now, and I was a bit worried. People say, oh, well, we've got four

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

translations, why do we need another one?

[Judith Jesch]

But then I read somewhere that apparently

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

Homer is translated into English every 10 years. So I thought, well, it's not Quite Homer, but 50 years.

[Judith Jesch]

And of the other four translations, the

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

one that you're familiar with, which is most recent one, a Penguin classic that

[Judith Jesch]

everyone's read, is the one that I was most familiar with. The others are A little bit obscure, and one doesn't really read them for pleasure. So that was one of my motivations

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

for doing this translation.

[Judith Jesch]

But I also just felt when I

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

read that translation from 1979 or whenever it is, I can remember 1979 very

[Judith Jesch]

well, but it is a long time

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

ago, and it reads like something from 1979. I thought, okay, we're in a new century now. Let's do something that's a bit more

[Judith Jesch]

modern in terms of the process and the decisions you make and compromises you have to make. The interesting ones for me were the style of the Icelandic sagas is very distinctive, and there's several aspects of that style. First of all, they don't mind repeating words. So certainly when I was taught to

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

write English at school, I was taught to vary my vocabulary and not keep using the same word.

[Judith Jesch]

They don't have any problem with that. If the word has to appear five times in a sentence and it's the

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

same word, it's still the same word.

[James Osborne]

They're not constantly looking for synonyms.

[Judith Jesch]

No, exactly. They don't need a Roget's thesaurus. Yes, that's one thing. The other thing is there's this curious switching between past and present tense, even

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

though they're talking about events that are in the past.

[Judith Jesch]

And again, that's something you wouldn't do

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

in good English, which is what all the previous translations are.

[Judith Jesch]

And the sentences have a tendency to be kind of coordinating rather than subordinating. So it's always and this and that

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

and that, and not so much causal relationships between events. There's just a sequence of events.

[Judith Jesch]

And those three things are very typical

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

of almost all sagas.

[Judith Jesch]

And I didn't realize until I'd kind of reached the end of doing the draft translation that what I was trying to do is actually give a sense of the Old Norse text in English. And so that was a very enjoyable realization. I thought, yes, this actually works. And I've also found. And again, this was a surprise to

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

me because I did a few workshops and things with people where I tried out the translation, read it out loud

[Judith Jesch]

to people, and on one occasion, a

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

gentleman came up to me because I'd given them a handout of the bit I was reading out. And he said, oh, doesn't look like much on the page.

[Judith Jesch]

Was really good when you read it out. I think the sagas, they're written, but they're meant to be read out loud.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

They weren't meant to be read quietly in your study.

[Judith Jesch]

If you find it heavy going, just Read it.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

Just pick a short bit and read it out loud.

[James Osborne]

I'm so glad you said that, because when I am, for example, sitting in bed in the evening and trying to read through some of these sagas, sometimes it can be quite heavy going. Even though I'm really interested in the subject, I'm interested in this form of literature. And, you know, sometimes I can feel like there's almost this kind of droning sense of it.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

Yeah.

[James Osborne]

And naturally, I have found myself reading out loud.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

Oh, have you? Oh, good.

[James Osborne]

And I guess that just reflects that this whole entire saga tradition does have oral origins, doesn't it?

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

I think so.

[James Osborne]

That's an important component to it, isn't it?

[Judith Jesch]

Yeah.

[James Osborne]

Great. So now we understand why Orkney was this important place. We understand, you know, the general sense of when it was written and perhaps why. What does the sagar actually tell us broadly? Where does it start and where does it end?

[Judith Jesch]

Well, it starts in the dim and distant past in the far north of Norway, strangely enough. And the first four chapters really set up a kind of Norwegian origin for

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

the earls of Orkney, because you will eventually end up with characters who are ancestors of the earls of Orkney. And I know a lot of people,

[Judith Jesch]

including the head master of the grammar

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

school in Kirkwall, always told his students, and they've told me that he said, oh, don't read the first four chapters, just jump in in chapter five or whatever, or even seven or eight.

[Judith Jesch]

But actually there's some good stories in

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

the first few chapters as well, and

[Judith Jesch]

it kind of sets the scene. You start wondering, why is it so

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

important that these things happened, I mean,

[Judith Jesch]

literally in the mythical past?

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

There's no timeline or anything. We don't know. It's just a very, very long time

[Judith Jesch]

ago, long ago, and. But then we move to Orkney and there's just really very little about. The question that most historians and archaeologists want the answer to is when did

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

the Vikings arrive and how did they do it and why did. But there's very little about that, and some of that is a bit kind of mythical as well. So there's a motif throughout Icelandic literature that a lot of people left Norway in the time of King Harald Fineher because he was a bit of a tyrant. And a similar explanation is given here.

[Judith Jesch]

But once the earldom is established and

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

there is a link between Norway and

[Judith Jesch]

Orkney in these earls, then it's really just a chronological account of each of

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

the earls of Orkney up until just after the year 1200. So starting in the 10th century and going up to about 1200.

[Judith Jesch]

And their feuds mainly with each other, but sometimes with other people, both in

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

the Scandinavian world, but also gradually, towards the end, you can just sense they're moving closer to becoming a part of Scotland because their connections and their fights are with people in Scotland rather than Norway anymore.

[James Osborne]

My sense reading it is that the earlier parts of the story, they're very brief, they're very vague, and then the later parts of the story, they are very detailed, and they're very specific. And so it seems like the further away the story is from when it was written, the more fantastical it is. And then the closer the story is to when it was written, it seems like it's much more a kind of rigorous historical document. And that might seem obvious, but I feel like it's important to say that it doesn't get equal weighting, does it? So, like, you have 100 years of history in a few pages, and then you have, towards the end of the story, single years of history in many more pages. That's an interesting component of it, I think.

[Judith Jesch]

Yeah, and I think there's a good reason for that. And the reason for it, I mean, if it was first compiled around 1200, and as you say, it is most detailed for the 12th century, and particularly

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

from about the second, third and fourth quarters of the 12th century, and that's

[Judith Jesch]

because there were people alive who remembered those things or had a grandfather who remembered it, or, you know, you're really

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

very close to the time of composition. So I think that's the reason they just had more information. They used whatever information they had. I think, you know, when I say

[Judith Jesch]

they wrote with historical intent, I think it's, you know, they wanted to put

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

down what happened in the past, and

[Judith Jesch]

whatever came to hand, they put it down.

[James Osborne]

Well, what I've done, Judith, is I've chosen three specific episodes or stories from within the saga that I think reflect something interesting about the saga, whether thematically or in terms of the literature itself, or just its ideas. So I want to go through those three stories, and I'd love to have you explain those stories, and then we can talk about the interesting things that stem out from them. So the first one that really struck me was the story of Earl Sigurd the Stout and his raven banner. Can you give us that story?

[Judith Jesch]

Sigurd the Stout, who might have been very skinny.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

Nicknames are a bit funny in the sagas.

[Judith Jesch]

Sigurd the Stout is heading for a battle in Scotland, and he goes to seek his mother's advice. So first of all then women give advice about how to approach the battle. And she says, you're taking advice from me if I, you know, are you? She assumes that he's worried about dying in this battle.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

And she basically says, well, if I

[Judith Jesch]

thought you would be worried about dying, I would have brought you up in my wool basket. We're also told she had magical powers. And she gives him a banner, which she has imbued with her magical powers. But there's a catch. She says, this banner will help you win the battle, but whoever carries the banner will die. So he loses three standard bearers in this battle. You'd think the guys would have heard

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

that it was a bad idea to carry this banner into battle.

[Judith Jesch]

And he does eventually win the battle.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

So his mother made it happen for him.

[Judith Jesch]

So, yes, all of these things are very interesting.

[James Osborne]

I find it really interesting that when he goes to seek her advice and when she thinks that he's scared of dying, she effectively mocks him. It's very goading. Her response. It's not nice. And then the resulting banner that she makes, this raven embossed banner, it is both blessed in a way, because he wins the battle and he doesn't die. But it's also cursed. Yes, because it's killing the people who carry it. There's just so much thematic complexity tied up in that. And this is only in about three paragraphs, isn't it? It's told in about three paragraphs. I wonder if we can use it as an opportunity to talk about the role of women in the saga.

[Judith Jesch]

You're spot on about the goading. Cause this is a motif we find a lot in Icelandic sagas, which, especially those set in Iceland, they're very much about feuds. And feuds involve kin groups and loyalty groups and people who will support each other. And it's often thought of as a very kind of masculine world. You know, it's the men going out

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

and killing each other, basically.

[Judith Jesch]

But as the sagas make clear, women also play this because they're part of the family group. They also play a part in this process. And the way they do it is by urging, encouraging the men folk out. So you almost get a sense from the sagas that if it was just up to the men, oh, no, they couldn't be bothered. But it's the women that make sure that they go out and redeem their honor by killing the guy who's killed

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

their father or whatever.

[Judith Jesch]

So I would say in this case, it's the combination of women giving advice, women with magical powers and women goading men to go out and kill people are all kind of three literary motifs

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

that get entwined in this particular episode.

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[James Osborne]

so I spoke about this in another podcast episode with Jackson Crawford, and he and I were speaking about, in the saga tradition, women being this recurring source of violence. They're the ones who are like starting the conflicts by saying that they wouldn't be manly enough or honorable enough if they didn't do it. And it's just such an interesting facet about this style of literature.

[Judith Jesch]

Well, many years ago when I wrote a book about women in the Viking age, I think I said something along the lines of, well, you know, typical of the saga authors who are almost certainly male, to blame women for violence. It's always about, you know, blame somebody

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

else when you're doing something that you know you shouldn't be doing.

[Judith Jesch]

The thing about this saga is that there are several women who are seen to cause violence and killing, but there are others who aren't. So it's nicely complicated in that way.

[James Osborne]

It is. And it wouldn't be half as fun if it wasn't complicated. The next story I wanted to touch on is a bigger story. So, you know, I said that that one about Sigurd the Stout is about three paragraphs. The story of Thorfinn and Rognvald makes a decent chunk of the saga. And this is so interesting to me. I think this kind of sequence of events where you have Earl Thorfinn versus Earl Rognvald, this could be its own saga, I think, its own narrative. So my understanding is that these are two. Are they cousins? No, they're uncle and nephew and they are co earls.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

Yes.

[James Osborne]

So they are both the earls of Orkney at the start of their co earlship. They get on quite well, but it quickly devolves and turns into this tit for tat battle between them. Can you add any detail into that for me?

[Judith Jesch]

Well, first of all, there's a prehistory, so the inheritance system is not terribly clear, but it seems that any son of a previous earl has a right

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

to be an earl.

[Judith Jesch]

And the way they get round that,

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

you know, there's no concept of primogeniture.

[Judith Jesch]

So the way they get round that is by the earls ruling together. And the way they seem to get around that is because the earldom includes

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

Caithness, Orkney and Shetland is often dividing it into either two or three.

[Judith Jesch]

Now, before Thorfinn and his nephew Ragnvaldr become just two crow earls. Thorfinn's the youngest of four brothers and the previous three, one of them is

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

very unpopular and they get rid of him.

[Judith Jesch]

The next one dies in his sick bed. And then there's a third one who's the father of Reganwaldr, who's actually explicitly said to be very popular. And everything went really well when he was in charge and everybody was happy. And then he dies as well. And then Thorfinn comes along and then there's a bit of toing and froing because previously there had been three earls and the earldom was divided into three, but now there are only two earls. So two into three don't go. And both of them go and appeal to the King of Norway, who's their overlord, for support.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

And the king says an interesting thing.

[Judith Jesch]

He says, you know, when he's making agreements with both of them separately, he says, well, I know Rgnwaldr will only agree to something that he will go along with, whereas Thorfinn will agree to

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

anything and then not do it.

[Judith Jesch]

So it's kind of complicated in that way. So it remains divided into three. And the way the king gets around it is to say that the third

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

part belongs to him.

[Judith Jesch]

But then he tells Rugenwaldr that he'll appoint the Rugenwaldr to be in charge

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

of that second of the three parts of the earldom.

[Judith Jesch]

And Thorfinn goes along with it for a while. And it's notable in the saga, it happens over and over again when two joint earls are getting along.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

It's expressed in the fact that they go raiding together. They kind of happily go off and raid.

[Judith Jesch]

And then it's a motif you find in Beowulf and everywhere and anywhere else,

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

that when they fall out, it's blamed on their advisors.

[Judith Jesch]

And the other thing you have to imagine, Thorfinn is the youngest of four brothers, and he had a different mother

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

than the other three. They're probably quite close in age, actually, even though they're uncle and nephew.

[Judith Jesch]

But Thorfinn, I think, is just pretty ambitious.

[James Osborne]

He's a very violent, aggressive and unpredictable figure, I think. And yet he ends up with the epithet the mighty. And I believe he ends up being called the most powerful and bestest of all the earls, which is an interesting idea.

[Judith Jesch]

Yeah. Not only that, but having, you know, fought his way to the top at the end, he turns into a good ruler, supposedly. You know, he goes on pilgrimage to Rome, he builds churches, and he becomes a good ruler.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

And I don't know how true that

[Judith Jesch]

is, but that's a pattern you see again and again that these guys feel the need to fight their way to the top, but then they very often

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

become popular, perhaps because he's the only one. He didn't have anyone else fighting against him once he'd killed off all his relatives.

[James Osborne]

There's this amazing scene where Rognvald tries to kill Thorfinn by burning his hall while Thorfinn is still inside. And Thorfinn smashes out of the wooden burning walls with his wife in his arms, I think, and he runs out in the smoke and no one knows that he has survived. And then he comes to take his revenge on Rognvald, and Rognvaldur's eventually killed. But that one scene is so vivid, it's so evocative. Yeah, it's quite unlike a lot of the other stories in the saga, where it is very detailed in its description of the action.

[Judith Jesch]

Yeah, it's. Well, you mentioned a moment ago, Thorfinn's

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

very violent and aggressive, but actually going to kind of burn the house down.

[Judith Jesch]

With people in it is what Rugenwaldr is doing. Even though he said in the saga, he's a really nice guy and he's handsome and tall and he's a paragon.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

And yet he's just as fond, really, as his uncle.

[James Osborne]

It's quite a common tactic, though, isn't it? The burning down of walls, of people inside it. So maybe it was more acceptable at the time than we're viewing it as now.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

Well, it's.

[Judith Jesch]

It's. Yeah, I suppose so. It's an easy way of, you know, you kind of besiege people. They're all stuck in the house, but they almost always let the women and

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

children and old folk out.

[Judith Jesch]

But if you think back, you know

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

the most famous Icelandic saga, Njao saga, where there's a burning. The wife of Njool, who's being burnt to death. I mean, she's allowed, but she says, no, no, she's gonna stay in.

[Judith Jesch]

So it makes you wonder, if Thorfinn's

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

wife, why was she still in there when all the other women had come out already? She's kind of sticking with him.

[James Osborne]

One of the other amazing elements within the conflict of Thorfinn and Rognvald is the poetry that it generates. Yeah, there are some fantastic examples of skaldic verse that are found within this story. Both of them have a poet called Arnor, this one man, who is kind of in the service of both of these two men at different points. And he writes some amazing poems that are recorded in the saga, which you've translated. Can you tell me about the skaldic verse and its influence in Orkney and the saga, or the saga of the earls of Orkney?

[Judith Jesch]

Well, at this point in the saga, the skaldic verse is the kind of poetry that's very typical of the late

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

10th and 11th centuries.

[Judith Jesch]

So powerful men, mainly kings, but also earls, employed poets to record their achievements. Cause they still weren't writing things down. So one way of ensuring your fame for the future is to get a

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

poet to compose a poem about you, which people will then remember forever. And that was their job, really.

[Judith Jesch]

They followed the ruler around and were

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

often present at important events.

[Judith Jesch]

And that's very clear in Arnor's poetry,

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

that he was present at a lot of these battles.

[Judith Jesch]

It's slightly weird.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

He gives details like, oh, that battle was on a Friday, for example.

[Judith Jesch]

So you can sense that he's trying to provide a record for the future

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

of what actually happened.

[Judith Jesch]

As you say, he worked for both of them. We don't know exactly what his relationship was. But there is a poem surviving elsewhere that suggests he may have married into

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

one of their families. We're not sure who.

[Judith Jesch]

And he makes quite clear in a

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

couple of the stanzas that he's conflicted because his two guys are fighting each other and he doesn't quite know what to do. So it's all very interesting from that point of view.

[James Osborne]

Someone could write an amazing story from his perspective, experiencing the conflict.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

Yeah.

[Judith Jesch]

Plus he was an Icelander. He's coming from the outside and he is a very well known poet who composed about several kings of Norway as well. So he's well versed in court etiquette

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

and just the politics of the time.

[James Osborne]

Judith, I wonder if you could give an example of the skaldic verse. I think it'd be useful for listeners to hear it, hear your translation of it.

[Judith Jesch]

I'll explain it before I read it.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

I think that might help.

[Judith Jesch]

First of all, Arnor is an Icelander and I think he's using imagery based on his experience of Iceland as a volcanic island in describing the impossible. And he doesn't use very many kennings, but there is one that you need to know. There's a kenning called Austri's Burden. Austri was one of the four dwarves that held up the world north, south, east and west. Osthri is east. And so when it refers to Eestri's Burden it means the whole, the earth, the world. And this is otherwise.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

I hope it's self explanatory.

[Judith Jesch]

The bright sun will become black. The ground will sink into the dark ocean. Ostri's Burden will break all the sea will resound on the mountains before a more splendid magnate than Thorfinn will be

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

born for the islands. God help that. Keeper of a whole troupe.

[James Osborne]

It's amazing. It's so powerful.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

It is practically my favorite in the whole saga. Yep.

[James Osborne]

It's so rich in its imagery. It's an amazing piece of poetry that fits within this broader, amazing story, which is within itself an amazingly interesting saga. I'd like to move on to the final of the little vignettes that I thought would be interesting to draw from, which is the death of Magnus Erlensson. I wonder if you could tell us what happens to Earl Magnus.

[Judith Jesch]

Magnus is the son of a lander. Erlandr had a brother Paul, and Paul

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

had a son called Haakon.

[Judith Jesch]

So Magnus and Haakon are cousins and after the deaths of their respective fathers, they're co earls again and again.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

They get on fine for a while

[Judith Jesch]

and go raiding Together. And the saga even says there's some

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

poetry about their youthful raids together, which doesn't survive, unfortunately.

[Judith Jesch]

But again, one of them seems more

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

ambitious than the other, and that's Haakon Paulson. And again, we're told that bad advisors

[Judith Jesch]

stirred up trouble between them, but they also go to the King of Norway for support, and the king tries to sort things out, and everyone tries to kind of make this work, because it seems from the saga they haven't kind of worked out a way of people

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

ruling together without falling out with each other. But they haven't thought of just having

[Judith Jesch]

one ruler, or it hasn't been possible for whatever reason. So there is a peace agreement is made. So they agree to meet on the island of Egilsee at Easter. We don't know the exact year, but

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

it would have been 11, 16 or 17 or thereabouts.

[Judith Jesch]

And on the way there, Magnus ship is hit by a wave that comes out of nowhere.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

And that then he starts thinking, I wonder what that wave means.

[James Osborne]

Bad omen.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

Bad omen, absolutely.

[Judith Jesch]

And it turns out that Haakon has been deceitful and he has brought twice

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

as many ships and therefore twice as many men as they agreed for this ostensible peace meeting.

[Judith Jesch]

And so Magnus goes in hiding, but

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

they track him down.

[Judith Jesch]

And then there's some discussion, and Magnus realizes he's in a vulnerable position, so he makes three offers.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

First of all, he says, well, you

[Judith Jesch]

know, he'll go away to Rome and not trouble them anymore, or put me

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

in prison and I won't trouble you

[Judith Jesch]

anymore, or indeed mutilate me.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

Cut my arms off and poke my eyes out. But he wants to live.

[Judith Jesch]

And the third time round, Haakon is tempted. I think it's the prison version is

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

the third offer that Magnus makes. Haakon is tempted.

[Judith Jesch]

But then Haakon's men say, hmm, we don't want a situation where both of you are still alive.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

He has to be killed.

[Judith Jesch]

And then Haakon doesn't want to do the deed himself.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

That's another pattern throughout the saga, that when.

[Judith Jesch]

I mean, he's killing his first cousin, when they do that, they never do it themselves.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

They get some henchmen to do it for them, which is cowardice, if you ask me.

[Judith Jesch]

Nobody will do it. And then the only person that he can bully into killing Magnus is his cook.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

So you can imagine a cook is

[Judith Jesch]

good at butchering people, and the cook doesn't want to do it. But Magnus says, don't worry, you'll be fine.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

God will forgive you. Et cetera, et cetera. There's an interesting bit.

[Judith Jesch]

He says, well, I don't want to be hit with an axe.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

I'm a chieftain. I want to be killed with a sword.

[Judith Jesch]

And he is killed. And as a result, again, Haakon, a bit like Thorfinn before him, has eliminated his rival. He becomes sole Earl. He also has to go on pilgrimage. But then he comes back and becomes

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

a very popular ruler, strangely enough, even though he's not a nice person up until that point in the saga.

[James Osborne]

So the story of Magnus is. And the betrayal, at least of his death, I think, again, it's another amazing story. The reason why I pick that one out as the final third one is because I think in all of those three stories you do have this element of betrayal. So with Sigurd the Stout and his raven banner, Sigurd's mother, I think, in a way betrays him by giving him this banner. That is, yes, blessed, but also cursed. With Thorfinn and Rognvald, you have mutual betrayal. They're both deceitful with each other, they're both underhanded with each other. And then in the death of Magnus, this is perhaps the most obvious instance where, yes, someone is simply betrayed. And I wonder if the saga is trying intentionally to make a point, a moral point, about ambition and betrayal. What do you think?

[Judith Jesch]

I think there's something in that. The way I would see it is that there are these patterns, and the patterns are always about one Earl betraying the other Earl, who's always a close relative. But if you read the saga very carefully, I'm not sure the baddies aren't

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

totally bad and the goodies aren't totally good.

[Judith Jesch]

And I think the saga sees it

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

as a structural problem that it's almost inevitable when you have two people with supposedly equal power, that one of them is going to want to assert more power than the other.

[Judith Jesch]

Each story is slightly different, but then it's interesting which of the two is the one that is going to assert himself and Magnus, of all of them, he's the one that is obviously going to be betrayed, because there is something

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

about him that just doesn't have that ambition that the other guys have. But even he and Magnus and Haakon went raiding together in their youth.

[Judith Jesch]

That's just kind of slipped in. It's a little detail, but much the much broader picture of Magnus is that he's this very saintly guy. But that's obviously with hindsight, because then

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

about 20 years after he's killed, he becomes a saint.

[Judith Jesch]

So I think it's more not so much moral as political.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

That's how I would see it.

[Judith Jesch]

This is a saga about the failure

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

of a particular political system.

[James Osborne]

So Judith, my final question is about the landscapes and the geography of the saga. They play such a prominent role, especially in the kind of latter half of the saga. Almost everything takes place in a certain place, in a certain location. It gives the name of these places and it speaks about the landscape and the geography. I recorded another podcast recently with Emily Lethbridge and we were talking about O the deep minded in Iceland. And she was telling me that she really enjoyed being in Iceland and visiting the spots that are mentioned in the saga. These specific landmarks, specific landscapes, specific geographical markers. I wondered if you've ever been to Orkney with the saga of the Earls of Orkney in your hand and done the same.

[Judith Jesch]

Yes, and it's even better than Iceland. At the risk of everyone in Iceland hating me. I mean, Iceland is wonderful cause the geography is still there, the place names are still there. But that's all you've got is the

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

landscape and the place names. And the place names are very important and they appear in the sagas and they tell a lot about the history of Iceland.

[Judith Jesch]

But if you go to Orkney and

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

Shetland and Caithness, then you say you

[Judith Jesch]

have the same thing.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

You have the landscape is still there

[Judith Jesch]

and a lot of the names labeled the landscape, you have the place names.

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

The vast majority of the place names in northern Scotland are from Old Norse when the Vikings settled there.

[Judith Jesch]

So you can just drive around with the saga and visit the places. But in addition to that you have relics, ruins, buildings still standing that are mentioned in the saga, as well as

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

ones that archaeologists have dug up.

[Judith Jesch]

So you have most famous of all

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

St Magnus Cathedral and Kirkwall, this building

[Judith Jesch]

of which is mentioned in the saga. You have the round church at Orfir. You have all kinds of ruins on the Isle of Bersee where Thorfinn was based. You can go to Shetland, but not only buildings built in the Norse period, but older buildings. So you have in Shetland the broch

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

of Musa, which is an Iron Age broch. It plays a part in the saga.

[Judith Jesch]

There's an eloping couple go there and you have very famously maes how a Neolithic burial chamber which also features in the saga. People go in there in a snowstorm

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

to get out of the snowstorm and some of them go mad.

[Judith Jesch]

And my theory on that is the inside of maze how's quite small and

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

according to the saga, 100 of them. Went in there, so I think you probably would go mad.

[Judith Jesch]

So you can literally live the saga

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

in interesting ways, even more so than in Iceland. But yes, the landscape and the place

[Judith Jesch]

names, and there's something like 80 place

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

names, which in the saga.

[Judith Jesch]

The saga is the earliest record of

[Judith Jesch (continued)]

these place names that still are still in use today.

[James Osborne]

Well, I would certainly encourage anyone who's remotely interested in this to have your translation in hand and go to Orkney and Caithness and these related areas and see it for themselves. I think they'd probably have a lot of fun.

[Podcast Host Introduction]

That was Judith Yesh speaking to James Osborne. Judith is a scholar of Old Norse culture and the Viking age.

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