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In Our Time
The Orkneyinga Saga
00:51:02
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Saga of the Earls of Orkney up to the 13th century.
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- [00:02]
Melvin Bragg
BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts.
- [00:05]
Alex Wolfe
This is in our time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this edition, you find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello. Around the turn of the 13th century, an unknown Icelander created the Orkneying saga, the story of arguably the most important strategically of all the islands in the British Viking world. This was a time when earls of Orkney controlled Shetland, Orkney and Caithness, from which they could raid the Irish and British coasts, from Dublin around to Lindisfarne. And the saga mixes myth with history, bringing to life the places on those islands where Vikings met, drank, made treaties, told stories, became saints, and murdered or were murdered. With me to discuss the Orkneyinga saga are Judith Jesch, professor of Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham, Jane Harrison, archaeologist and research associate at Oxford and Newcastle Universities, and Alex Wolfe, senior Lecturer in History at the University of St. Andrews. Alex, can you give us an idea of what the saga covers and which period?
- [01:11]
Judith Jesch
Well, the saga, as you say, written in Iceland in the early 13th century, but apart from a very brief mythological beginning, which basically is part of the mythological origin of the Norwegians, it covers the history of orkney from about 900 to about 1200, and it focuses particularly on the internecine strife between the different members of the family of earls, how they betray each other, ally with each other, go to the Scottish and Norwegian kings to get help in this struggle. And it focuses very much on that internal struggle within the family. The bulk of the land is a single large island, which is called, slightly confusingly, mainland nowadays. I was called Hrose in the Viking age, the Horse island, and it lies within sight of the north coast and the mainland of Scotland. And then beyond that, you have the Shetlands, which are out of sight, though Fair Isle lies between them and is indivisible between the north of Orkney and the south of Shetland. And Shetland was part of the Earldom of Orkney, though most of the political action of the saga takes place on the main archipelago and in Caithness, the immediately adjacent bit of Scotland.
- [02:21]
Alex Wolfe
We've said that an Icelander wrote this. What do we know about him and the origins of the saga?
- [02:26]
Judith Jesch
We don't know anything specific about the Icelander. What we can tell is that he's working in the same milieu as other saga writers, particularly the ones who wrote the accounts of the Norwegian kings, that they seem to be familiar with each other's work to some extent, although different scholars argue about whether there's direct copying and so on. But he obviously had some very good sources. Some of them were written, but he probably had spoken to people and perhaps himself even visited Orkney and Caithness. Caithness in particular is very well described in the latter part of the saga. So although he was an Icelander, and there's no doubt about that, he was closely connected with some people who were involved with Orkney and perhaps have visited.
- [03:11]
Alex Wolfe
Orkney himself, why did it take an Icelander to do this and not somebody from the Orkneys?
- [03:16]
Judith Jesch
Iceland generally seems to be the main place where most of the sagas about ancient Scandinavian history were written down. This might be partly problem of recovery and survival, but it's not just that. Because as early as the time the saga was being written, around about 1200, we have other Scandinavian writers like the Danish Latin writer Saxo Grammaticus, who tells us he's reliant on Iceland as sources for his own history. I sometimes tell my students that because there's nothing else to do in Iceland in the winter, they were very good at telling stories. And I think that may not be too far from the truth. So other people may disagree.
- [03:56]
Alex Wolfe
What prompted him to write this? If you were a decent country, you wanted to have a saga, didn't you?
- [04:02]
Judith Jesch
Yes, and I think Orkney was perceived as being an important place, as you said in the introduction, it was a kind of stopping off place. One of the first places that Icelanders might reach. They'd either sail to western Norway or to Orkney before going further afield. And the Orkney earls and some of the other great families in Orkney were intermarried with some of the Icelandic chieftains families. There was a long tradition of service by Icelandic poets in the retinues of Orkney earls. And there's a connection. It's one of the places that connects them to the wider world.
- [04:37]
Alex Wolfe
You speak of earls in the plural. There are an awful lot of earls in this story, aren't there?
- [04:42]
Judith Jesch
There are. And one of the curious things about the earldom of Orkney is unlike most other earldoms, it seems to be divided and shared. So at times you might have three people claiming to be earl of Orkney simultaneously. And sometimes they're in conflict and sometimes they're sharing it together. For example, Paul and Ireland in the period after 1066 are said to have kept the same court and their brothers who simply are both earls. And that's unusual, although it's quite Similar to what was happening in the Norwegian kingdom with Norwegian kings at the time. It's not something you usually see with earls.
- [05:15]
Alex Wolfe
Thank you very much, Jan Harrison. Why were they especially important strategically at this time?
- [05:21]
Melvin Bragg
Well, you've hinted in the introduction and Alex has picked up on its location geographically because you have that it's a maritime hub, effectively, because you come over from Norway and you. First you reach Shetland and then you're coming down into Orkney and from there you can go down into Scotland and round the east coast down into England. There are mentions of voyages from Orkney down the east coast. They mention the mud of Grimsby and then also from Orkney round the west coast and to the Hebrides of Scotland. To the Hebrides, Isle of Man, that whole Irish Sea, literal and opening up the places in Ireland that the Vikings became so closely associated with. So it's a really good place initially, if you're a raiding Viking. It's a place where on your way to places on the west or east coast of England, you can stop, you can perhaps pick up more men, you can restock, you can draw breath and then head off and. And then I suspect what happened is that they then realized how fertile Orkney is and how. What a range of resources there are there. There are a great many islands and a good deal of very good beaching points, very good harbours. So you've got good places to lay up. There are little islands which can be the lairs of major Vikings. There are lovely bays where you can have your farm with all the resources of the sea and the land available. So I think that's when you think, okay, we might not just stop off here on our way to a raid. We're going to settle here as well. Because it's not just strategic, it's fertile as well.
- [07:00]
Alex Wolfe
The sea was obviously central to all this. Can you describe that more fully than my sentence?
- [07:06]
Melvin Bragg
Yes, I mean, obviously, because of its location in terms of sea ways. But also, I think ships, of course, are absolutely crucial and central because it's ships and the mastery of sail that drives the Vikings out to settle and to raid. And we get a sense in the saga of a whole range of those ships, from the fine, fully fitted warships, longships, the classic Viking ship that the Norwegian kings tend to gift to the earls they've decided they're going to support.
- [07:43]
Alex Wolfe
When you say classic, how big are they? How many men do they carry?
- [07:46]
Melvin Bragg
They vary, But I think 60 to 70 men. They're light and fast and they can be contrasted with the Big, high, broad cargo ships that are used to take heavy goods, grain, dried fish, timber. Because Orkney has no trees. That's a crucial thing as well. And you get a mention of cargo ships when one of the earls is off on pilgrimage. Part of the pilgrimage seems to be raiding, and they take a big cargo ship and you come across smaller cargo ships that are being used both for trading but also for opportunistic raids and fishing boats, because, of course, fishing is vital. I suspect all of the farmers of Orkney were equally comfortable on land and sea and were fisher people as well as farmers. So it weaves its way through the saga.
- [08:42]
Alex Wolfe
And they were a refuge people, the men was always men, wasn't it? Often slept on them.
- [08:47]
Melvin Bragg
Yes, yes, yes. There are mentions in the saga, especially when things are tense, when one of those occasions when there's more than one earl and there's a lot of tension and fighting, then the safe place to be overnight is on board your ships roped together. But then there's one of the ears roped together. So they're roped together like a sort of little settlement. Often ships sound almost like a household and almost like a hall, and they're all roped together, and that's where you go with watchmen on overnight. And one of the earls is careless, gets careless, and despite being on board his ship, is captured and killed. So it didn't always work, but that was supposed to be the safest place.
- [09:30]
Alex Wolfe
Thank you, Judith. It comes to you to have the honor to read some of the section or two to give us a flavor of the saga.
- [09:41]
Jane Harrison
Thank you. I've got two short extracts I'd like to read, and they both pick up on a point Alex already made, is that a lot of the saga is about men killing their brothers, half brothers, nephews and cousins in order to become the sole Earl of Orkney. The first one is a bit of poetry, and then the second one will be a little bit of prose. The poetry I'll read in Old Norse. Bjercht versol at svartri sekr fold I mar dec van brestr ervidi avstra allerglimir sjour aufjolum avrat eum frithri indrottar thorfinni thame hjalpi gud gamer mini firthask.
- [10:29]
Alex Wolfe
Now that is in English.
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Jane Harrison
The bright sun will become black. The earth will sink into the dark ocean. Ostri's burden will break all the sea will resound on the mountains before a more glorious nobleman than Thorfinnr will be born for the islands God help that keeper of a whole troop.
- [10:51]
Alex Wolfe
That's really good, isn't it? I'm going to beat that with your second quote.
- [10:57]
Jane Harrison
No, no. I want to tell you a little bit about what it is. It's a stanza from a memorial poem for an ear called Thorfinn the Mighty, who died in the 1060s. He was a warrior, a successful warrior. He killed his nephew in order to become Solar Earl of Orkney. But then he went to Rome and was absolved of his sins by the Pope himself. And then he came back and concentrated on governing and making laws and building churches and doing good things. And this is an Icelandic poet saying, basically, that there will never be a better earl than Thorfinn. My second extract, I won't read in the Old Norse, I'll just read in the English translation. It is a part of the story of the martyrdom of Saint Magnus in the 12th century, the early 12th century, Magnus actually ruled. You were talking about co earls earlier. He and his cousin, Haakon Paulson managed to get on for quite a few years together and they went raiding together and did stuff like that. But eventually, eventually Haakon was too ambitious and he lured Magnus to an ostensible peace meeting and treacherously had him executed there. And this extract features Magnus's mother, Thora. Thora, the mother of Earl Magnus, had invited both the earls to a feast after the meeting. And now Earl Haakon came to the feast after the killing of the holy Earl Magnus. Thora did the serving herself and carried drink to the Earl and those of his men who had been at the killing of her son. And when the drink had affected the Earl then Thora went before him and spoke. Now you have come here alone, sir, but I expected both of you. You will now want to gladden me before God and men. Be now in place of a son to me, and I will be in place of a mother to you. I now have great need of your mercy and that you allow me to have my son carried to church. Be as good to me in answering my prayers as you want God to be to you on the Day of Judgment. The Earl falls silent and thinks over the matter and felt guilty of his misdeeds. When she begged so softly, weeping that she could carry her son to church, he looked at her and shed a tear and spoke to her. Bury your son where you like. Graf son. Thin sar er ser licar did sound quite difficult.
- [13:36]
Alex Wolfe
How difficult is it to translate?
- [13:39]
Jane Harrison
Different parts of it are more difficult than others. So it's long, so it takes Time. I think you have gathered from the prose reading that it's actually a fairly very specific style. It makes use of a paratactic style. Everything is. And. And it switches between tenses, between past and present tense. That's something that other translators have eliminated from their English translations. Whereas I think it's so much a characteristic of this saga style that I think it should be kept. But the real difficulty comes with the poetry because it's a very strict meter. There are very strict rules about alliteration and rhyme. There's a very special diction you have to use. You have to use kennings. And because Old Norse is an inflected language, the word order in these stanzas is not. Not normal word order. So speakers of the language would understand it. But you can't turn it into English and make it sound like poetry. It sounds like poetry in the original. It doesn't really sound like poetry in English.
- [14:40]
Alex Wolfe
Thank you very much. All right, Alex, what are the main themes of the saga?
- [14:44]
Judith Jesch
Well, we've touched on some there. It's the internecine strife between the earls. And usually one of the ways you see this arising is, as Judith just said, to begin with, often groups of earls go raiding together. They govern together happily, but their. Their immediate personal friends and supporters egg them on to. To say, well, you know, you could have it all if you wanted. You're much better man than him. And that internecine strife and the way that these relationships break down and the way that supporters change sides quite regularly is one major theme. And the other major theme is really the relationship with the kings of Norway and to a much lesser extent, the kings of Scotland. The earls will frequently go to the kings of Norway to get support against their rival, or perhaps someone who's not yet an earl, but who thinks he has a claim will go to Norway first and be given ships, as Jane mentioned, and maybe men by the Norwegian earl, by the Norwegian king, rather, and said to cross. And one of the earls who we hear most about in the 12th century section, Earl Ronald Cowley, is in fact a Norwegian who is the grandson of an earl. He's the son of the murdered Earl Magnus's sister, and he's sort of given the title of earl as a whim by the Norwegian king, as a favor to him, because he's one of his retainers whom he's become particularly enamored with. And then subsequently, he's given several attempts at taking fleets across and eventually does make himself establish himself in the islands. So it's that kind of relationship. And yet at the same time, once they're in power, the earls try and distance themselves from the Norwegians. So on one hand they want to be independent rulers, almost like kings themselves, but they require the help of the Norwegian kings. And tied in with that is their relationship with the farmers. And there's rather a complicated element that recurs in the saga, which an awful lot of ink has been spilt by modern academics trying to understand what's going on, which is talking about what's called the Odal rights, the freehold rights of the farmers, which various earls grant back to the farmers or take away from the farmers. And this seems to be somehow also about the relationship of the earls to the king. If you think about the freeholders having a direct relationship to the king, is that relationship mediated through the earliest, or is the Earl simply a civil servant, if you like. And so those are the major themes that run through the saga.
- [17:18]
Alex Wolfe
Jane, can you. Other places you can stand with the saga in hand now and say it's the hall, because there were great hall skulls there, weren't there? Yes, the hall is over there, the little church is over there, the mound by the bear is over there. You can do that now.
- [17:35]
Melvin Bragg
Absolutely you can. I mean, this is one of the extraordinary things about the combination of Orkney in Gosaga and Orkney as it is today. And there are a range of places that you can go to of different sorts across the. I think it's nearly. Actually nearly 70 islands if you count all the tiny little skerries and uninhabited bits, but 12 sort of main islands. And there are the big earldom sites, there's the brochure Bersee and the land connected to it, which is the northwest corner of the biggest island which Alex mentioned. And that's an extraordinary offshore island which is sort of canted dramatically as someone has stamped on the inland edge and is splashed by the Atlantic on its cliff edges. And on that island now are the ruins of a church and the grass covered outlines of Viking halls and buildings. And so you can cross at low tide to the island and you can stand there. And this is the place that Judith mentioned. This is Thorfinn center in the 11th century. It's where he goes and he builds his cathedral after he's been absolved. And it's where he's supposed to have settled and turned into a great lawmaker and ruler of all his people. And you can stand there and you can look back at the mainland and see the acres of fertile land and the little lochs and you can see why that would be a great place to set up if you were the Earl. And there's another earldom site just down the coast, where, again, there are the ruins of a church. And you can imagine the big hall, which features in a number of the more dramatic stories in the saga, two of the murders. One is the accidental killing of an Earl and the other is the murder by the great last Viking, Svein Asliffsson, of another Sweyn. They get into an acrimonious drinking fight and there's a wonderful description of Svein hiding behind the stone uprights that hide the aelvats and jumping out with his ax and getting rid of the rival Svein. And so you can stand there and imagine this story, because the church is described as just paces from where this happened. But then you can go to any of the sandy bays on any of the main islands, and you can imagine being one of the chieftains in your Scarley hall. And they're always up on mounds with great views, looking out over the sea and over the land that they control. And you can think, okay, the Earl's coming and I've got to get myself sorted. I've got to be able to house and feed him and his retinue, and I've got to call in all the favors from my farmers and get that all set up. So it's really vivid. And all those places are there, from the big places to the landing places to the hall sites.
- [20:30]
Alex Wolfe
Thank you, Judith.
- [20:31]
Jane Harrison
Yeah, no, I wanted to add to what Jane was saying, because the most obvious place that's mentioned in the saga is, of course, the Cathedral of St Magnus in Kirkwall. A beautiful. One of the most beautiful cathedrals in Britain, in my opinion, and beautiful red and gold sandstone, a kind of miniature Durham. And it relates to what Alex was saying, because it was built by Regenwalder. Kali Kolsson, who was not a very effective politician, and his father persuaded him that if he invoked the power of his uncle, the St. Magnus, then he would become Earl of Orkney. But in order to do that, he had to build the church, the cathedral, in memory of St. Magnus.
- [21:16]
Melvin Bragg
And that's one of the occasions when he taxes people in order to be able to fund it. Nothing changes, does it?
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Alex Wolfe
So what values do they seem to hold?
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Jane Harrison
It's interesting.
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Alex Wolfe
Are they Christian values?
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Jane Harrison
It depends what you mean by Christian values.
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Alex Wolfe
It's pretty obvious.
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Jane Harrison
There is a Viking theme running through the saga, but it's important to Remember there are 112 chapters in the saga And Christianity is introduced in chapter 12. So the vast majority of the saga takes place in Christian times. These are Christian people killing each other regularly. I think my way of reading the saga is that the narrative voice is often non judgmental. It's just, this is what happened and this is what had to happen. And it's interesting. Certain of the characters are said to be handsome and intelligent and so on. And as soon as someone is said to be popular, you know they're going to come to a sticky end having been killed by their cousin or whatever. At the same time, Magnus is, of course, he's a saint, he has all kinds of virtues.
- [22:25]
Alex Wolfe
But basically how did he become a.
- [22:26]
Jane Harrison
Saint by being killed by his cousin? It's what happened in a lot of countries in northern Europe at the time, countries that were relatively recently converted to Christianity. The ruling dynasty and the Church found it useful to make an alliance and they'd make one of the people somebody was killed for political reasons, into a martyr in order to strengthen the power of the Church and the state over the population.
- [22:53]
Alex Wolfe
And it worked.
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Jane Harrison
It seems to have done.
- [22:56]
Alex Wolfe
Can I come back to you now, Alex? It's not history quite, is it? But historians use it. Can you unpick some of that?
- [23:05]
Judith Jesch
Well, it varies, as Judith said, it goes on for a very long time. And the early bits of it are terrible from a historical perspective.
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Alex Wolfe
What do you mean by terrible?
- [23:14]
Judith Jesch
They're probably largely imaginative. They might have a sense of the pedigree that the list of ancestry of the earls and one or two broad brush events. But a lot of the detail seems more like it's drawn from folklore or maybe even just made up. But as it goes on it becomes more historical. And the section set in the 12th century and the very beginning of the 13th century where it ends, some of them are probably as good as most historical sources. It's also its historical value varies according to what it's dealing with. The author is very well grounded in Scandinavian society and history. So things to do with Orkney itself and with Norway are often things that we can sort of verify from other sources and seem plausible the further they go away from there, down into the Irish Sea world, or in the case of Earl Ronald's pilgrimage to Jerusalem into the Mediterranean, you get the feeling that they've not really got a very clear sense of the geography or of the political background. So Lundy, for example, almost appears to be regarded as one of the Hebrides rather than an island off the north of Devon. And their understanding of Scottish history has moments where it seems to link to what we understand from Scottish sources and English sources. But at other times they seem to throw in names which are just stereotypically Scottish. So, for example, when we're told that Magnus, bare legged, the Norwegian king, sails to Orkney and then down the west coast, we're told he makes a treaty with the Scottish king Malcolm. But at that point in time there wasn't a Scottish king called Malcolm, but it's a nice stereotypical Scottish name. So perhaps added for verisimilitude by the Icelandic author. And there are other things that are puzzlingly missing. So for example, Thorfinn the Mighty, who we've talked about, the poem that Judith Redout relates to, is an almost exact contemporary of Macbeth, who originated in the north of Scotland in Murray Shire or that sort of region. And yet Macbeth isn't mentioned in the saga at all. And yet we're told that Thorfinn controlled nine earldoms in Scotland, which must be pretty much all of Scotland, and ravaged far and wide and so on. And he went on pilgrimage to Rome, as we've heard from Jane and Dorothy Dunnett, the historical novelist actually tried to solve this dilemma by suggesting that Thorfinn Macbeth were the same person, which I think very few scholars would believe. But it is a puzzle that certain people you would expect to be present and not present. And whether that's done deliberately because they perhaps would have put the earls in shadow, or whether it's done because they really don't have much understanding of non Scandinavian, non Norse speaking communities is unclear.
- [26:07]
Alex Wolfe
Thank you very much, Jane. The saga is partly about who holds power over whom and on what authority. How do we find out what's going on?
- [26:16]
Melvin Bragg
Yes, and there are all sorts of levels of authority that are mentioned in the saga. And Alex and Judith have already referred to relationships with the kings of Norway and Scotland and those are clearly key for the earls. But we get a sense of how the rest of the structures of authority work as well, because the earls have a group of a retinue, a group of leading men who are their supporters. And as well as the strife between cousins and brothers and earls, you see them trying to keep allegiance of leading people and farmers and chieftains are mentioned. And, and it's a really interesting sort of bond that is reflected in that hall culture we've mentioned. The big halls where they had the feasts, where they declaimed the poetry, where they took oaths, where they gave gifts. And it's all a very personal and present face to face authority, where you have to meet the people, you have to see them. And so it's also very peripatetic. So the Earl moves around a lot and goes and visits, spoken about as being a wieslu, as being visiting one of their chief people. There's someone called Sigurd of Westness, who is one of the chieftains, and Earl Paul is mentioned as feasting with him on a couple of occasions, on one of which he's then kidnapped by Svein Asleepsson, the marauding and Viking, who seems to be able to have allegiance with a number of people over his career. So it's a very, very personal sort of authority. And then the other group who Alex mentioned are these farmers, and of course they're the people who in effect are supporting it all, because they are the group who are producing the taxes in kind, the renders that support the chiefs in being able to house and feed these roving earls and who do the fishing and who produce everything that is supporting the chiefs and the earl. But they also have a role, and they're mentioned a number of times in the saga as, firstly, as a kind of grumbling chorus. There are moments when they pop up and say, look, you're asking too much of us. And they ask one of the leading men called Thorkell, who's the foster father of Thorfinn the Mighty, to intervene and ask for a letter. Less of an imposition, but they also help to reconcile occasionally. They obviously find the times of trouble and strife harder. There are more demands made on them. They're probably asked to crew boats and taken away from their everyday roles. And so they intervene and they want to reconcile and to try and bring the earls together. So they pop up and by the 12th century, they're actually being called to regular assemblies in Kirkwall by Earl Roggenwald.
- [29:20]
Alex Wolfe
So far you haven't mentioned one woman.
- [29:22]
Melvin Bragg
No, but they run through as an important thread and Judith can probably say more.
- [29:26]
Alex Wolfe
Judith.
- [29:27]
Jane Harrison
Well, how long have you got? There are they don't play a huge role, but they really pack a punch when they do get involved in the saga. We can start with Dragnhildr, who's actually the daughter of Eric Bloodaxe, who was a Viking king in York, and she manages to marry three of the sons of Earl Thorfinn Skalsblitter and causes the death of two of them and two nephews.
- [29:57]
Alex Wolfe
Causes the death. Is that a polite way of saying what?
- [30:00]
Jane Harrison
Well, she promises marriage to various men on the grounds that if they kill the person she wants killed, she will marry them of Course, then the promise doesn't really come to anything. Then there's an Irish mother of Earl Sigurd, who made a magic banner for him so that when he went into battle it would bring victory to the man before whom it was carried, but death to the man who carried it. So it brings him a victory at first, but then he runs out of banner carriers and then he dies. He has to carry his own banner and dies. Then there's Thora, you've already heard about as a rather different kind of woman. Then there's Ragnar, who actually has a bit of authority because she seems to have been a widow, or at least there's no mention of a husband. She has a son, she has two estates. She gives advice to Earl Pol and he basically mansplains her and says, oh, no, I'm not going to take your advice. I'm the one in charge here. It doesn't end well for him. She also stands up to Earl Roggenwalder, who doesn't want to let a visiting Icelander join his court.
- [31:15]
Alex Wolfe
Then I think we're convinced. I think we're Convinced we mentioned St Magnus earlier. Were there many more persons there who were almost saints, and was that hierarchy there?
- [31:33]
Jane Harrison
The interestingly previously mentioned Earl Regenwalder, Kali Kolsen, who was the nephew of Saint Magnus. His father was a Norwegian. He grew up in Norway. He was also considered a saint in Orkney, although he was never officially canonized by the church. But when they found a skeleton, which is almost certainly that of St Magnus, in Kirkwall Cathedral in 1919, they also found another one that quite possibly was his. We don't know what he did to become a saint, other than build the cathedral, I think, but quite something, though, isn't it? Yeah.
- [32:09]
Alex Wolfe
Alex, what do Woodham neighboring people think of these earls going around murdering each other and taking over?
- [32:17]
Judith Jesch
Well, the interesting thing is that we don't have very many notices of them in neighbouring sources. We have a writ from the Scottish King David the First, which is sent to Earl Harold and the other earl, that's all he's called, telling them to leave the monks at Dornoch alone and not to bother them. That would date to probably the late 1130s or 1140s. There are occasional references to them involved with piracy. The first one to be mentioned in any contemporary source is Earl Sigurd the Fat, who's the one with the raven banner that Judith mentioned, who fights at the Battle of Clontarf in Ireland in 1014. And that's where he's killed. And that's the first contemporary reference to the earldom. And then we don't hear about it for a while. In Norwegian sources, they seem to be present or scandal sources, mostly Icelandic. In fact, they seem to be presented as rulers who are admirable. In several other Icelandic sagas, like Njal Saga, young men will go and spend some time in their retinue, going off, raiding and making their fortune. And that's what establishes them as heroic when they return to farming life in Iceland. So they were admired in the Scandinavian world, but there's very little notice of them further south.
- [33:43]
Alex Wolfe
Thank you, Jane. You know about artifacts on the island, your life study being artifacts. What do you want to tell us about them?
- [33:51]
Melvin Bragg
I think that you get less of a sense in the saga of objects than you do in some of the other sagas, actually. But why is that? I think because it's focused so much on the politicking of the earls. But one of the extraordinary things about Orkney is the quality and the preservation of the archaeology. So we do actually have a lot of objects associated with sites that are in the saga. And the important thing I think really is that in an essentially non literate and very sensory and physical visual culture, all these objects are very potent and very meaningful. They can tell you things about someone's social position, their affiliations, and they can speak in a way that perhaps we have lost a sense of. Can you give us some examples? Yes. So, for example, there are in Orkney a number of hoards where precious things have been buried in the ground. And there's a lot of dispute about whether these are always done for safekeeping, to be recovered later and then forgotten about, whether they're done deliberately as some kind of offering. And there's an extraordinary one on one of those bays where you have a long house, a big stone hall, long house and these beautiful silver, big silver brooches. They must have been so heavy and difficult to wear and twisted neck rings and armlets. You've got very high status beautiful things. But then you have very ordinary things like combs that you also find in burials and buried in the foundations of houses, which again are much more mundane but carry a lot of meaning because they can perhaps associate with your affiliation and your belongings. So there are a whole range of different objects that.
- [35:43]
Alex Wolfe
Are they still to be dug up or have you dug them all up?
- [35:46]
Melvin Bragg
We haven't dug them all up. There's a surprising. I mean, we've done a number of excavations, but there's still a lot out there. That we could discover waiting to be.
- [35:55]
Alex Wolfe
Alex, where's the writer of this sag? On the firmest ground.
- [36:01]
Judith Jesch
He's on the firmest ground in the later part of the period, from probably from about the middle of the 12th century onwards, which is presumably within living memory, either of his own generation or of the older generation whom he relied on. And particularly his understanding of the geography of parts of Caithness seemed to be extremely good. So that some of the events, such as the killing of Earl Ron Valkalli Colson at a farm called Forsey, you could actually plot it out. You can get the Ordnance Survey map out and you can follow almost step by step the route that's being taken. And it's hard to believe that didn't come from an eyewitness account and that maybe the author himself had been there, or he was sitting down with someone, telling him over his shoulder as he wrote so. And there are other accounts, such as the killing of Fraccock, one of the powerful women who lives in Helmsdale, where again, you get a sense that the geography is really clearly understood by the author. So that's always struck people as interesting and suggesting either that the author has been to Caithness or that perhaps his main informants are from the Caithness branch of the various noble families that are associated with the earls. And then there were one or two places that Jane talked about, the description of Orfir, where the hall and the church are adjacent to each other, where there seems to be a very direct understanding of the geography. So you get moments of place like that, perhaps also Westness, where the relationship between Sigurd of Westness's farm and the narrow strait between Rausa and the island of mainland which Svein Asleifson takes his boat into when he's going to kidnap Earl Paul. There are moments where you get a real sense that the geography is real, and then there are other places where you get a sense that there isn't. And in the early part of the saga, it's very noticeable. I noticed when I reread the saga just before Christmas, that before the 12th century, individual farms are very rarely named. The saga will say things like, and then they went to the farm where the Earl was. But from about 1100 onwards, you're always told the name of the farm, often where it's near and the people, and you're given quite a lot of genealogical information about the farmer and who he's related to, and suddenly it all comes alive. So that 12th century section is very alive, and you Feel you could almost reconstruct society. You could use it as the basis of some kind of soap opera, I think. Probably.
- [38:35]
Alex Wolfe
Just to come back to you for a moment, Jane, what evidence is there a peaceful existence in the artifacts?
- [38:44]
Melvin Bragg
When you excavate one of those big long houses with the hall space, what you normally find are a lot of animal bones, cattle, pigs, sheep, deer, otters, whale, seal. With the evidence for the fishing and the farming. Also lots of bits of steatite bowls. Steatite is a soft stone that the Vikings used instead of pottery. And you find lots of iron bolts and nails and roves from ships. Because timber is scarce, you use it in the roofs. So you get the everyday things from farming and fishing, spindle whirls and fishing weights.
- [39:31]
Jane Harrison
I just wanted to say the saga itself acknowledges that there was occasionally peace. It will often say, yes, there was peace for a few years. And it's obviously not interested in telling us about the peaceful times. The other bits make a better story.
- [39:45]
Melvin Bragg
Two sentences, don't you?
- [39:46]
Alex Wolfe
We're coming to the end now, unfortunately. But, Judith, what do we gain from reading the saga today?
- [39:52]
Jane Harrison
Everything. I think that's a starter, certainly for British readers. It's quite a good way into the saga genre because it's set in Britain and in a landscape that many people are familiar with. So you can get used to the style. It is an important part of the history of these islands. I mean, for 500 years, a part of what is today the United Kingdom was not a part of even Scotland, let alone a United Kingdom. It was a part of Norway and subsequently Denmark. Orkney is a great tourist destination and as we've said several times already, you can go there and take the saga with you and see all the places in it. And so I think. I think there are many reasons to want to read the saga.
- [40:39]
Alex Wolfe
Is there a final word from I?
- [40:41]
Melvin Bragg
Yes, well, quite interesting. Also in the way in which geopolitical situations can change from being that strategic nodal island. It then becomes a quiet rap quarter far off the northern coast of Scotland. And then it's briefly during world wars, becomes again a strategically important. But it's a good example of the way in which things come in and out of focus.
- [41:04]
Judith Jesch
Finally, Alex, I think also particularly that 12th century section gives you a huge amount of information about how ordinary people live, the interaction between the farmers, farmers and each other, as well as the farmers and the earls. It gives you a sense of what an agrarian society with no towns, very little cash, and consensual forms of government operated and that's probably how much of Britain operated in this period. But further south, the focus is on high politics only, and we don't see that level of the wealthy farmers who make up the backdrop for the 12th century section of Orkney and Gossaville.
- [41:45]
Alex Wolfe
Well, thank you all very much. Thanks to Judith, Jane Harrison and Alex Wolfe, and to our studio engineer, Emma Hearth. Next week, it's Henry Fielding's comic novel from 1749. Tom Jones, thanks for listening.
- [41:58]
Jane Harrison
And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.
- [42:06]
Alex Wolfe
So, to start from the beginning here, what did you not say that you would like to have said? Starting with you, Alex?
- [42:12]
Judith Jesch
Well, I think that one of the things that a historian can use it for is the social, historical detail, which is often things that you miss if you're focusing on the plot. So, for example, there's one episode which is actually set in western Norway, when a servant named Brynjolf is sent from one farm to a neighbouring farm to pick up his mistress and take her home. And we're told when he arrives that she brings out her clothes, and while he's putting the clothes on the pack pony, she goes back into the house to kiss the maidservants goodbye. And we're also told that while he's putting the clothes on the pack pony, he's put his weapons down. So this gives us this kind of intimate relationship between the women, the mistress, mistress and the maidservants who kind of hug and kiss when they say goodbye. But also it tells us that even on a relatively minor errand from one farm to another neighbouring farm, a servant was carrying weapons. And there's. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of little moments like that in the saga, which, if you focus too much on the plot, you can miss, but which tell us a huge amount about society.
- [43:23]
Alex Wolfe
Judith, you want to come in?
- [43:25]
Jane Harrison
Yeah. I have a very similar comment, actually, because you did say in the beginning that the earls of Orkney ruled over Shetland, and Shetland plays very relatively little part in the saga. But there are some wonderful episodes in Shetland, including Rognwalder being shipwrecked there. And that's also again, where you get a glimpse of serving women. Two serving women go out, it's cold and it's winter, to bring water back, and one of them falls into the well and the other one comes running back and complaining that she's frozen and everyone else is sitting in front of the fire. And also in the miracles of St. Magnus, because we mustn't Forget he was a saint. So there were miracles. Most of the miracles seem to take place in Shetland and you get an idea of the things that ail people. You can fall off a haystack or you can have leprosy, or you can just have a very bad headache and going to the Shrine of St Magnus in Kirkwall will cure you. But the most amazing miracle, really is the English guys with the dice. They're playing dice and one of them throws two sixes, so the other one thinks that's the end of it. I can't win over two sixes. But he prays to St. Magnus and one of the dice breaks in two, so he gets a six and a one as well as the other six, so he wins.
- [44:44]
Alex Wolfe
Anything else?
- [44:46]
Melvin Bragg
I think just to pick up on the values running through and think about the Vikings, because there's a great character, this Feina Sliffsson who is mentioned, who's talked about as the last Viking. And there's a sort of theme where once the earls settle down, have been on their pilgrimages and start being lawgivers, then they stop the raiding. They've moved on from being Vikings and. And Sveina Sliefsson is the man who has the huge drinking hall where over winter he has 80 men there and at his own expense he feeds them and feasts them. But then when he goes on his final Viking trip and is killed in Ireland, after having a lifestyle where he planted his crops in spring, went off on his spring raid, came back and harvested his crops in summer and goes off on his autumn raid, he finally meets his end and his sons, what they do is they divide up his big hall and that's a kind of symbolic end of the great Viking age. And we've gone into the sort of 12th century Christian, Latinate, more sort of feudal society. So there's that sort of running through as well.
- [45:53]
Alex Wolfe
The two things I'd like to bring up. The first is Lindisfarne. It seems to be. Talk about this without mentioning Lindisfarne. Would anybody like to volunteer a comment or three comments about Lindisfarne?
- [46:05]
Melvin Bragg
Well, I think we can see that the raid on Lindisfarne at the end of the 8th century, the beginnings of Scandinavian contact in Orkney, are around the same time. And I think you can picture that the raids that brought Vikings to Lindisfarne may well have brought them from Shetland through to Orkney. And that's that first contact where Scandinavians begin to see the point of Orkney not just as a raiding base, but also as a place to settle, but also that they must have known about Lindisfarne. If they're getting as far south as Grimsby and it's muddy, it's mud, then Lindisfarne is part of that world. It's not specifically mentioned, but they go off raiding down the east coast of England. We know that.
- [46:49]
Alex Wolfe
When you were excavating, did you find anything that might have come from Lindisfarne?
- [46:55]
Melvin Bragg
No, no, I don't think we ever did. But we found things that could have come from that sort of milieu. I mean, when you're digging on a site in Orkney, you find imported pottery and jewelry and things that have come from all over the Viking diaspora, from all over the places that the Scandinavians are coming to and fro. It's that sense of mobility. You get a real sense of the. From the Orkneyinga saga, I think, of that mobility and of the comings and goings.
- [47:26]
Judith Jesch
On one occasion, when Svein Asleifs, in the late 12th century, has to flee Orkney because he's fallen out yet again with yet another earl, he stops at the Isle of May, which is a monastic island in the mouth of the Firth of Forth between Fife and Lothian, from which you can see Lindisfarne. It's indivisible within Lindisfarne, and there are abbots there. And the Abbot Baldwin takes Sibyl and they make up some story about them being storm beleaguered merchants. But we're told in the saga that the monks think they might be pirates, so they send a message to the mainland to get help. And when Sven discovers this, he decides he's got to leave pretty quickly. So he takes everything he can from the monastery and sails off anyway.
- [48:11]
Alex Wolfe
Well, a final, final question. I know. I mean, this is for the podcast. They. How many of them set off for and got to the Holy Land in those boats?
- [48:21]
Judith Jesch
Do we know Earl Ronald at Kalikos?
- [48:24]
Jane Harrison
Well, yeah. Well, a king of Norway had also been there before him. They went down the Atlantic route and into the Mediterranean. It took a long time.
- [48:36]
Alex Wolfe
How long?
- [48:37]
Jane Harrison
I think they were away for two or three years. For the whole journey.
- [48:41]
Melvin Bragg
And with a number of ships.
- [48:43]
Jane Harrison
Yeah, a large number of ships, yeah.
- [48:45]
Judith Jesch
Did they come back overland by horses?
- [48:47]
Jane Harrison
They came back overland, so they said.
- [48:49]
Judith Jesch
They sail for the Holy Land, then they go to Constantinople, and then they switch to horses and ride back through.
- [48:54]
Alex Wolfe
Why is that?
- [48:56]
Judith Jesch
Just for variety, I suppose. It's not really explained, but it seems to be the way it is.
- [49:02]
Jane Harrison
Well, it was called the Rome Road, so that would have been a route that was already well established by then.
- [49:07]
Judith Jesch
And at least two of the earls went on pilgrimage to Rome for Earl Thorford the mighty in the 11th century. And Halson, when he's appeasing God for killing St. Magnus. They both go on pilgrimage to Rome and come back.
- [49:20]
Alex Wolfe
Well, thank you very much. And here's the producer.
- [49:23]
Judith Jesch
Who would like tea or coffee?
- [49:24]
Jane Harrison
Tea, Tea, please.
- [49:26]
Judith Jesch
Tea?
- [49:26]
Melvin Bragg
Tea, please. Nothing.
- [49:28]
Alex Wolfe
I'll have some tea, please.
- [49:29]
Melvin Bragg
Thank you very much.
- [49:30]
Alex Wolfe
Well, thank you all very much. There's some very good stuff there.
- [49:33]
Jane Harrison
I could do another three hours in.
- [49:36]
Melvin Bragg
Our Time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson and it's a BBC Studios audio production.
- [49:44]
Judith Jesch
Do you know Paris? I did a bit of hiking there a few years ago. A village called Bly. It's not on the tourist trail. The Specialist by Matthew Broughton, the local GP has died unexpectedly. We need someone to fill the gap while we find a replacement.
- [50:03]
Alex Wolfe
We brought it on ourselves. Us devils love blind.
- [50:09]
Judith Jesch
A new limelight series for radio 4. Help me, doctor. Why did he choose me for this? Or they'll be deep down in there. There's so many still coming. We don't have the resources.
- [50:22]
Alex Wolfe
Good luck. Mr. Darting turns a demon. Are you scared, little girl?
- [50:29]
Judith Jesch
And the award winning writer of Tracks and Broken Colors. They were onto him. Mystery meat. Deranged Blood bank transfers. An investigation.
- [50:43]
Melvin Bragg
This is dark.
- [50:45]
Alex Wolfe
Hello?
- [50:46]
Judith Jesch
Get out.
- [50:47]
Melvin Bragg
Get out.
- [50:48]
Judith Jesch
Okay, okay. Get out.
- [50:50]
Jane Harrison
Get out.
- [50:50]
Melvin Bragg
Oh.
- [50:50]
Judith Jesch
Get out.
- [50:51]
Melvin Bragg
Get out of here.
- [50:55]
Judith Jesch
The Specialist on BBC sounds.