The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

74 THE HIGHLANDERS [paPxT r
men and women fled to the deserts and woods, and filled the
country with lamentation. Some were driven before the Norwegians
and made slaves.
" Thus says Arnor, the earl's skald :
" '
The dwellings were all destroyed,
When he burnt every where, (that day
Danger and death was not awanting,)
As among dry reeds the red flames
Sprung into the kingdom
Of the Scots. The Great
Slayer revenged himself
On the Scots. In one summer
Three times were they
Overcome by the Prince.'
" After this Earl Thorfinn returned to his ships, subjugating
the country everywhere in his progress." ^
The Norwegians thus obtained effectual possession of the
wegLa
°'^"
greater part of the north of Scotland, and their king-
dom, which by the talents and energy of Thorfinn
Kingdom in • •
.11 r i
tiie north of thev wcre enabled to retam lor thirty years, was un-
A.p. io3iparalleled
m its extent and duration by any previous
or subsequent conquest. Besides the Orkneys, which
was their original seat, their possessions in Scotland consisted
now of the Hebrides and of nine of the great districts or earldoms
of Scotland, which, as far as can be gathered from the Sagas,
appear to have been those of Caithness, Ness, Sutherland, Ross,
Moray, Garmoran, Buchan, Marr, and Angus ; while to the
Scots there remained nothing north of the Firths of Forth
and Clyde, except the districts of Fyfe, Strathern,
Gowr)%
Menteith,
and Lennox, with the two northern districts
and Argyll.2
of AthoU
'
Orkneyinga Saga, Flatey Book.— he has adopted in consequence of find-
Tighernac, Annals of Ulster. ing the most remarkable coincidence
It will be observed that the Author between the Irish Annals and the
has here altogether departed from the Norse Sagas, both of which agree in
generally received history, and that in these particulars,
place of Malcolm II., said to have
reigned thirty years, he has placed
ftt-o Malcolms of different families,
- All the Xorse Sagas are unani-
mous as to the extraordinary extent of
the first of whom reigned twenty-six Tliorfian's conquest.
and the latter four years. This view