half given to him was, he added, Harold's half.[29]

Sweyn and Erlend then force Harold, who had then just come of age, to
agree to give up this half, under duress, in order to secure his own
liberty, and the Orkney folk agree that Erlend shall have this half,
Ragnvald having the other. This, Sweyn knew, Harold would not stand,
and, as he drank at a feast with his house-carles in his castle in
Gairsay,[30] the wily Viking said, slily rubbing his nose, "I think
Harold is now on his voyage to the isles," a shrewd surmise which
proved correct in spite of the midwinter storm then prevailing.
Harold's expedition, however, failed, and he went back to Caithness to
raise a force to kill a man called Erlend the Young who had seized his
mother Margret and taken her by force to Shetland, where he fortified
Mousa Broch[31] and held her prisoner there. After a siege, Harold,
who had followed them, at last allowed their marriage, Erlend the
Young becoming his ally, and going that summer with his wife and
Harold to Norway. When that was heard in the Orkneys, Sweyn and Earl
Erlend went raiding off the east coast of Scotland and afterwards
a-viking to North Berwick, and got much plunder, and Harold returned
in the autumn to Orkney. In the winter Jarl Ragnvald came back from
the east to Turfness (Burghead), whence he went about Yule 1153 to
Orkney, to find that the Orkney-men want himself and Erlend, not
himself and Harold, as joint jarls over them.

Harold had then to fight for his own hand; and, finding that Earl
Erlend and Sweyn were in Shetland, he sought them out but missed them,
and afterwards, though he hated Jarl Ragnvald, tried to get him on his
side.

We come to another Sutherland event, historically of the first
importance to us, in 1154.[32] "Jarl Ragnvald was then up the country
in Sutherland, and sat there at a wedding at which he gave his only
daughter and child Ingirid or Ingigerd, to Eric Stagbrellir," who, as
we have seen, as Audhild's son, had been brought up in Kildonan.
"News came to him at once that Earl Harold was come into Thurso.
Jarl Ragnvald, rode down with a great company to Thurso from the
bridal.[33] Eric was Harold's kinsman and tried to reconcile the
earls."

There was a fight in Thurso between their followers, Thorbiorn Klerk
instigating it, no doubt because after Eric's marriage with Ingigerd,
Ragnvald's daughter, he knew he could not hope to force Eric to give
up the Moddan lands in Strathnavern a