ered.
After Jarl Sigurd's death, his son Guthorm ruled for one winter, and
died without issue, so that Sigurd's line came to an end. When Jarl
Ragnvald of Maeri heard of his nephew's death, he sent his son Hallad
over from Norway to Hrossey, as the mainland of Orkney was then
called, and King Harald gave him the title of jarl. Failing in his
efforts to put down the piracy of the Vikings, who continued their
slayings and plunderings, Hallad, the last of the purely Norse jarls,
resigned his jarldom, and returned ignominiously to Norway. In the
absence at war of Hrolf the Ganger, who became Duke of Normandy and
was an ancestor of the kings of England, two others of Ragnvald's
sons, Thorir and Hrollaug, were summoned to meet their father. At
this meeting it was decided that neither of these should go to Orkney,
Thorir's prospects in Norway being good, and Hrollaug's future lying
in Iceland, where, it was said, he was to found a great family. Then
Einar, the Jarl's youngest son by a thrall or slave woman, and thus
not of pure Norse lineage, asked whether he might go, offering as an
inducement to his father that, if he went, he would thus never be seen
by him again. He was told that the sooner he went, and the longer he
stayed away, the better his father would be pleased. A galley, well
equipped, was given to him, and about the year 891 King Harald Harfagr
conferred on him the title of Jarl of Orkney and Shetland, for which
he sailed. On his arrival there, he attacked Kalf Skurfa and Thorir
Treskegg,[15] the pirate Viking leaders, and defeated and slew them
both. He then took possession of the lands of the jarldom; and, from
having taught the people of Turfness in Moray the use of turf or peat
for fuel, was known thenceforward as Torf-Einar. He is said to have
been "a tall man, ugly, with one eye, but very keen-sighted,"[16] a
faculty which he was soon to use.
When Jarl Ragnvald of Maeri, the first of the Orkney jarls, was killed
in Norway by two of Harald Harfagr's sons, one of them, Halfdan Halegg
or Long-shanks fled from their father's vengeance to Orkney. When
Halfdan landed, Torf-Einar took refuge in Scotland, but returned in
force, and after defeating Halfdan--who had usurped the jarldom--in
North Ronaldsay Firth, spied him as a fugitive, in hiding, far off on
Rinarsey or Rinansey (Ninian's Island) now North Ronaldsay, and seized
him, cut a blood-eagle on his back, severed his ribs and pulled out
his lungs, and, aft
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