The Isles of Orkney and Shetland and the whole of the Sudreyar
or Hebrides, however, owed allegiance, whether their jarls admitted
it or not, to the Crown of Norway, and the Scottish kings had no
authority over them.[40] Moreover, the Northmen--Danes and Norsemen
and Gallgaels--held the western seas from the Butt of Lewis to the
Isle of Man, and they had severed the connection between the Scots
of Ulster and the Scots of Argyll. The latter had thus been forced to
move eastwards, in order to avoid constant raids by the Irish Danes
and Norsemen and the Gallgaels, who thus possessed themselves of all
the coast of Scotland then known as Airergaithel or Argyll, which
extended up to Ross and Assynt, west of the Drumalban watershed.
Of the next nine centuries from 1000 to the present time it is
proposed to deal with the first two hundred and seventy years only,
which, with the preceding century and a half, form a chapter of
Scottish history complete in itself. The narrative, as already stated,
will be based largely upon the great Stories or Tales known as the
_Orkneyinga, St. Magnus'_, and _Hakonar Sagas_, and also upon Scottish
and English chronicles and records so far as they throw their fitful
light upon the northern counties of Scotland, and especially upon
Caithness and Sutherland, during the dark periods between these Sagas.
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