The two jarls met in battle in the Pentland Firth, off Rautharbiorg or
Rattar Brough in Caithness, east of Dunnet Head, Kalf Arnason with
his six ships standing out of the fight. Thorfinn had sixty ships,
smaller, and, save Thorfinn's own, lower in the waist than those of
his enemy, who thus easily boarded them, and then attacked Thorfinn.
Surrounded and boarded on both sides, Thorfinn cut his ship free and
rowed to land. Arrived there, he removed his seventy dead, and all
his wounded. Next he persuaded Kalf Arnason to join him with his six
ships, and renewed and won the fight, though Ragnvald himself escaped
to Norway.[18]
Sailing thence in 1046 with one ship and a picked crew, Ragnvald
surrounded Thorfinn,[19] who was wintering in Mainland of Orkney, and
set fire to the Hall at Orphir in which he was, but the earl tore
out a panel at the back, and, escaping through it with his young wife
Ingibjorg in his arms, rowed in the dark over to Caithness, where
he remained in hiding among his friends, all in Orkney believing him
dead. Ragnvald then seized all the islands, and lived at Kirkwall.
But, while Ragnvald was in Little Papey--now Papa Stronsay--to fetch
malt for Yuletide, Thorfinn returned, and surrounded the house in
which Ragnvald was, by night; and, on his escaping by leaping through
the besiegers in priestly disguise, Thorfinn's men followed him, and,
led by his lapdog's barking, discovered him among the rocks by the
sea, where Thorkel Fostri slew him, Thorfinn meanwhile annihilating
his following, save one man.
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