Further, Valthiof, Sweyn's elder
brother, was drowned in the roost of the West-firth, while rowing
south to Jarl Paul's Yule Feast. Sweyn Asleifarson, as he was ever
afterwards called, then went to Paul's Hall at Orphir to complain of
Olvir Rosta. The news of his brother's death, which arrived during
the feast, was considerately withheld from him, and he was greatly
honoured there; but he roused the jarl's anger by slaying Sweyn
Breast-rope, the jarl's forecastle-man, at Orphir, not indeed so much
for the murder, as because Sweyn had fled and did not come to submit
himself after it to the jarl, and so offended him.[12]
Then follow the stories, well worth reading in the Saga itself, of
the raising and lowering of the sails on Ragnvald's ships and of the
mutiny of Paul's followers, and of the dowsing of the beacons on the
Fair Isle by Uni, Ragnvald's ally, of Ragnvald's landing in Westray,
of his suppression of all opposition to him, of the spies at Paul's
Thing, of Sweyn's junction of forces with Ragnvald, of Sweyn's visit
to Margret at Athole, and his dramatic kidnapping of Jarl Paul while
hunting otters near Westness[13] in the Isle of Rousay, in Orkney,
and of the jarl's deportation by Sweyn first to Dufeyra and thence via
Ekkjals-bakki[14] to Athole to his sister Margret, who receives him
with the utmost show of cordiality, and finally of Paul's abdication
in favour of Margret's second son, Harold Maddadson, then a boy
of five years of age, with the instructions to Sweyn to tell the
Orkneymen that Paul himself was blinded, or, worse still, maimed,
so that his friends should not seek him out, and restore him to his
jarldom.
Pages:
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107