[15] Such is one version of the story; the other is a more
sinister tale, that his half-sister Margret cast Jarl Paul into a
dungeon and had him murdered, and, so far as the Saga relates, he left
no issue.
Sweyn then returns to Orkney and tells his version of the affair to
the bishop, the bishop to Ragnvald, and Ragnvald to the "good men" or
_lendirmen_ of Orkney, who express themselves satisfied, and Ragnvald
builds the Cathedral he had vowed to St. Magnus in Kirkwall--a strange
medley of craftiness, murder, and piety.
Next we have the vivid scene[16] of the arrival from Athole at
Knarstead near Scapa, in his blue cope and quaintly cut beard, on a
fine winter's day, of John, Bishop, probably of Glasgow, and formerly
tutor to King David of Scotland, on whom Jarl Ragnvald waits like a
page, and who passes on to Egilsay to Bishop William the Old; and the
two clerics propose to Jarl Ragnvald that Harald Maddadson, who
had already been created sole Earl of Caithness, shall have Paul
Thorfinnson's half of the Orkney jarldom, an arrangement which
Ragnvald accepts, and which is ratified by the people of Orkney and
of Caithness. In due course the boy arrives in 1139, and the tutor
selected for him is, of all others, Frakark's grandson, Thorbiorn
Klerk, who had married Sweyn Asleifarson's sister, Ingirid, and who
was "one of the boldest of men, and the most unfair, overbearing man
in most things,"[17] differing indeed but little in character from
Sweyn himself "who was a wise man and foresighted about many things;
and an unfair overbearing man and reckless towards others," while they
were both said to be men "of power and weight," and at this time they
were fast friends.
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