Earl Harold at
first would not interfere; and though Magnus son of Havard Gunni's son
insisted, Earl Harold again declined to pursue Thorbiorn to the death,
but left Magnus to besiege him at Asgrim's Ergin or Shielings,[42] now
Assary, near Loch Calder, where, by setting fire to the hut in which
he was, his pursuers succeeded in smoking him out and killing him.
They then brought the jarl's body from Force to Thurso, and thence
took it over to Orkney, to be buried in the choir of St. Magnus'
Cathedral, which he had founded and built in his uncle's honour.
"Jarl Ragnvald's death was a very great grief, for he was very much
beloved there in the Isles, and far and wide elsewhere." It took place
on the 20th August 1158.
"He had been a very great helper," the Saga adds, "to many men,
bountiful of money, gentle, and a steadfast friend; a great man for
feats of strength, and a good skald" or poet. In 1192 he was canonised
as St. Ragnvald[43] with, it is said, full Papal sanction. Save during
Harold Maddadson's minority he was never Earl of Caithness, and then
had the title only as guardian of his ward Harold.
Ragnvald left a daughter, his only surviving child, Ingirid or
Ingigerd, whom as we have seen, Audhild's son, Eric Stagbrellir had
married four years before her father's death; and their children, who
come into the story afterwards, were three sons, Harald Ungi or Harald
the Young, Magnus nick-named Mangi, and Ragnvald, and three daughters,
Ingibiorg, Elin[44] and Ragnhild, all of whom, so far as the Saga
relates, died childless save Ragnhild, whose son by her second husband
Gunni, was Snaekoll Gunni's son, who about 1230 claimed the Ragnvald
lands in Orkney from Earl John, son of Earl Harold Maddadson,[45]
and complained that Earl John was keeping him out of his rights in
Caithness to Ragnvald's share of the earldom lands there.
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