The Orkneyinga Saga

·51 min·5 clips

Þóra serves Haakon after Magnus's killing and asks him to carry her son to church.

1. In Our Time: History discusses the Orkneyinga Saga, the early-13th-century Icelandic account of Orkney from about 900 to about 1200. 2. Judith Yesh, Jane Harrison, and Alex Wolfe join the host as a professor of Viking studies, an archaeologist, and a history lecturer who can read the saga against places and artefacts. 3. The episode asks why Orkney mattered as both a political prize and a route into the Norse world. 4. Alex Wolfe says the saga centers on internecine strife among earls, brothers, cousins, and supporters who change sides. 5. He explains that Orkney could be shared, so Paul and Erlend are described as brothers who both held the earldom after 1066. 6. Jane Harrison describes Orkney as a maritime hub linking Norway, Shetland, Caithness, Scotland, the Hebrides, and the Irish Sea. 7. She says raiding Vikings could stop there, restock, and recruit men before moving on to England or the western islands. 8. Harrison stresses that Orkney is fertile, with harbours, landing places, bays, and farmland that made settlement as attractive as raiding. 9. She contrasts 60-to-70-man longships with larger cargo ships that carried grain, dried fish, timber, and fishing gear. 10. She adds that, when tensions rose, men could sleep on ships roped together overnight. 11. Judith Yesh reads an Old Norse stanza on Thorfinn the Mighty and explains that he killed a nephew, went to Rome, and was absolved by the Pope. 12. Yesh then reads the Magnus and Þóra passage, where Haakon Pálsson is confronted after Magnus's killing and told, "Bury your son where you like." 13. She uses the prose scene to show the saga's paratactic style, with repeated "and" clauses and shifts between past and present tense. 14. She says Old Norse poetry depends on strict metre, alliteration, rhyme, and kennings that do not transfer cleanly into English. 15. Alex Wolfe says the saga is least trustworthy in its early mythological sections and strongest in the 12th-century material. 16. He gives Caithness place-names and routes, especially the killing of Rognvald Kali Kolson at Forsey, as examples of where the geography can be traced on a map. 17. The discussion turns to freehold rights, farmers, retinues, feasting, gift-giving, and hall culture as forms of authority. 18. Jane Harrison adds that excavated halls, silver brooches, combs, steatite bowls, and ship rivets provide material evidence for farming, fishing, and status. 19. The tone is scholarly but conversational, with three specialists answering direct questions and two readings from the saga. 20. Listeners interested in Viking history, medieval Scotland, or saga literature will get the most from it, while people wanting a fast-moving plot may skip it.

As heard by us

A grounded look at Orkney's places, rivalries, Christianity, and the saga's cool treatment of violence.

The Orkneyinga Saga is made unusually tangible through the practical business of power: an earl arriving with people to house and feed, farmers' favors being called in, and routes traced between major settlements, landing places, and hall sites.

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Why you'd press play

You get an earl's logistical headache, a red-and-gold sandstone cathedral, and sainthood achieved through a cousin's killing.

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