page_title: Orkneyinga saga
section_title: Sigurd the Stout
hierarchical_section_title: Orkneyinga saga / Narrative / Sigurd the Stout
context_page_description: The Orkneyinga saga is a historical narrative of the history of the Orkney and Shetland islands and their relationship with other local polities, particularly Norway and Scotland. The saga has "no parallel in the social and literary record of Scotland" and is "the only medieval chronicle to have Orkney as the central place of action". The main focus of the work is the line of jarls who ruled the Earldom of Orkney, which constituted the Norðreyjar or Northern Isles of both Orkney and Shetland and there are frequent references to both archipelagoes throughout.
  The narrative commences with a brief mythical ancestry tale and then proceeds to outline the Norse take-over of the Norðreyjar by Harald Fairhair – the former event is not in doubt although the role of the latter King of Norway is no longer accepted by historians as a likelihood. The saga then outlines, with varying degrees of detail, the lives and times of the many jarls who ruled the islands between the 9th and 13th centuries. The extent to which the earlier sections in particular can be considered genuine history rather than fiction have been much debated by scholars.
context_section_description: The death of Earl Sigurd Hlodvirsson (980–1014) is the earliest known contemporary reference to the earldom of Orkney. The 12th-century Irish source, the Cogadh Gaedhil re Gallaibh, records the events of the Battle of Clontarf in 1014. The "foreigners and Leinstermen" were led by Brodir of the Isle of Man and Sigurd, and the battle lasted all day, but the Irishmen ultimately drove back their enemies into the sea. His death is corroborated by the Annals of Ulster, which record that amongst the dead was "Siuchraid son of Loduir, iarla Innsi Orcc" (i.e. of Sigurd, son of Hlodvir, Earl of Orkney).
  According to the Orkneyinga saga, the Northern Isles were Christianised by King Olaf Tryggvasson in 995 when he stopped at South Walls on his way from Ireland to Norway. The King summoned jarl Sigurd and said "I order you and all your subjects to be baptised. If you refuse, I'll have you killed on the spot and I swear I will ravage every island with fire and steel." Unsurprisingly, Sigurd agreed and the islands became Christian at a stroke. However, when the sagas were written down Orkney had been Christian for 200 years or more and the conversion tale itself has been described as "blatantly unhistorical". When the Norse arrived in the Northern Isles they would have found organised Christianity already thriving there, although there is no mention of this at all in the sagas.
caption: King Olaf Tryggvason of Norway, who is said to have forcibly Christianised Orkney.[41] Painting by Peter Nicolai Arbo.
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