page_title: Thorfinn the Mighty
section_title: Chronology
hierarchical_section_title: Thorfinn the Mighty / Interpretations / Chronology
caption_attribution_description: English: Kringlublaðið [the Kringla leaf] is a vellum manuscript leaf, dated c. 1260, the only one to survive from a manuscript called Kringla that was destroyed in the 1728 great fire of Copenhagen. Kringla was well known as the best manuscript of the great set of historical sagas known as Heimskringla, written by the thirteenth-century writer and statesman Snorri Sturluson (1178-1241). The leaf was found in the Royal Library in Stockholm, and is likely to have been in Stockholm from the late seventeenth century. During his state visit in Iceland in 1975 King Carl Gustav XVI presented the manuscript leaf to the Icelandic people for preservation in the National Library. The text to be found on the leaf is from Óláfs saga helga [the saga of King Ólafur the Saint], the longest of Heimskringla's 16 sagas about the kings of Scandinavia.
context_page_description: Thorfinn Sigurdsson, also known as Thorfinn the Mighty, was an 11th-century Earl of Orkney. He was the youngest of five sons of Earl Sigurd Hlodvirsson and the only one resulting from Sigurd's marriage to a daughter of Malcolm II of Scotland. He ruled alone as earl for about a third of the time that he held the title and jointly with one or more of his brothers or with his nephew Rögnvald Brusason for the remainder. Thorfinn married Ingibiorg Finnsdottir, daughter of Finn Arnesson, Jarl of Halland.
  The Heimskringla of Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson, and the anonymous compiler of the Orkneyinga Saga wrote that Thorfinn was the most powerful of all the earls of Orkney and that he ruled substantial territories beyond the Northern Isles. A sizeable part of the latter saga's account concerns his wars with a "King of Scots" named Karl Hundason whose identity is uncertain. In his later years he went on a pilgrimage to Rome and he was instrumental in making Orkney and Shetland part of mainstream Christendom. On his death in the latter half of the 11th century he was followed as earl by his sons Paul and Erlend.
context_section_description: The chronology of Thorfinn's life is problematic, the dating of his assumption of the earldom being an example. The Heimskringla states that Thorfinn was 5 years old when his father Sigurd was killed at Clontarf, reliably dated to 1014. "When Thorfinn came of age he asked Earl Einar for a third of the islands" and it is clear from the text of the Orkneyinga saga that Einar, Brusi and Thorfinn were joint earls for a period.  Muir (2005) states that Einar died in October 1020 but if Thorfinn was five years old in 1014 this would have made him only eleven by then. A rather earlier birthdate for Thorfinn is thus implied, with a coming of age c. 1016 at about the time of Sumarlidi's death. Similarly, Thorfinn is often stated as dying c. 1064, although Woolf (2007) states that "there is no reason why a date in the late 1050s is not just as credible."
  St Olaf's saga states that Thorfinn "took the earldom when he was five winters old, and he ruled for more than sixty winters" although this implies a very late death date of 1074. One version of the Icelandic Annals has his rule lasting 52 years, providing the more commonly quoted year of death as c. 1065.
caption: One of two surviving pages of an early version of the  Heimskringla known as the "Kringla leaf", which is kept in the National and University Library of Iceland. The text is part of Óláfs saga helga.[63]
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