Orkneyinga saga

The Orkneyinga saga (Old Norse: [ˈorknˌœyjeŋɡɑ ˈsɑɣɑ]; Scottish Gaelic: Seanchas Arcach nan Lochlannach; also called the History of the Earls of Orkney and Jarls' Saga) is a 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 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 take-over is not in doubt although the role of the king 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 has been much debated by scholars.

There are several recurring themes in the Orkneyinga saga, including strife between brothers, relationships between the jarls and the Norwegian crown, and raiding in the Suðreyjar – the Hebrides and elsewhere. In part, the saga's purpose was to provide a history of the islands and enable its readers to "understand themselves through a knowledge of their origins" but even where its historical accuracy is lacking it provides modern scholars with insights into the motives of the writers and the politics of 13th century Orkney.

The original text of this Norse saga was written in the late twelfth century. It no longer exists. A new version was written in the early thirteenth century (three centuries after some of the earliest events it records) by an unknown Icelandic author who was probably associated with the cultural centre at Oddi. Orkneyinga saga belongs to the genre of "Kings' Sagas" within Icelandic saga literature, a group of histories of the kings of Norway, the best known of which is Heimskringla, written by Snorri Sturluson. Indeed, Snorri used Orkneyinga saga as one of his sources for Heimskringla which was compiled around 1230 (and then Heimskringla became in turn a source for later versions of the Orkneyinga saga).

As was generally the case with Icelandic language writing of this period, the aims of the saga were to provide a sense of social continuity through the telling of history combined with an entertaining narrative drive. The saga is thought to have been compiled from a number of sources, combining family pedigrees, praise poetry and oral legends with historical facts. In the case of the Orkneyinga saga the document outlines the lives of the earls of Orkney and how they came about their earldom. Woolf (2007) suggests that the task that the Icelandic compiler was faced with was not dissimilar to trying to write a "history of the Second World War on the basis of Hollywood movies". He also notes that a problem with medieval Icelandic historiography in general is the difficulty of fixing of a clear chronology based on stories created in a largely illiterate society in which "AD dating was probably unknown".

As the narrative approaches the period closer to the time it was written down, some historians have greater confidence in its accuracy. For example, there are significant family connections between Snorri Sturluson and Earl Harald Maddadsson (d. 1206) and the original saga document was probably written down at about the time of Harald's death.

Gudbrand Vigfússon (1887) identified several different components to the saga, which may have had different authors and date from different periods. These are:

A Danish translation dating to 1570 indicates that the original version of the saga ended with the death of Sweyn Asleifsson, who (according to the saga) was killed fighting in Dublin in 1171. Various additions were then added circa 1234-5 when a grandson of Asleifsson and a lawmaker called Hrafn visited Iceland. The oldest complete text is found in the late 14th century Flateyjarbók but the first translation into English did not appear until 1873.