Before setting out on his crusade, King Sigurd gave up the Earldom of Orkney to Håkon Paulsson (r. 1105 – 26), son of the deposed Earl Paul. Håkon was soon joined by his cousin Magnus Erlendsson (r. 1105 – 16), the son of Earl Erlend. The earldom was back in the hands of its original ruling family. Earls Håkon and Magnus at first ruled Orkney and Shetland amicably enough, dispensing justice and rounding up and executing many Viking pirates who were disturbing the peace. However, in 1114 the pair fell out. Though it is not clear what the cause was, there was certainly a faction among the Orcadian chiefs that was not happy with joint rulership, and they had the ear of Earl Håkon. A meeting was arranged in April 1116 on the Orkney island of Egilsay, ostensibly to patch up a peace between the two. Each earl was to be allowed to attend with two ships full of retainers, but when Magnus saw that Håkon had turned up with eight ships he knew that he meant to kill him. Magnus first tried hiding but then gave himself up to Håkon and tried to save his life by offering to go into exile or even be imprisoned. The chiefs, however, wanted a decisive outcome and demanded that one of the earls be killed. ‘Better kill him then,’ said Håkon. ‘I don’t want an early death: I much prefer ruling over people and places.’ Magnus had a reputation for piety – he had been present with Magnus Barefoot at the Battle of the Menai Straits in 1098 but had refused to fight because he had no quarrel with anyone there, and had read psalms instead – and he prepared for his execution with all the humility and composure of someone who knew he was destined to become a saint. Magnus asked his executioner to strike him on the head because it was not appropriate that someone of his birth be beheaded like a common criminal. A cult soon developed around Magnus’s memory but, even though he was recognised as a saint in 1135, Håkon’s reputation was not tarnished at all by the killing. Orkneyinga Saga describes him as a popular ruler, an able administrator who brought firm peace and made good laws. For the Orcadians it probably seemed like an ideal arrangement, one earl in Heaven to care for their souls, and another on Earth to provide them with security and good government. Håkon, however, lived with a burden of guilt for the killing and later in his reign made the long pilgrimage to Jerusalem as penance.
In 1137, Magnus’s nephew Rognvald Kali Kolsson (r. 1137 – 58), who had been born and brought up in Norway, overthrew Earl Håkon’s son and successor Paul the Silent. Rognvald would have made a good PR man in the modern world: his given name was Kali and he adopted ‘Rognvald’ to associate himself more closely with earlier earls of Orkney, two of whom shared the same name. Among the promises that Rognvald made to the islanders to win popular support was that he would build a stone church more magnificent than any in Orkney to house Magnus’s relics. Rognvald immediately ordered work to begin at Kirkwall under the direction of his father Kol. The church was built in the weighty Norman Romanesque style, using red and yellow Orkney sandstone, by masons who had learned their skills on Durham Cathedral in northern England. The stylistic similarities between the two buildings are very obvious. Though it was still far from complete, St Magnus’s remains were enshrined in the cathedral when it was consecrated about fifteen years later. A skull with a prominent head wound that was found in a casket in a cavity in the cathedral’s walls in 1917 is generally accepted as Magnus’s. There was politics as well as piety in Rognvald’s actions. The recognition of Earl Magnus as a saint put the Earldom of Orkney on a par with the kingdoms of Norway and Denmark: by giving the earldom a church to rival anything in the Scandinavian kingdoms, Rognvald was making a powerful statement about his own status.
Rognvald further emulated the Scandinavian kings by leading his own crusade to the Holy Land with a fleet of fifteen ships in 1151, in the process establishing himself as a figure of Europe-wide stature. Rognvald returned to Orkney in time for Christmas in 1153, but the situation he found was probably an unwelcome reminder that he was not, after all, a king. Rognvald had left the earldom in the care of his junior co-earl Harald Maddadsson, the grandson of Earl Håkon Paulsson (r. 1139 – 1206), with whom he had ruled amicably since 1139. While Rognvald was away, King Eystein II became the first Norwegian king to visit Orkney since Magnus Barefoot’s death while he was on his way to plunder the east coasts of Scotland and England. In Orkney Eystein learned that Harald was at Thurso in Caithness with only a single ship. Eystein sent three ships to capture him: suspecting nothing Harald was taken without a fight. The price of Harald’s freedom was a ransom in gold and an oath of allegiance to the Norwegian crown. Worse followed when Harald’s cousin Erlend Haraldsson turned up to claim a share of the earldom, sparking a complex dynastic struggle that was only resolved with Erlend’s killing in 1161. Rognvald did not live to see the end of the dispute: he was killed in a skirmish with outlaws in Caithness in 1158 and was buried in the cathedral he had founded in Kirkwall. Miracles were soon being reported and in 1192, Rognvald was recognised as Orkney’s second saint.
The insecurity caused by the dispute between the earls was a heaven-sent opportunity for one of the last of the old-fashioned Viking freebooters, Svein Asleifarson, a chieftain from the small island of Gairsay in Orkney. In a career of piracy that lasted over thirty years, Svein raided the coasts of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, taking ships on the high seas, and plundering villages and (despite him being a Christian) monasteries too. Just as it had been for the earliest Vikings, piracy for him was a seasonal activity to be fitted into the cycles of the agricultural year:
This was how Svein used to live. Winter he would spend at home on Gairsay, where he entertained some eighty men at his own expense. His drinking hall was so big, there was nothing in Orkney to compare with it. In the spring he had more than enough to occupy him, with a great deal of seed to sow, which he saw to carefully himself. Then, when the job was done, he would go off plundering in the Hebrides and Ireland on what he called his ‘spring-trip’, then back home just after midsummer, where he stayed until the cornfields had been reaped and the grain was safely in. After that he would go off raiding again, and never came back until the first month of winter was ended. This he called his ‘autumn-trip’. Orkneyinga Saga (trans. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards, Hogarth Press, London, 1978).