History of Orkney - Norwegian Rule

Norwegian Rule

Vikings having made the islands the headquarters of their buccaneering expeditions (carried out indifferently against their own Norway and the coasts and isles of Scotland), Harold Hårfagre ("Fair Hair") subdued the rovers in 875 and annexed both Orkney and Shetland to Norway. They remained under the rule of Norwegian earls until 1231, when the line of the jarls became extinct. In that year the earldom of Caithness was granted to Magnus, second son of the Earl of Angus, whom the king of Norway apparently confirmed in the title. Recent studies from the field of population genetics reveal a significant percentage of Norse ethnic heritage—up to one third of the Y chromosomes on the islands are derived from western Norwegian sources, as opposed to Shetland, where over half the male lineage is Norwegian.

Some jarls of Orkney:

• Ragnvald Eysteinsson, -890
• Turf-Einar, -910
• Thorfinn Turf-Einarsson, Earl of Orkney, -963
• Erlend II
• Hakon Paulsson, 1103-
• Saint Magnus, 1108–1117

There is some evidence that Henry Sinclair, 1st Earl of Orkney may have sailed to Newfoundland in 1398, returning in 1400.