Earl Thorfinn of Orkney and the forgotten battle of 1058

Tools

Licence, Tom (2025) Earl Thorfinn of Orkney and the forgotten battle of 1058. Early Medieval England and its Neighbours, 51. ISSN 3033-3679

[thumbnail of earl-thorfinn-of-orkney-and-the-forgotten-battle-of-1058]

Preview

PDF (earl-thorfinn-of-orkney-and-the-forgotten-battle-of-1058) - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (314kB) | Preview

Abstract

Verses by Arnórr ‘jarls’-poet’, preserved in Orkneyinga saga, describe a battle in which Earl Thorfinn of Orkney fought the English south of the Isle of Man. The thirteenth-century saga-author associated these verses with a campaign supposedly fought in the 1030s or 1040s, but this account is doubtful. Turning to the Norwegian expedition of 1058, this article considers whether the verses might originally have referred to that campaign and later become linked with a different story. New readings of the key stanzas are proposed, and a new sequence, with consequences impacting on the chronology and circumstances of Thorfinn’s life and death. There are ramifications for discussions touching the saga tradition, Arnórr’s career, Malcolm (Máel Coluim) III Canmore’s career, and his marriage to Ingibjorg.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Funding information: The research in this paper was facilitated by the Leverhulme Trust’s award of a Major Research Fellowship (MRF-2021-078), to fund the three-year project, ‘The Earl who became King: the Rise of Harold Godwinson’.
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Medieval History
Related URLs:	https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/i...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	24 Jan 2025 01:37
Last Modified:	30 Jan 2025 01:41
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/98313
DOI:

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Actions (login required)

View Item