Jarl

And he's entranced by Leif's stories of his home in Greenland.

And so one day he takes Leif aside and he asks if Leif would agree to be baptized and to return to Greenland as his special envoy and preach the gospel of Christianity to the people there and to convert his father, who is effectively the chieftain or the Jarl of Greenland, Eric the Red, to become Christian.

Now, Leif, he's not too pleased about this because he says this is going to be very hard.

It's going to be a hard ask for the Greenlanders who do seem quite wedded to the old Norse religion of Odin and Thor.

Gunnar and she had two daughters and but one son, and that son was Havelok, at this time seven years old.

Next to the king came our own lord, Jarl Sigurd, older than Gunnar, and his best counselor, though in the matter of sparing harmless and helpless church folk his advice was never listened to.

His hall was many miles from the king's place, southward down the coast.

Here too lived my father, Grim, with us in a good house which had been his father's before him.

Well-loved by Jarl Sigurd was Grim, who had ever been his faithful follower, and was the best seaman in all the town.

He was also the most skillful fisher on our coasts, being by birth a well-to-do freeman enough, and having boats of his own since he could first sail one.

At one time the jarl had made him steward of his house, but the sea drew him ever, and he waxed restless away from it.

The birds cry to one another, as I think, and say when the feast is but enough for those that have gathered.

Harold fitted out an expedition and devoted a whole summer to conquering the Vikings and extirpating the brood of pirates.

The country being gained, he offered it to his chief adviser, Rugnevalder, Jarl of Mori in Norway, father of Rollo of Normandy, who though refusing to go himself held it during his life as a family possession and sent Sigurd, his brother, there.

Sigurd, having organized his kingdom, crossed to the mainland and overran Caithness and Sutherland, then in common with the Orkneys and Shetlands, inhabited by the North Picts, a tribe of Gaelic extraction.

Sigurd's death was characteristic of his life.

He was wounded in the leg by the prominent teeth of his lifeless foe, and died from the effects.

Although his ally, Torstein Olafsson, gained Caithness and Sutherland on the direct failure of his issue, authority was again in abeyance, and the Vikings again commenced their ravages.

Rugenvalder next sent his son Einar, and from this time we may date the final establishment of the Jarls of Orkney, who henceforth owe a nominal allegiance to the King of Norway.

In the 11th century the leading Jarl accepted Christianity at the peremptory demand of his sovereign, and soon after they finally conquered Caithness and Sutherland, and wrested a recognition of their claim from Malcolm II of Scotland.