The Highland Battles by Chris Peers

Author:Chris Peers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Medieval
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

The tables are turned

Paul was well aware that he would not be secure as long as his rival was alive, and he ordered work to begin on a system of warning beacons on outlying islands, so that he would receive warning if an enemy fleet approached from Shetland. He also raised troops throughout Orkney and kept them under arms until the beginning of winter, when he demobilised them on learning that Rognvald had returned to Norway. Meanwhile Olvir was still active, launching hit and run attacks at various points around the coast. In the course of one of these raids Olaf Hrolfsson of Gairsay, who had commanded one of Paul’s ships at Tankerness, was trapped in a house and burned to death while visiting friends at Duncansby. Olaf ’s son was the notorious pirate Svein Asleifsson (Asleif was his mother), who would later exact his revenge by killing Olvir’s grandmother Frakokk in a very similar hall-burning attack. Few of the participants at Tankerness were destined to die peacefully. That Christmas Svein Asleifsson got into a drunken quarrel with Svein ‘Breast Rope’, the hero of the battle, over a drinking game, the result of which was that the latter was fatally wounded with an axe blow to the head. Many people were apparently glad to see the back of Breast Rope, who had a reputation as a bully, but Svein Asleifsson fled to the Hebrides, and Earl Paul pronounced him an outlaw.

In the spring Kol and Rognvald put their plan into action. With the assistance of their friends, including King Harald, who provided a longship, they mustered a fleet of fourteen vessels in Shetland: six large longships, five smaller ones, and three cargo ships. On his father’s advice Rognvald also made a bid for divine favour, promising to build a magnificent cathedral at Kirkwall in honour of his uncle, St Magnus, if he obtained the victory. Spies from Orkney had obviously revealed the existence of Paul’s early warning system, and Kol then set out to neutralise it by a clever stratagem. He took a group of small vessels to within sight of Fair Isle, where the northernmost of Paul’s beacons had been built, and raised their sails to half mast, while having the crews row in the opposite direction to the way the wind was blowing, so that although they appeared to be moving rapidly under sail they were in fact stationary. Then after a while he raised the sails fully, so that to an observer at a distance it would appear that they had risen above the horizon and so must have moved closer. The idea was that those manning the beacon on Fair Isle would mistake them for a fleet of larger ships approaching fast from Shetland. The scheme succeeded, and a Fair Isle farmer named Dagfinn Hlodvisson duly lit the fire. His counterpart on North Ronaldsay, Thorstein Rognusson, saw it and followed suit, and soon all the beacons through Orkney were ablaze. Paul hastily mustered his army, but

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