A few other persons are referred to in the Sagas as connected with Caithness at this time.  In the Landnamabok (1.6.5) we find Swart Kell, or Cathal Dhu, mentioned as having gone from Caithness and taken land in settlement in Mydalr in Iceland, and his son was Thorkel, the father of Glum, who took Christendom when he was already old.

About this time also, as appears from the Saga of Thorgisl,[31] there was an Earl Anlaf or Olaf in Caithness, who had a sister, named Gudrun, whom Swart Ironhead, a pirate, sought in marriage.  But Swart was killed in holmgang, or duel, by Thorgisl, who cut off his head and married Gudrun, by whom he had a son called Thorlaf.  Thorgisl then tired of Gudrun, and gave her to Thorstan the White on the plea that he himself wished to go and look after his estate in Iceland, which he did.  Can this Anlaf be the original of the legendary Alane, thane of Sutherland, whom Macbeth, according to Sir Robert Gordon in his Genealogie of the Earles of Southerland,[32] put to death, and whose son, Walter, Malcolm Canmore is said to have created first Earl?  Or was Alane, like others, a creation of Sir Robert’s inventive brain?  He was certainly no earl of the present Sutherland line; neither was Walter.[33]

To this period also belongs the romantic story of Barth or Bard, son of Helgi and Helga Ulfs-datter told in the Flatey Book, and translated at page 369 of the Appendix to Sir George Dasent’s Rolls Edition of the Orkneyinga Saga, which is shortly as follows.

In the time of Sigurd Hlodverson, Ulf the Bad, of Sanday in Orkney, murdered Harald of North Ronaldsay, and seized his lands in the absence of Harald’s son Helgi, a gentle Viking, on a cruise.  On his return, Helgi, to revenge his father’s death, slew Bard, Ulf’s next of kin, in fight.  Jarl Sigurd blames him for this and for not letting him settle the feud himself, and Helgi sells all he has, and goes to Ulf’s house and takes his daughter, Helga, away.  Ulf follows them up by sea with a superior force, defeats Helgi off Caithness, and he jumps overboard with Helga and swims to shore, where a poor farmer, Thorfinn, as Helgi had always been kind in his “vikings” to such as he was, has the wedding at his house, and shelters the pair there till on Ulf’s death two years after they can return to Orkney with Bard or Barth, their infant son.  At twelve years of age, Barth desires to fare away “to those peoples who believe in the God of Heaven Himself,” and fares far away accordingly.  Barth works for a farmer, and works so well that his flocks increase, and gets a cow for himself as a reward, but meets a beggar who begs the cow of him “for Peter’s thanks.”  Each year a cow is the reward of Barth’s work, and each year he is asked for the cow, and gives her up, until he has given three cows.  Then St. Peter (for the beggar was no other than he) passes his hands over Barth, and gives him good luck, and sets a book upon his shoulders; and he saw far and wide over many lands, and over all Ireland, and he was baptized, and became a holy hermit and a bishop in Ireland.  Such is the Norse story of Barth, to whom the first Cathedral in Dornoch was said to have been dedicated.  It is far more prettily told in the Saga.