arrangement which Ragnvald accepts, and which is ratified by the people of Orkney and of Caithness.  In due course the boy arrives in 1139, and the tutor selected for him is, of all others, Frakark’s grandson, Thorbiorn Klerk, who had married Sweyn Asleifarson’s sister, Ingirid, and who was “one of the boldest of men, and the most unfair, overbearing man in most things,"[17] differing indeed but little in character from Sweyn himself “who was a wise man and foresighted about many things; and an unfair overbearing man and reckless towards others,” while they were both said to be men “of power and weight,” and at this time they were fast friends.

Then follows the story of Frakark’s Burning, one of the most purely Sutherland tales in the whole Saga.[18]

Sweyn, to avenge on that lady and her grandson, Olvir Rosta, the burning of his own father Olaf and of his house in Duncansby, openly asked Jarl Ragnvald for “two ships well fitted and manned,” sailed to the Moray Firth, the Breithifiorthr or Broadfirth, as it was then called, “and took the north-west wind to Dufeyra, a market town in Scotland.  Thence he sailed into the land along the shore of Moray and to Ekkjals-bakki.  Thence he fared next of all to Athole to Earl Maddad, and lay at the place called Elgin and obtained guides, who knew the paths over fells and wastes whither he wished to go.[19] Thence he fared the upper way over fells and woods, above all places where men dwelt, and came out in Strath Helmsdale near the middle of Sutherland.  But Olvir and his men had scouts out everywhere where they thought that strife was to be looked for from the Orkneys; but in this way they did not look for warriors.  So they were not ware of the host, before Sweyn and his men had come to the slope at the back of Frakark’s homestead.  There came against them Olvir the Unruly with sixty men; then they fell to battle at once, and there was a short struggle.  Olvir and his men gave way towards the homestead; for they could not get to the wood.  Then there was a great slaughter of men, but Olvir fled away up to Helmsdale Water and swam across the river and so up on to the fell:  and thence he fared to Skotland’s Firth,[20] and so out to the Southern Isles.  And he is out of the story.  But when Olvir drew off, Sweyn and his men fared straight up to the house, and plundered it of everything; but, after that, they burnt the homestead and all those men and women who were inside it.  And there Frakark lost her life.  Sweyn and his men did there the greatest harm in Sutherland, ere they fared to their ships.”

Such is this Sutherland tale of Sweyn.  According to the current notions of blood feud, he merely discharged the solemn duty of avenging his father’s burning and death by a like burning and slaying of the household of his father’s murderers.  But his acts were wholly unjustifiable by the law of the time, as he had already accepted an atonement by were-geld from Earl Ottar.