Sound (the Straits of Gibraltar); is deserted by Eindridi, sails along Sarkland (Barbary), captures the Saracen ship Dromund, and burns her, sells the prisoners in Barbary, but releases their prince, coasts along Crete, lands at Acre, and bathes in Jordan on St. Lawrence’s Day, the 10th of August 1152.  After a visit to Jerusalem they come at last to Constantinople, where the Varangian Guard heartily welcome them, although Eindridi, who has arrived there before him, tries to set everyone against them; and Ragnvald finally returns to Bulgaria and Apulia and Rome, and thence overland to Denmark and Norway.[26]

When Ragnvald reached Norway in 1153, he heard what had been going on at home during his absence in the east.  King Eystein of Norway, King Harald Gilli’s son, had seized Jarl Harold Maddadson, then a young man of twenty, at Thurso, and made him swear allegiance to himself, letting him go on his paying three marks of gold as his ransom.  Then Maddad, his father, Earl of Athole, died; and the widowed Margret, Harold’s mother, came north to Orkney, still dangerous, still beautiful and attractive, especially to Gunni, Sweyn’s brother, by whom she had a child, for which Gunni was outlawed, a punishment which alienated his brother Sweyn from Harold Maddadson.[27]

Erlend, only son of Harald Slettmali, and really entitled to the whole earldom, obtained from his relative[28] King Malcolm, then a boy of under twelve, through his powerful kin, a grant of half of the earldom of Caithness jointly with Harold Maddadson, who objected to give him half the Orkney jarldom unless King Eystein confirmed the grant.  Erlend then went to Norway to get it confirmed.  Meantime Sweyn seized a ship of Harold’s; but, to help Erlend, tried to reconcile Harold to him, as King Eystein (said Erlend) had given him half of Orkney.  And the half given to him was, he added, Harold’s half.[29]

Sweyn and Erlend then force Harold, who had then just come of age, to agree to give up this half, under duress, in order to secure his own liberty, and the Orkney folk agree that Erlend shall have this half, Ragnvald having the other.  This, Sweyn knew, Harold would not stand, and, as he drank at a feast with his house-carles in his castle in Gairsay,[30] the wily Viking said, slily rubbing his nose, “I think Harold is now on his voyage to the isles,” a shrewd surmise which proved correct in spite of the midwinter storm then prevailing.  Harold’s expedition, however, failed, and he went back to Caithness to raise a force to kill a man called Erlend the Young who had seized his mother Margret and taken her by force to Shetland, where he fortified Mousa Broch[31] and held her prisoner there.  After a siege, Harold, who had followed them, at last allowed their marriage, Erlend the Young becoming his ally, and going that summer with his wife and Harold to Norway.  When that was heard in the Orkneys, Sweyn and Earl Erlend went raiding off the east coast of Scotland and afterwards a-viking to North Berwick, and got much plunder, and Harold returned in the autumn to Orkney.  In the winter Jarl Ragnvald came back from the east to Turfness (Burghead), whence he went about Yule 1153 to Orkney, to find that the Orkney-men want himself and Erlend, not himself and Harold, as joint jarls over them.