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Around the turn of the 13th century, an unknown Icelander created the Orkneying saga, the story of arguably the most important strategically of all the islands in the british viking world.
This was a time when Earls of Orkney controlled Shetland, Orkney and Caithness, from which they could raid the irish and british coasts from Dublin around to Lindisfarne.
And the saga mixes myth with history, bringing to life the places on those islands where vikings met, drank, made treaties, told stories, became saints and murdered or were murdered.
With me to discuss the Orkneyinga saga are Judith yes, professor of viking studies at the University of Nottingham, Jane Harrison, archaeologist and research associate at Oxford and Newcastle universities, and Alex Wolf, senior lecturer in history at the University of St Andrews.
Alex, can you give us an idea of what the saga covers and which period?
Well, the saga, as you say, written in Iceland in the early 13th century, but apart from a very brief mythological beginning, which basically is part of the mythological origin of the Norwegians, it covers the history of Orkney from about 900 to about 1200.
And it focuses particularly on the internecine strife between the different members of the family of earls, how they betray each other, ally with each other, go to the scottish and norwegian kings to get help in this struggle, and it focuses very much on that internal struggle within the family.
The bulk of the land is a single large island, which is called, slightly confusingly, mainland nowadays, and what's called hrose in the Vici age, the horse island.
And it lies within sight of the north coast of the mainland of Scotland.
And then beyond that, you have the Shetlands, which are out of sight, though fair isle lies between them and is indivisible between the north of Orkney and the south of Shetland.
And Shetland was part of the earldom of Orkney, though most of the political action of the saga takes place on the main archipelago and in Caithness, the immediately adjacent bit of Scotland.
We've said that an Icelander wrote this.
What do we know about him and the origins of the saga?
We don't know anything specific about the Icelander.
What we can tell is that he's working in the same milieu as other saga writers, particularly the ones who wrote the accounts of the norwegian kings that they seem to be familiar with each other's work to some extent, or the different scholars argue about whether there's direct copying and so on.