namely, Duncan
II, and, it may be, also Malcolm and Donald. As regards rank, also,
she was equal to Malcolm, being a cousin of the Queen of Norway, and
widow of Thorfinn grandson of Malcolm II, the great jarl of Orkney who
had then recently subdued all the north of Scotland and the Western
Isles and Galloway to himself, while Malcolm III was in exile in
England, whence he had been brought back with the greatest difficulty,
not by a Scottish force but by the help of an English, or at least a
Northumbrian army.

After his marriage with Ingibjorg it is clear that there was peace for
thirty years in the north of Scotland, so far as the Norse jarls
were concerned, a fact which of itself justified the marriage,
which, however, may have afterwards been held to have been within the
prohibited degrees, and therefore void, while its issue would be held
to be illegitimate, and not entitled to succeed to the Scottish crown.

We may add that there is nothing in any Scottish record to prove this
marriage or to disprove it.

The first important event in the lives of Paul and Erlend happened
just before the Norman conquest of England. They joined King Harald
Sigurdson (Hardrada) and his son Prince Olaf, who was their second
cousin on their mother's side,[7] in an attack on England; and, after
Harald's death, and his army's defeat by King Harold Godwinson of
England at Stamford Bridge, in September 1066, (three days before
William the Conqueror landed at Pevensey) the two Orkney jarls were
taken prisoner, but, along with Prince Olaf, they were released.
On their return to Orkney, Paul asked the Archbishop of York to
consecrate a cleric of Orkney as Bishop in Orkney, and the two
brothers ruled harmoniously there until their sons Hakon on the one
hand and Magnus and Erling on the other, who had been engaged in
Viking cruises together as boys, grew up and quarrelled, and, as is
usual, drew their fathers into the strife. This strife was provoked by
Hakon, and apparently lasted for many years,[8] Erlend supporting
his own sons, and driving Hakon abroad to Norway about the year 1090.
Neither Paul nor Erlend seems to have been much in Sutherland or
Caithness, in which the representatives of the Gaelic Maormors or
Chiefs probably regained power, especially the family of Moddan, and
extended their territories.

Meantime King Magnus Barelegs[9] of Norway, instigated by Hakon,
and taking advantage of the contentions between 1093 and 1098 of