nn went to the Pope not only for absolution, but to
get Thorolf appointed bishop in Orkney, according to Adam of Bremen,
c. 243.

We now come to the last years of the fourth period of his life, when
"the earl sate down quietly and kept peace over all his realm. Then
he left off warfare, and he turned his mind to ruling his people and
land, and to law-giving. He sate almost always in Birsay, and let them
build there Christchurch,[20] a splendid Minster. There first was set
up a bishop's seat in the Orkneys."

The Annals of Tighernac record a great Norse expedition with the aid
of the Galls of Orkney and Innse Gall and Dublin to subdue the Saxons
in 1057, which failed. It is strange that we hear nothing of Thorfinn
in this, and the question arises whether he had died before it took
place. Had he been alive, such an expedition would hardly have been
possible without him.[21] It is interesting to note that so accurate
a chronicler as Sir Archibald Dunbar dates his widow Ingibjorg's
marriage to Malcolm III in 1059. (See _Scottish Kings_, p. 27.)

Thorfinn's life forms the subject of no less than twenty-six chapters
of the _Orkneyinga Saga_.[22] In his childhood, and later at all the
main turning points of his life, he was blessed with the constant care
and touching devotion, and with the able counsel and active assistance
of his foster-father, Thorkel Fostri, the slayer of his three
chief competitors--Jarl Einar and Earl Moddan and Jarl Ragnvald
Brusi-son--the captain of his armies, the collector of his revenues
and the guardian, in his absence on his Viking cruises and in his
travels abroad, of his widespread dominions. There is a tradition[23]
that Thorkel founded the rock-castle of Borve, near Farr on the north
coast of Sutherland, which was demolished by the Earl of Sutherland
in 1556; but Thorkel is a common name among Vikings, and the story is
otherwise unauthenticated.

According to the Saga, Thorfinn died of sickness "in the latter days
of Harald Hardrada," (who was killed in September 1066), near the
church which he founded, in his Hall at Birsay, north of Marwick Head
in the north-west corner of Mainland of Orkney, within a few miles
of the scene of Earl Kitchener's recent death at sea, so that the
greatest of our jarls and of our earls rest near each other, the great
Viking on the shore, and the great soldier in the ocean.

The chronology of Thorfinn and Ingibjorg his wife is extremely
difficult, but on the