When the Vikings invaders first began arriving on the coastlines of central and western Europe, few people had seen anything more frightening. Beginning in the mid-8th century, and enduring for several hundred more years, bands of violent and bloodthirsty Norsemen ransacked their way across northern and eastern England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and other parts of mainland Europe. They burned villages, churches, and monuments to the ground, murdered anyone who crossed their path, and took whatever treasures they came across as their own. “Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race,” wrote an English clergyman in York after one of the earliest raids on the region in 793 CE. “The heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God like dung in the streets.”
The Vikings’ violent reputation might be somewhat exaggerated according to some modern historians, who point to their extraordinarily advanced culture, literature, language, and knowledge of navigation and astronomy that all developed alongside the “raping and pillaging” with which the Vikings have become eternally associated. But as unwarranted as their reputation as violent invaders may be, the Vikings were no less successful in launching their raids on the coasts of Europe, and by the end of the 9th century, the Vikings had taken over vast swathes of territory across England, Ireland, mainland Europe, and, following a lengthy and bloody conquest in the mid-800s CE, much of northern Scotland.
One of the first Viking earls to take power over the Norse lands in Scotland is as remembered today for his violence as he was for the bizarre comeuppance that eventually caused his downfall.
Sigurd Eysteinsson, known as “Sigurd the Mighty,” was made the second Viking Earl of Orkney sometime around 875 CE. Orkney, the sprawling archipelago of islands off the far northeast tip of Scotland, had first fallen under Viking control (alongside the nearby Shetland Islands) in the late 700s, when an influx of Norwegian settlers began using the islands as a base from which to operate their raids on the Scottish mainland. By the mid-800s, the islands were all incorporated into a single Viking earldom, answerable to the King of Norway, and Sigurd was given control over the region by his brother, the Norwegian Earl Rognvald Eysteinsson. Sigurd took to his newfound role with gusto, and once established on Orkney, quickly began expanding Viking rule in the area. The Viking Conquest, as it became known, pushed south from Orkney into Scotland’s Caithness peninsula, as Sigurd ruthlessly stole territory from the local Celtic population. Finally, however, in 892 CE Sigurd came up against some resistance.
A local Celtic chieftain known as Mael Brigte the bucktoothed, leader of Moray, raised an army to fight back against Sigurd’s conquest of the area. Mael challenged Sigurd to a simple battle, of equal strength, 40 men on either side, with the victor either taking or retaining control of Mael’s kingdom. Sigurd accepted Mael’s invitation, yet treacherously turned up to the battle with twice the agreed number of men. Sigurd’s 80 Viking soldiers quickly defeated Mael’s band of Celtic fighters, and with his victory assured, Sigurd personally sought out Mael on the battlefield and decapitated him. He then picked up Mael’s head and tied it to his horse’s saddle, to carry it back to Orkney as proof of his uncompromising leadership and victory in battle. Enroute back home, however, Sigurd began to take ill.
On the long journey back north, the “bucktooth” in Mael’s mouth that had given him his less than flattering nickname began to chafe and eventually cut Sigurd’s leg. The wound quickly became infected, and long before he arrived back in Orkney, he died as a result of the injury. Sigurd’s treachery on the battlefield, it seemed, had ultimately proved his undoing.