Magnus ‘Barelegs’ Steers a Bold Course
AFTER this battle King Magnus turned back with his fleet, and came first to Scotland. Then men went between the Scottish king Malcolm* and King Magnus, and a peace was made between them; so that all the islands lying west of Scotland, between which and the mainland he could pass in a vessel with her rudder shipped,* should be held to belong to the king of Norway. Now when King Magnus came north to Kintyre, he had a skiff* drawn over the strand at Kintyre, and shipped the rudder of it. The king himself sat in the stern-sheets,* and held the tiller;* and thus he appropriated to himself the land that lay on the larboard side.* Kintyre is a great district, better than the best of the southern isles of the Hebrides, excepting Man; and there is a small neck of land between it and the mainland of Scotland, over which long-ships are often drawn.* King Magnus was all the winter in the southern isles,* and his men went over all the fjords of Scotland, rowing within all the inhabited and uninhabited isles, and took possession for the king of Norway of all the islands west of Scotland.
* Sturluson makes a little slip here. Malcolm III Canmore (?1031-1093), King of Scots from 1058 to 1093, had died some five years previously: the king in 1098 was Malcolm’s fourth son Edgar (1097-1107), whose right to the crown was however much disputed at home, hence his need to keep Magnus quiet.
* ‘Shipped’ here means ‘fixed in place’. Detachable Viking rudders were positioned for use towards the stern (back) on the starboard side (the right-hand side, from Old English steorbord, Norse styrbord, meaning ‘steering-board’). Edgar’s idea was that Magnus could have any piece of land separated by water from the mainland, so he demanded somewhat naively that the rudder be shipped (properly in place for steering) when any claims were made. He needed better lawyers, as he shortly found out.
* A skiff is a light rowing boat. Magnus’s plan was to perch on dry land looking northwest, and then claim all the land to the left — a significant portion of the seaward end of the prize Kintyre Peninsula. This was not exactly within the spirit of his deal with Edgar, though Magnus clearly felt it was within the letter.
* ‘Stern-sheets’ is a nautical term for the space in the stern of an open boat not occupied by the thwarts (seats).
* The tiller is the handle that works the rudder; the rudder is the blade that goes in the water.
* The larboard side is the left-hand side of a boat as you look forward from the stern (back). Larboard derives from Old English ladebord, ‘loading-board’. Ships would tie up against the wharf on this side to do their loading. Since this was the side nearest the port, the term ‘port side’ later superseded larboard.
This neck of land is at Tarbert, an Anglicised form of the Gaelic word tairbeart meaning ‘carrying across’, or portage. The portage distance is just under a mile.
* Snorro Sturluson’s term for the Outer and Inner Hebrides and the Isle of Man. The Northern Isles were Orkney, Shetland and the Faroes.
