there was an Earl Anlaf or Olaf in Caithness, who had a sister, named
Gudrun, whom Swart Ironhead, a pirate, sought in marriage. But Swart
was killed in holmgang, or duel, by Thorgisl, who cut off his head
and married Gudrun, by whom he had a son called Thorlaf. Thorgisl then
tired of Gudrun, and gave her to Thorstan the White on the plea that
he himself wished to go and look after his estate in Iceland, which he
did. Can this Anlaf be the original of the legendary Alane, thane
of Sutherland, whom Macbeth, according to Sir Robert Gordon in his
_Genealogie of the Earles of Southerland_,[32] put to death, and whose
son, Walter, Malcolm Canmore is said to have created first Earl? Or
was Alane, like others, a creation of Sir Robert's inventive brain?
He was certainly no earl of the present Sutherland line; neither was
Walter.[33]

To this period also belongs the romantic story of Barth or Bard,
son of Helgi and Helga Ulfs-datter told in the _Flatey Book_, and
translated at page 369 of the Appendix to Sir George Dasent's Rolls
Edition of the _Orkneyinga Saga_, which is shortly as follows.

In the time of Sigurd Hlodverson, Ulf the Bad, of Sanday in Orkney,
murdered Harald of North Ronaldsay, and seized his lands in the
absence of Harald's son Helgi, a gentle Viking, on a cruise. On his
return, Helgi, to revenge his father's death, slew Bard, Ulf's next of
kin, in fight. Jarl Sigurd blames him for this and for not letting him
settle the feud himself, and Helgi sells all he has, and goes to Ulf's
house and takes his daughter, Helga, away. Ulf follows them up by
sea with a superior force, defeats Helgi off Caithness, and he
jumps overboard with Helga and swims to shore, where a poor farmer,
Thorfinn, as Helgi had always been kind in his "vikings" to such as he
was, has the wedding at his house, and shelters the pair there till