every summer thenceforth he had his levies out, and harried about the
west lands, but sate most often still in the winters," feasting his
men at his own expense, especially at Yuletide, in true Viking style.

Allowing for exaggeration, it is not too much to say that Thorfinn
and his cousin Macbeth must, after the death of their cousin Duncan
in 1040, between them have held all that is now Scotland save the
Lothians, until about 1057, when Macbeth was slain. To us it is
interesting to note[14] that Duncan died, not in old age, (as
Shakespeare, following Boece and the English chronicler Holinshed
would have us believe) but a young man of thirty-nine years, either
in, or after, Thorfinn's battle, and that he fell a victim not of
Groa, Macbeth's wife's cup of poison, but possibly of her husband's
dagger at Bothgowanan or Pitgavenny, a smithy about two miles from
Elgin. We should also note that Thorfinn's cruelty made it difficult
for him ever to hope to obtain and keep the throne of Scotland, which
thus fell to Macbeth.

Meantime Jarl Brusi had died about 1031, and though he left a son
Ragnvald, this son was long abroad in Norway, where he was taught all
the accomplishments suitable to his rank, and remained there at the
time of his father's death.[15] Ragnvald Brusi-son was "one of the
handsomest of men, his hair long and yellow as silk, and he was stout
and tall and an able splendid man of great mind and polite manners."
He had saved King Olaf's brother Harald Sigurdson at the great battle
of Stiklastad, after King Olaf, Ragnvald's own foster-father, was
killed, and had fought with great distinction in Russia. Shortly after
his father's death, Ragnvald returned, and, fortified by a grant from
King Magnus of Norway, whom he had helped to gain the throne, claimed
his father's two trithings of the Orkney jarldom. To this Thorfinn,