Series 1 > Diary of the Reverend John Mill, minister of the parishes of Dunrossness Sandwick and Cunningsburgh in Shetland, 1740-1803. With selections from local records and original documents relating to the district

Ixxxii
INTRODUCTION
VII.—Earl Rognvald and the Dunrossness Man, an
Unpublished Story of the Twelfth Century.
This story may not seem germane to the purpose of the
present work, but if it violates the canon of unity of time, it
certainly does not do so in respect of unity of place. It gives
us a glimpse of everyday life in the parish at a time many
centuries earlier than anything of a personal nature elsewhere
recorded.
The story, which was found at Upsala by Professor Vig-
fusson, is a ms. fragment belonging to a more extended version
of the Orkneyinga Saga than that now known; and not
having been brought to light at the time, it was not included
in the translation of the Saga. It will no doubt appear in
the long-promised version by Sir George W. Dasent and
Professor Vigfusson.
Earl Rognvald was a hero of a rollicking type, who travelled
far, as a Crusader to the Holy Land and elsewhere ; and many
incidents of gallantry and drollery are related of him, quite
in the spirit of the ruse he played upon the Dunrossness man
on this occasion, and of the Skaldic stanza which followed.
The occurrence, no doubt, took place when the Earl was
shipwrecked in Shetland, as told in Chapter Ixxix. of the
Saga, where it is stated that he ‘ stayed a long time in
Hjaltland.’
The fishing industry, and the movements of the people in
connection therewith, are brought before us with great dis¬
tinctness in this narrative, seven hundred years old, and are
in no marked degree dissimilar from what prevailed in the
district in Mill’s time, or what still prevails there.
1 The Orkneyinga Saga. Translated from the Icelandic by Jon A. Hjaltalin
and Gilbert Goudie. Edited, with Notes and Introduction, by Joseph Anderson.
Edinburgh : Edmonston and Douglas, 1873. Pp. 128, 129, 130.