Crimsoning the Eagle's Claw

A genuinely unique European treasure, this volume bristles with all 33 of Rognvaldr's verses from the Orkneyinga Saga. While full of highly stylised, often grotesque images, the poems convey the skill, vigour and daring of the original.
Rich narratives and old Norse mythology blend with familiar place-names and landscapes to create a peculiarly alluring, sometime comic, world that never quite settles around the reader, as if time travel is possible from a favourite armchair.

Rǫgnvaldr jarl Kali Kolsson was born on his father's extensive estates in East Agoar, Norway, around 1100 - the exact year is not known. His mother inherited estates in Orkney and her brother ruled half the Orkney earldom before his martyrdom and subsequent canonisation as St. Magnus. When Kali, having adopted the name Rǫgnvaldr after a previous successful earl, assumed the earldom in 1135, he founded the cathedral at Kirkwall and dedicated it to his uncle's memory. Rǫgnvaldr is best remembered for his building of the cathedral, for his adventurous exploits during a three year pilgrimage to Jerusalem, described in the thirteenth century Orkneyinga Saga, and for his magnificently skilful skaldic poetry. In 1158 he was killed in an ambush in Caithness by political opponents, and in 1192, following his own canonisation, his remains were translated to Kirkwall Cathedral.