SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

62 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
After Halfdan inn mildi ok matarilli no mention of
Vikings occurs in the prose narrative of Heimskringla
before Haralds Saga Hdrfagra ; nor for that matter is
there any reference to any mustering of their forces that
might correspond to the battle between the "light" and
"dark" foreigners of the Irish annals. But the verses
tell another story, which I shall now try to trace.
There seems no doubt that the Turgeis of the Irish
authorities is referred to in the account in Haralds Saga
Hdrfagra of the two sons of Haraldr, l>orgisl and FrotH,
of whom it is said: "They won Dublin first of the Northmen.
So it is said that Frol'5i was given a deadly drink,
but l>orgisl was long king over Dublin, and was betrayed
by the Irish and fell there." 4 In H aralds Pdttr in
Flateyjarb6k 5 we are told that these brothers went on a
Viking expedition to the West and harried far and wide.
l>orgisl is not counted among the sons of Haraldr either
in Agrip or in Fagrskinna, and is not mentioned in any
poem. In all these four works, the sons of Haraldr are
numbered as twenty, but the only contemporary poem to
give their number, Hdkonarmdl, puts it at nine, which is
doubtless correct. There is no means of knowing where
Snorri got his information about l>orgisl. As far as his
paternity and chronology are concerned, the information is
wrong, but otherwise it contains a notable grain of truth,
indicating that some obscure traditions about this Viking
king were in circulation among the Icelandic settlers and
in Norway. In fact, it can be assumed that l>orgisl
would have been more or less a contemporary of Ketill
Flatnose, Eyvindr the Easterner and 0lvir barnakarl, and
what is said in the Annals of Prudentius of Troyes for the
year 847 would apply well to their activities in the West:
"The [Irish] Scots, after being attacked by the Northmen
• Hkr. I 138.
• Gui'Jbrandur Vigfusson and C. R. Unger, Flateyjarb6k (1860-68), I 576;
abbreviated Flat. hereafter.