Haraldr Maddaðarson and Scoto-Orcadian politics before 1222

At Northallerton (Yorkshire) in 1138, a tightly organised group of Anglo- Norman knights managed to repulse a numerically superior force sent against them by David I, king of the Scots (r. 1124–53). The encounter, the ‘Battle of the Standard’, is documented in numerous near-contemporary sources, among them a dedicated tract by the English Cistercian abbot Aelred of Rievaulx, himself a former member of the Scottish court. There are numerous highly valuable points of interest within the abbot’s account, and one of these is that amid the vast array of soldiers at the command of the Scottish potentate there were not a small number of [Hebridean] islanders and of Orcadians’ (insulanis et Orchadensibus non parvam mulititudinem) (RdS 3: 181, author’s translation). Aelred does not explain the presence of Orcadians, perhaps because the detail was incidental.