The Orkneyinga Saga is a complicated Icelandic saga. Parts of it seem to go back to the early twelfth century, but parts were probably written in the thirteenth or even fourteenth century. It was originally titled the Earl's Saga, and it actually covers not merely the Orkneys, as the modern title suggests, but also the Shetlands. The saga is in some ways quite loose with history, and it's unclear how much of this free hand with history is deliberately written, how much is just recording the actual legends and rumors of the time, and how much is an accidental byproduct of its multi-layered composition through an extended period of time. Like many of the 'national' sagas produced by Icelanders, it depicts Christianity coming to the Northern Isles, but this is perhaps partly just conventional; historically, Christianity in the Orkneys probably predates the events of the saga. Even in the saga itself, the coming of Christianity seems presented as a long, stuttering, complex, and perhaps not always consistent process -- and, again, it is unclear how much of this is deliberate, how much due to sources, and how much due to accident of composition.
In any case, the Orkneyinga Saga is the next fortnightly book. I am reading it in the Penguin Classics edition, translated by Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards. It has a sort of minor connection to a prior fortnightly book, since it is dedicated to George MacKay Brown, whose Magnus was a fortnightly book in 2018; Magnus, of course, is partly influenced by the account of St. Magnus in the Orkneyinga Saga.
The Northern Isles of Scotland (i.e., the Orkneys, bottom left, and the Shetlands, upper right).
