Talk:Thorfinn Sigurdsson

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In the Karl Hundason section, 1st paragraph, the statement that in around 1040 Hundason is attacking Thorfinn and who is "most likely Mac Bethad", and then the last paragraph the statement that Thorfinn had a "strong alliance he held with his half-brother or cousin (historians still debate on this) Macbeth of Moray, King of Scotia." Surely both statements can't be true. According to the Orkneyinga Saga, Hundason tried three times to defeat Thorfinn; this was the same time that Mac Bethad defeated Donnchad at Elgin. If anything, Thorfinn would have been batting for Mac Bethad against Donnachd. Once MacBeth became king, if he were Hundason, would he have left Thorfinn alone? --Billreid 18:07, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

The Karl Hundason bit is now revised and hopefully makes some sense. I was going to go into more detail, but that seems to confuse the issue rather than clarifying it. The idea that Karl was Donnchad will get addressed in the section on Ms. Dunnett's theory which appears in Donaldson's Northern Commonwealth, so it deserves a mention here. I am told that Alex Woolf seems less convinced of the historicity of the early parts of the saga than many writers have been. We'll see what he has to say when From Pictland to Alba is published, whenever that might be. Angus McLellan (Talk) 13:29, 6 November 2006 (UTC)