Hello Grumpy! >>>On the Orkneyjar is states that Orkney was given as a dowry in marriage, which is what I have always been led to believe, but C. Tait seems to disagree, and that it was mortgaged. Can you throw any light on the situation, so far all the searches I have done on the subject confirm the dowry. History is always made and written down by "those who survived in power". ... and that are as this case is concerned - obviously - the Scots and their point of view. The only surviving documents (those in the Rijksrchivet in Kopenhagn) are clear, stating "our lands and our rights". Ours = the lands and the rights of a king of Norway (Christian, the Danish-Nowegian King at that time expressivly makes a reference to his forebearers in that case "the Kings of Norway"). But the question whether it was a dowry or a mortgage is of secondary interest. The fact is that no Norwegian king or any Norwegian-Danish king (there was a union of the crowns at that time) had any power over the properties of an Udaler or a Norse Jarl - as far as the properties of his own right as an udaler or jarl are concerned. That's why Christian could not "give" all of Orkney or all of Shetland neither as a dowry nor as a mortgage. The Scottish Crown knew about the fact - and consequently acted in different ways in both Orkney and Shetland. The Crown later on bought the Earldom of Orkney and incorporated Orkney into "Scotland" after a short time under the Privy Council while Shetland (at the time in question it was no more part of the Norse Earldom of Orkney but more or less a crown estate of the kings of Norway) remaind under the government of the Scottish Privy Council (in 1571 the Scottish Parlament confirmed the use of Old Norse for Shetland, property sales had to be registered at the Bergen Court and were notified only to the Privy Council etc. ... and the Scottish officials in charge like the Sinclairs of Bows or Quendale acted according to this rules) ... nevertheless ... tempi passati ... :-) Wolfgang