Erlend Haraldsson
Earl of Orkney
Erlend Haraldsson (c.1124 – 21 December 1154) was joint Earl of Orkney from 1151 to 1154. The son of Earl Harald Haakonsson, he ruled with Harald Maddadsson and Rögnvald Kali Kolsson.
This was a turbulent period of Orcadian history. Erlend's claim to the earldom was strong, his father having been earl before him but as happened on several previous occasions, rulership of the islands had become divided. His father had been poisoned c. 1130 when Erlend was still a child and after the death of Erlend's uncle, Paul Haakonsson, the earldom had become shared between Rögnvald and Harald "the Old" Maddadsson. Earl Rögnvald left Orkney in 1151 to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Erlend acted quickly to build on his inheritance. He obtained half of his father's lands in Caithness from the king of Scotland and claimed half of Orkney as well. Earl Harald refused, so Erlend set sail to Norway to request his share from King Eystein Haraldsson.
The King granted Erlend Harald Maddadsson's share of the Orkney earldom, which led to a series of skirmishes between the two.
“Erlend Haraldsson” enters the record as earl of Orkney. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Erlend, Haraldsson and Earl can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3056695. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1124, 1154, 1151 and 1130.
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This entry incorporates text from “Erlend Haraldsson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.