 For example, Woolf (2007) suggests that his appearance in the sagas "looks very much like a story created in later days to legitimise Norwegian claims to sovereignty in the region" and suggests an early 11th-century creation of the earldom of Orkney, prior to which local warlords competed for influence with one another and local populations of farmers.Nonetheless, the Norse tradition states that Rognvald Eysteinsson received Orkney and Shetland from Harald as an earldom as reparation for the death of his son in battle in Scotland, and then passed the earldom on to his brother Sigurd the Mighty.Sigurd's line barely survived him and it was Torf-Einarr, Rognvald's son by a slave, who founded a dynasty that controlled the Northern Isles for centuries after his death.