Olaf The Black - Background

Background

Óláfr was a member of the Crovan dynasty of sea-kings, a younger son of Guðrøðr Óláfsson, King of the Isles, King of Dublin (d. 1187), and grandson of Óláfr Guðrøðarson, King of the Isles (d. 1153). Guðrøðr inherited a vast island-kingdom from his father, which encompassed the Hebrides—situated on the western seaboard of Scotland—and the Isle of Man (Mann), located in the middle of the northern Irish Sea, a strategically important point approximately equidistant from the islands of Great Britain and Ireland. In the mid 12th century Guðrøðr lost control of much of the Inner Hebrides to Somairle, Lord of Argyll, and was unable to regain these islands on Somairle's death in 1164. Like his predecessors, Guðrøðr is sometimes anachronistically styled "King of Mann" in secondary sources. This is because Guðrøðr, his sons Rögnvaldr and Óláfr, and his father Óláfr styled themselves Rex Insularum ("King of the Isles"); it was not until the reigns of Guðrøðr's grandsons (Óláfr's sons) that the leading members of the dynasty adopted the Latin title Rex Mannie et Insularum ("King of Mann and the Isles").

Óláfr's epithet "the black", considered to refer to his hair colour, is recorded in the Orkneyinga saga and within a 13th century English document, the Close Roll.