Máel Coluim (Malcolm)

Malcolm — the king of Scots (Laing's 'Melkolm') — is the ruler who makes the famous island-treaty with Magnus Barefoot. When the viking king sweeps through the western seas claiming the isles, Malcolm comes to terms rather than fight him, agreeing that Magnus shall have all the islands lying west of Scotland between which and the mainland he can pass in a ship with the rudder shipped. It is this lawyerly clause that Magnus then stretches to its famous extreme — having his ship dragged across the narrow neck of Kintyre, himself at the helm, to claim the whole peninsula as an 'island'. Malcolm is the saga's image of the neighbouring king who chooses treaty over war — the Scots ruler who, faced with an unbeatable viking fleet, cedes the western isles by a precise agreement, and so gives Norway its legal title to the Hebrides and Magnus the occasion for his most audacious exploit.