Hist. Also yarl. [ON. (= OE. eorl EARL), orig. ‘a man of noble birth’; hence used as the title of hereditary Norse and Danish chieftains; later, of the royal liegemen next in rank to the king whom they followed.] An old Norse or Danish chieftain or under-king.
Applied by modern historians to those of Scandinavia, and to those of Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles of Scotland. The OE. contemporary form was eorl, applied to Danish leaders and to viceroys or governors of the great divisions of the kingdom under Cnut, whence EARL, q.v.
1820. S. Turner, Anglo-Sax. (ed. 3), I. IV. iii. 479. Then humble kingdoms, jarlls, and nobility appeared.
1829. Tytler, Hist. Scot. (1864), II. 40. These northern districts [of Scotland] had for many centuries been more accustomed to pay their allegiance to the Norwegian yarls, or pirate kings.
1839. Keightley, Hist. Eng., I. 38. Five Danish kings and seven earls (Iarls) were slain.
1861. J. A. H. Murray, Week in Orkney, 12. Sigurd, the first Jarl, in alliance with Thorstein the red, Norse Jarl of the Hebrides, conquered all Scotland north of the Grampians.
Hence Jarldom, the territory governed by a jarl; Jarless, the wife of a jarl; Jarlship, the office or function of a jarl.
1820. Turner, Anglo-Sax. (ed. 3), I. IV. iii. 480. Among their little kingdoms and jarlldoms.
1847. I. A. Blackwell, in Percy’s Transl. Mallet’s North. Antiq., 141, note. We are not told whether Sigurd’s fair Countess or Jarless accompanied him.
1861. J. A. H. Murray, Week in Orkney, 11. Ridding them of the piratical Vikings, and bestowing the jarlship of them upon Sigurd brother to Rognvald. Ibid., 28. When Rolf the Ganger, the third successor to the Jarldom, found Orkney too narrow a sphere.
