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SUTHERLAND AND CAITHNESS IN SAGA-TIME
OR,
THE JARLS AND THE FRESKYNS
BY JAMES GRAY, M.A. OXON.
EDINBURGH OLIVER & BOYD. 1922
STROMNESS:
PRINTED BY W.R. RENDALL.
PREFACE.
Originally delivered as a Presidential Address to The Viking Society
for Northern Research, the following pages, as amplified and revised,
are published mainly with the object of interesting Sutherland and
Caithness people in the early history of their native counties, and
particularly in the three Sagas which bear upon it as well as on that
of Orkney and Shetland at a time regarding which Scottish records
almost wholly fail us.
When, however, these records are extant, use has been made of them
together with later books upon them, of which a list follows, and to
which references are given in the notes.
A special effort has been made to deal with the vexed question of the
succession to the Caithness Earldom after Earl John's death in
1231, with the pedigree of the first known ancestors of the House of
Sutherland, and with the mystery of the descent of Lady Johanna of
Strathnaver.
Acknowledgments of assistance received are tendered to the writers of
the books above referred to, but thanks are specially due to Mr.
A.W. JOHNSTON, Founder and Past President of the Viking Society, for
numerous hints, and for making the Index; to Mr. JON STEFANNSON for
reading the manuscript; and to Mr. ALAN O. ANDERSON, whose knowledge
of the English and Scottish Records of the period is as accurate as it
is extensive, and who has made several valuable suggestions.
But for the opinions expressed no one save the writer is responsible,
and, where records are scanty, much has necessarily been left to
conjecture.
J.G.
53 MONTAGU SQUARE,
LONDON, W., 1922.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
LIST OF AUTHORITIES AND BOOKS REFERRED TO
CHAPTER I.--INTRODUCTORY
A.D. 82-790--Scope of this Book--Authorities--Roman times and their
result--Post-Roman days.
CHAPTER II.--THE PICT AND THE NORTHMAN
Geography and description of Cat--Brochs--Picts--Christianity
--Vikings--Gall-gaels--Gaelic--Land Settlement--The rise of the
Scots.
CHAPTER III.--THE EARLY NORSE JARLS
790-1014--Constantine I and the Northmen--Kenneth and the Union of
the Picts and Scots--Thorstein the Red and Aud--Groa and Duncan of
Duncansby--The Vikings and Harald Harfagr--Ragnvald of Maeri and
Jarl Sigurd--Cyderhall--Torf-Einar, Thorfinn Hausakliufr, Skuli
and others--War for the Moray seaboard--Jarl Sigurd Hlodverson--
Christianity introduced in Orkney--Swart Kell--Earl Anlaf--Story
of Barth--Sigurd Hlodverson, Clontarf--"Darratha-liod"--Resumé.
CHAPTER IV.--THORFINN, EARL AND JARL
1008-1064--King Malcolm's matrimonial alliances--Victory of
Carham--Thorfinn Sigurdson, Earl of Caithness and Sutherland--His
attempts on Orkney--Somarled, Brusi and Einar--Thorkel Fostri slays
Einar--Moddan created Earl of Caithness and slain by Thorkel--Battle
of Torfness--Death of Duncan--Thorfinn and Macbeth--Thorfinn and
Ragnvald Brusison--Marriage with Ingibjorg--Battle of Rautharbiorg--
Thorfinn sole Jarl of Orkney and Shetland--His travels, retirement,
and death--His chronology.
CHAPTER V.--PAUL AND ERLEND, HAKON AND MAGNUS
1058-1123--Paul and Erlend, jarls--Ingibjorg's marriage with
Malcolm III--Its objects--Norman conquest of England--King Magnus
Barelegs--Hakon and Magnus, jarls--Harold Slettmali and Paul the
Silent, jarls--Ingibiorg and Margret--Moddan in Dale--Feudalism in
Scotland--The Catholic Church--Alexander I and David I--The three
leading families in Caithness and Sutherland, of the Norse Jarls,
Moddan, and Freskyn de Moravia--The Mackays--The Gunns.
CHAPTER VI.--THE MODDAN FAMILY, JARLS HARALD AND PAUL AND RAGNVALD
1123-1158--Harald Slettmali and Paul the Silent--Frakark and
Helga--Harald poisoned--Frakark in Kildonan--Plot against Jarl
Paul--The Moddan family--Audhild--Eric Stagbrellir--Ragnvald's
history and jarldom--Battle of Tankerness--Olvir Rosta and
Sweyn--Paul kidnapped--Harold Maddadson--Frakark's Burning--Thorbiorn
Klerk--Ragnvald's cruise to the East--Erlend Haraldson's grant of half
Caithness--Scramble for the earldom--Ragnvald's daughter Ingirid's
marriage to Eric Stagbrellir--Fight at Thurso--Erlend and
Sweyn--Erlend's death--Ragnvald's murder--His descendants.
CHAPTER VII.--HAROLD MADDADSON AND THE FRESKYNS
1158-1206--Harold sole Jarl and Earl; his first family--Sweyn's
cruises and death in 1171--Harold's second wife, and family--Eric
Stagbrellir's family--Scottish affairs--Moray and the MacHeths--
Freskyn and Duffus--William MacFrisgyn--Hugo Freskyn of Sutherland, and
his brother, William of Petty--Hugo's grant to Gilbert, Archdeacon of
Moray--Hugo's family--William _dominus Sutherlandiae_--Events in the
North in 1153 and after--William the Lion's accession, 1165--Persons of
note at that date--Those in authority--Harold's forfeitures--Events
leading up to them--Eddirdovir and Dunskaith--Donald Ban
MacWilliam--Defeat of Thorfinn, Harold's son, and of Harold,
1196--Harald Ungi--Ragnvald Gudrodson--Victory of Dalharrold--The
Stewards--Death of Thorfinn, Harold's son--William the Lion in
Caithness--Death of Harold Maddadson, 1206.
CHAPTER VIII.--JARLS DAVID AND JOHN, FRESKIN II
1206-1263--David's eight years, 1206-1214--King William takes John's
daughter as a hostage--Murder of Bishop Adam, 1222--King Alexander's
expedition--John's forfeiture--Death of John's son, Harald,
1226--Snaekoll Gunni's son, grandson of Eric Stagbrellir--Murder of
Earl John--Trial at Bergen--Lady Johanna of Strathnaver.
CHAPTER IX.--THE SUCCESSION TO THE CAITHNESS EARLDOM
1231-9--Difficulty of the subject--The Angus pedigree--The Diploma of
the Orkney Earls--Magnus II's charter--The wardship question--Three
claimants (1) Magnus, (2) Johanna of Strathnaver and (3) Earl John's
nameless hostage daughter--Skene's opinion--The Cheynes and Federeths,
descendants of Johanna--Her charitable gift--Her Moddan and Erlend
descent--Magnus II, his descent and marriage--Freskin de Moravia, his
descent, marriage, life, and death--The settlement of Caithness and
Sutherland--Creation of the Sutherland Earldom between 10th October
1237 and Magnus' death in 1239--Conclusion.
CHAPTER X.--KING HAKON'S EXPEDITION AND THE NORTH
1263-1266--Recapitulation--Norse jarls and the Norse Crown--Affairs
in Sutherland--Battle at Embo--Dornoch Cathedral and its
constitution--The Angus line and the Freskyns--Hakon's fleet at
Ragnvaldsvoe sails south--Battle of Largs--Hakon's retreat
and death--The mainland of Scotland and the Hebrides won for
Scotland--Treaty of Perth, 1266.
CHAPTER XI.--RESULTS AND CONCLUSION
The creed of the Viking--The causes of his migration--Odinism--Settlement
in the West--Celtic mothers--Effect on race, language and place-names--
Viking remains--Skaill, Dunrobin--Castles--The Viking type of man--The
blended race--Norman influence.
NOTES.
APPENDIX.--EARLY PEDIGREE OF THE FRESKYN FAMILY
INDEX
LIST OF AUTHORITIES AND BOOKS REFERRED TO.[1]
Anderson, Dr. Joseph. Rhind Lectures, "Scotland in Pagan Times."
Edinburgh, 1883 and 1886.
Antiquaries. Proceedings of The Society of Scottish.
Bain. Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland in Record Office.
Bannatyne Club--Publications of.
Barry, History of Orkney. Edinburgh, Constable, 1805.
Broxburn. (Strabrock.) History and Antiquities of Uphall, by Rev.
James Primrose. Edinburgh, Andrew Elliott, 1898.
Burnt Njal. Dasent's Translation. (B.N.)[2] Edinburgh, Edmonston &
Douglas, 1861.
Caithness Family History, by John Henderson. Edinburgh, David Douglas,
1884.
Caithness, The County of--by John Home. Wick, W. Rae, 1907.
Calder's History of Caithness. Glasgow, Thomas Murray & Son, 1861.
Cat, History of the Province of--by Rev. Angus Mackay. Wick, Peter
Reid & Co., Ltd., 1914.
Chalmers. Caledonia.
Chroniques Anglo-Normandes. Francisque Michel. Rouen, Ed. Frere, 1836.
Corpus Poeticum Boreale. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1883.
Curie. Monuments of Caithness. Royal Commission's Report, 1911.
Curie. Monuments of Sutherland. Royal Commission's Report, 1912.
Dalrymple's Collections, (1705).
Diploma of the Earls of Orkney.
Du Chaillu. The Viking Age. John Murray, 1889.
Dunfermelyn, Register of. (Bannatyne Club.)
Early Scottish Kings, by E. William Robertson, 1862.
Eric the Red--Saga of.
Flatey Book (Flateyjarbok). Christiania, Mailings, 1860. (F.B.)
Fordun. Scottish Annals. Edited by W.F. Skene. Edinburgh, Edmonston &
Douglas, 1871.
Genealogie of the Earles of Southerland, by Sir Robert Gordon, Bart.
Edinburgh, A. Constable, 1813.
Hailes (Lord) Additional Case of Elizabeth, Claimant of the Earldom of
Sutherland and Annals of Scotland, (Dalrymple's Works, vol. 4).
Hakon Saga. Dasent's Translation, Rolls Edition, 1894. (H.S.)
Henderson, George--Norse Influence on Celtic Scotland. Glasgow,
Maclehose, 1910.
Henderson, George--Survivals in Belief among the Celts. Glasgow,
Maclehose, 1911.
Hume Brown. History of Scotland. (H.B.)
Innes, Familie of. (Spalding Club).
Laing and Huxley. Prehistoric Remains of Caithness. Williams, &
Norgate, 1866.
Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters. Glasgow, Maclehose, 1905.
Lawrie, Annals of the Reigns of Malcolm and William, 1153-1214.
Glasgow, Maclehose, 1910.
Liber Pluscardensis. Edited by Felix J.H. Skene. Edinburgh, William
Paterson, 1877.
Mackay, Rev. Angus. Book of Mackay. Edinburgh, Norman Macleod, 1906.
Magnus Saga (in Rolls Edition of Dasent's Translation of Orkneyinga
Saga).
Maxwell, Sir Herbert, Early Chronicles relating to Scotland. Glasgow,
Maclehose, 1912.
Moray--Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis (Bannatyne Club) (Reg.
Morav.)
Moray--Shaw's History of.
Munch's Symbolae or Notes to the Diploma of the Orkney Earls.
Munro, Dr. Robert. Prehistoric Scotland.
Nisbet's Heraldry.
Orcades, by Thormodus Torfaeus. Copenhagen, 1715.
Orcades, (Torfaeus) Translation by the Rev. A. Pope. Wick, Peter Reid,
1866.
Origines Islandicae. Vigfusson & York Powell. Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1905.
Origines Parochiales Scotiae. Vol. ii, part ii. Edinburgh, W.H.
Lizars, 1855. (O.P.)
Orkney and Shetland, by John R. Tudor. London, Edward Stanford, 1883.
(O. &. S.)
Orkney and Shetland Folk, by A.W. Johnston. Viking Society, 1914.
Orkneyinga Saga. Dasent's Translation, Rolls Edition. (O.S.)
Orkneyinga Saga. Anderson, and Hjaltalin and Goudie's Translation.
Edinburgh, Edmonston & Douglas, 1873.
Oxford Essays, 1858. (Dasent's Essay). London, John W. Parker & Son,
1858.
Pinkerton's History of Scotland preceding Malcolm III. Edinburgh, Bell
& Bradfute, 1814.
Rhys' Celtic Britain. London, S.P.C.K., 1908.
Robertson's Index. Edinburgh, Murray and Cochrane, 1798.
Rymer. Foedera.
Saint-Clair. Roland William. The Saint-Clairs of the Isles. Auckland,
H. Brett, 1898.
Scandinavian Britain, by W.G. Collingwood. London, S.P.C.K., 1908.
Scon. Liber Ecclesiae de.
Scott, Rev. Archibald--The Pictish Nation, its people and Church.
Edinburgh and London, Foulis Press, 1918.
Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers, Alan O. Anderson. London,
David Nutt, 1908.
Scottish Kings. Sir Archibald Dunbar, Bart. Edinburgh, David Douglas,
1906.
Scottish Peerages. Paul and Cokayne (Gibbs).
Skene, W.F. Celtic Scotland. Edinburgh, Edmonston & Douglas, 1878.
Skene, W.F. Chronicles of the Picts and Scots. Edinburgh, H.M. General
Register House, 1867.
Sutherland Book, by Sir William Fraser. Edinburgh, 1892.
Sutherland and the Reay Country, by the Rev. Adam Gunn. Glasgow, John
Mackay, Celtic Monthly Office, 1897.
Sverri's Saga. Translation by J. Sephton. London, David Nutt, 1899.
Tacitus--Agricola.
Thorgisl's Saga in Origines Islandicae (as above).
Viking Club. Caithness and Sutherland Records.} London
Viking Club. Old Lore Miscellany. } 29 Ashburnham
Viking Society. Saga Books, &c. } Mansions, Chelsea
William the Wanderer, by W.G. Collingwood. G.C. Brown Langham & Co.,
47 Great Russell Street, London, W.C., 1904.
Worsaae. Danes and Norwegians. London, John Murray, 1852.
Worsaae. The Prehistory of the North. London, Trübner, 1886.
Wyntoun's Chronicle. Edinburgh, Edmonston & Douglas, 1872.
[Footnote 1: An excellent Bibliography of Caithness, by Mr. John
Mowat, was published by W. Rae, Wick, in 1909, and of Caithness and
Sutherland by The Viking Club, 1910, by the same author.]
[Footnote 2: The Capitals and abbreviations placed in brackets after
certain authorities, give their initial letters and short titles,
(e.g. (O.S.) Orkneyinga Saga), as used in the notes at the end of this
volume.]
Early Sources of Scottish History, A.D. 500 to 1286, by Alan O.
Anderson. Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh.
NOTE.--Since this little book was printed, the above great work
has appeared. To the student of the Norse invasions its value is
inestimable.
[Transcriber's note: The following errata have been applied to the
text.]
_ERRATA._
Page 1, line 13, for "they" read "Man."
" 28, line 9, for "or" read "of."
" 40, line 23, for "Kundason" read "Hundason."
" 42, line 24, after "note" reference[14] omitted.
" 50, line 17, for "mainland of" read "Unst in."
" 65, line 35, for "burnings" read "revenges."
" 65, line 37, for "burnt" read "killed."
" 87, line 18, for "Earl Ragnvald" read "Jarl Ragnvald."
" 104, lines 4 and 5, for "Magnus' great-grandson's granddaughter's
husband" read "Magnus' granddaughter's great-grandson."
" 117, line 16, omit "a child of."
SUTHERLAND AND CAITHNESS IN SAGA-TIME
OR,
THE JARLS AND THE FRESKYNS.
CHAPTER I.
_Introductory._
In the following pages an attempt is made to fit together facts
derived, on the one hand, from those portions of the Orkneyinga, St.
Magnus and Hakonar Sagas which relate to the extreme north end of the
mainland of Scotland, and, on the other hand, from such scanty English
and Scottish records, bearing on its history, as have survived, so as
to form a connected account, from the Scottish point of view, of the
Norse occupation of most of the more fertile parts of Sutherland and
Caithness from its beginning about 870 until its close, when these
counties were freed from Norse influence, and Man and the Hebrides
were incorporated in the kingdom of Scotland by treaty with Norway in
1266.
References to the authorities mentioned above and to later works
bearing on the subject have been inserted in the hope that others,
more leisured and more competent, may supplement them by further
research, and convert those portions of the narrative which are at
present largely conjectural from story into history.
What manner of men the prehistoric races which in early ages
successively inhabited the northern end of the Scottish mainland may
have been, we can now hardly imagine. Dr. Joseph Anderson's classical
volumes[1] on _Scotland in Pagan Times_ tell us something, indeed
all that can now be known, of some of them, and in the Royal
Commission's[2] _Reports and Inventories of the Early Monuments_ of
Sutherland and of Caithness respectively, Mr. Curle has classified
their visible remains, and may, let us hope, with the aid of
legislation, save those relics from the roadmaker or dykebuilder.
Lastly, such superstitions, or survivals of beliefs, as remain in the
north of Scotland from early days have been collected, arranged, and
explained by the late Mr. George Henderson in an able book on that
subject.[3] Enquiries such as these, however, belong to the provinces
of archæology and folk-psychology, and not to that of history, still
less to that of contemporary history, which began in the north,
as elsewhere, with oral tradition, handed down at first by men of
recording memories, and then committed to writing, and afterwards
to print; and both in Norway and Iceland on the one hand, and in
the Highlands on the other such men were by no means rare, and were
deservedly held in the highest honour.
Writing arrived in Sutherland and Caithness very late, and was not
even then a common indigenous product. Clerks, or scholars who could
read and write, were at first very few, and in the north of Scotland
hardly any such were known before the twelfth century of our era,
save perhaps in the Pictish and Columban settlements of hermits and
missionaries. Of their writings, if they ever existed, little or
nothing of historical value is extant at the present time. But the
_Orkneyinga, St. Magnus_, and _Hakon's Sagas_, when they take up their
story, present us with a graphic and human and consecutive account
of much which would otherwise have remained unknown, and their story,
though tinged here and there with romance through the writers' desire
for dramatic effect, is, so far as the main facts go, singularly
faithful and accurate, when it can be tested by contemporary
chronicles.
Until the twelfth or the thirteenth century, save for these Sagas, we
learn hardly anything of Sutherland, or, indeed, of the extreme north
of Scotland from any record written either by anyone living there or
by anyone with local knowledge, and for facts before those given in
the _Orkneyinga Saga_ we have to cast about among historians of
the Roman Empire and amongst early Greek geographers, or later
ecclesiastical writers, to find nothing save a few names of places and
some scattered references to vanished races, tongues and Churches. For
information about the Picts we have at first to rely on the researches
of some of our trustworthy archæologists, and at a later date on
the annals, largely Irish, collected by the late Mr. Skene in his
_Chronicles of the Picts and Scots_, and in the works of Mr. Ritson,
into which it is no part of our purpose to enter in detail. All the
authorities for early Scottish history have been ably dealt with by
Sir Herbert Maxwell in his book on the _Early Chronicles Relating to
Scotland_, reproducing the Rhind lectures delivered by him in 1912. At
the end of our period reliable references to charters from the twelfth
century onwards will be found in _Origines Parochiales Scotiae_, and
especially in the second part of the second volume of that valuable
work of monumental research, produced, under the late Mr. Cosmo Innes,
by Mr. James Brichan, and presented to the Bannatyne Club by the
second Duke of Sutherland and the late Sir David Dundas. There are
also the reprints, often with elaborate notes, of Scottish Charters
by Sir Archibald C. Lawrie, The Bannatyne Club, The Spalding Club, The
Viking Society, Mr. Alan O. Anderson, and others. The first volume
of the Orkney and Shetland Records published by the Viking Society is
prefaced by an able introduction of great interest.
By way of introduction to Norse times, we may attempt to state very
shortly some of the leading events in Caledonia in Roman, Pictish, and
Scottish times from near the end of the first century to the beginning
of the tenth, so far as they bear on the agencies at work there in
Norse times.
The first four of the nine centuries above referred to had seen
the Romans under Agricola[4] in 80 to 84 A.D. attempt, and fail, to
conquer the Caledonians or men of the woods,[5] whose home, as
their name implies, was the great woodland region of the Mounth or
Grampians. Those centuries had also seen the building of the wall of
Hadrian between the Tyne and Solway in the year 120, the campaigns
of Lollius Urbicus in 140 A.D. and the erection between the Firths
of Forth and Clyde of the earthen rampart of Antonine on stone
foundations, which was held by Rome for about fifty years. Seventy
years later, in the year 210, fifty thousand Roman legionaries had
perished in the Caledonian campaigns of the Roman Emperor Severus, and
over a century and a half later, in 368, there had followed the
second conquest of the Roman province of Valentia which comprised the
Lothians and Galloway in the south, by Theodosius. Lastly, the final
retirement of the Romans from Scotland, and indeed from Britain, took
place, on the destruction of the Roman Empire in spite of Stilicho's
noble defence, by Alaric and the Visigoths, in 410.
From the Roman wars and occupation two main results followed. The
various Caledonian tribes inhabiting the land had then probably for
the first time joined forces to fight a common foe, and in fighting
him had become for that purpose temporarily united. Again, possibly
as part of the high Roman policy of Stilicho, St. Ninian had in the
beginning of the fifth century introduced into Galloway and also
into the regions north of the Wall of Antonine the first teachers of
Christianity, a religion which, however, was for some time longer to
remain unknown to the Picts generally in the north. But, as Professor
Hume Brown also tells us in the first of the three entrancing volumes
of his History, "In Scotland, if we may judge from the meagre accounts
that have come down to us, the Roman dominion hardly passed the stage
of a military occupation, held by an intermittent and precarious
tenure." What concerns dwellers in the extreme north is that although
the Romans went into Perthshire and may have temporarily penetrated
even into Moray, they certainly never occupied any part of Sutherland
or Caithness, though their tablets of brass, probably as part of the
currency used in trade, have been found in a Sutherland Pictish tower
or broch,[7] a fact which goes far to prove that the brochs, with
which we shall deal later on, existed in Roman times.[8]
As the Romans never occupied Sutherland or Caithness or even came near
their borders, their inhabitants were never disarmed or prevented
from the practice of war, and thus enfeebled like the more southerly
Britons.
After the departure, in 410, of the Romans, St. Ninian sent his
missionaries over Pictland, but darkness broods over its history
thenceforward for a hundred and fifty years. Picts, Scots of Ireland,
Angles and Saxons swarmed southwards, eastwards, and westwards
respectively into England, and ruined Romano-British civilisation,
which the Britons, unskilled in arms, were powerless to defend, as the
lamentations of Gildas abundantly attest.
In 563 Columba, the Irish soldier prince and missionary, whose Life
by Adamnan still survives,[9] landed in Argyll from Ulster, introduced
another form of Christian worship, also, like the Pictish, "without
reference to the Church of Rome," and from his base in Iona not only
preached and sent preachers to the north-western and northern Picts,
but in some measure brought among them the higher civilisation then
prevailing in Ireland. About the same time Kentigern, or St. Mungo,
a Briton of Wales, carried on missionary work in Strathclyde and in
Pictland, and even, it is said, sent preachers to Orkney.
In the beginning of the seventh century King Aethelfrith of
Northumbria had cut the people of the Britons, who held the whole of
west Britain from Devon to the Clyde, into two, the northern portion
becoming the Britons of Strathclyde; and the same king defeated Aidan,
king of the Scots of Argyll, at Degsastan near Jedburgh, though Aidan
survived, and, with the help of Columba, re-established the power of
the Scots in Argyll.
About the year 664, the wars in the south with Northumbria resulted in
the introduction by its king Oswy into south Pictland of the Catholic
instead of the Columban Church, a change which Nechtan, king of the
Southern Picts, afterwards confirmed, and which long afterwards led
to the abandonment throughout Scotland of the Pictish and Columban
systems, and to the adoption in their place of the wider and broader
culture, and the politically superior organisation and stricter
discipline of the Catholic Church, as new bishoprics were gradually
founded throughout Scotland by its successive kings.[10]
Meantime, during the centuries which elapsed before the Catholic
Church reached the extreme north of Scotland, the Pictish and Columban
churches held the field, as rivals, there, and probably never wholly
perished in Norse times even in Caithness and Sutherland.
During these centuries there were constant wars among the Picts
themselves, and later between them and the Scots, resulting,
generally, in the Picts being driven eastward and northward from
the south centre of Alban, which the Scots seized, into the Grampian
hills.
After this very brief statement of previous history we may now attempt
to give some description of the land and the people of Caithness and
Sutherland as the Northmen found them in the ninth century.