_The Early Norse Jarls._
It was in the reign of Constantine I, son of the great Pictish king,
Angus MacFergus, that the new and disturbing influence mentioned above
appeared in force in Alban. Favoured in their voyages to and fro by
the prevailing winds, which then, as now, blew from the east in
the spring and from the west later in the year, the Northmen,
both Norsemen and Danes, neither being Christians, had, like their
predecessors the Saxons and Angles and Frisians, for some time made
trading voyages and desultory piratical attacks in summer-time on
the coasts of Britain and Ireland, and probably many a short-lived
settlement as well. But as these attacks and settlements are
unrecorded in Cat, no account of them can be given.
In 793 it is on record that the Vikings first sacked Iona, originally
the centre of Columban Christianity but then Romanised, and they
repeated these raids on its shrine again and again within the next
fifteen years. Constantine thereupon removed its clergy to Dunkeld,
"and there set up in his own kingdom an ecclesiastical capital for
Scots and Picts alike,"[1] as a step towards the political union
of his realm, which Norse sea-power had completely severed from the
original home of the Scots in Ulster.
The Northmen now began the systematic maritime invasions of our
eastern and northern and western coasts and islands, which history has
recorded. North Scotland was attacked almost exclusively by Norsemen,
and Norsemen and Danes invaded Ireland. The Danes seized the south of
Scotland, and the north of England, of which latter country, early in
the eleventh century in the time of King Knut, they were destined to
dominate two-thirds, while Old Norse became the _lingua franca_ of
his English kingdom, and enriched its language with hundreds of Norse
words, and gave us many new place and personal names.
In 844, Kenneth, king of the Scots, the small North Irish sept which,
as stated above, had crossed over from Erin and held the Dalriadic
kingdom of Argyll with its capital at Dunadd near the modern Crinan
Canal, succeeded in making good his title, on his mother's side, to
the Pictish crown by a successful attack from the west on the southern
Picts[2] at the same time as their territory was being invaded from
the east coast by the Danes. Thereafter, these Picts and the Scots
gradually became and ever afterwards remained one nation, a course
which suited both peoples as a safeguard not only against their
foreign foes the Northmen, but also against the Berenicians of Lothian
on the south. With the object of ensuring the union of the two peoples
Kenneth is said to have transferred some of the relics of Columba, who
had become the patron saint of both, from Iona to Dunkeld, which thus
definitely remained not only the ecclesiastical capital of the united
Picts and Scots, but the common centre of their religious sentiment
and veneration. Incidentally, too, the Pictish language gradually
became disused, as that people were absorbed in the Scots; and
unfortunately, through the fact that no written literature survived to
preserve it, that language has almost entirely disappeared. The better
opinion is that it was more closely akin to Welsh and Breton than to
Erse or Gaelic, the Welsh and the Picts being termed "P" Celts, and
the other races "Q" Celts, because in words of the same meaning the
Welsh used "P" where the Gaelic speaking Celt used the hard "C". For
instance, "Pen" and "Map" in Welsh became "Ken" (or Ceann) and "Mac"
in Gaelic.[3]
In the reign of Constantine II, Kenneth's son and next successor but
one, further incursions by the Northmen took place under King Olaf
the White of Dublin in 867 and 871; while in 875 his son Thorstein the
Red, by Aud "the deeply-wealthy" or "deeply-wise," landed on the north
coast, and, we are told, seized "Caithness and Sutherland and Moray
and more than half Scotland,"[4] being killed, however, by treachery
within the year. His mother Aud thereupon built a ship in Caithness,
and sailed for the Faroes and Iceland with her retinue and
possessions, marrying off two grand-daughters on the way, one, called
Groa, to Duncan, Maormor of Duncansby in Caithness, the most ancient
Pictish chief of whom we hear in that district, and probably ancestor
of the Moldan, or Moddan, line in Cat. Two years later, in 877, King
Constantine was defeated by a force of Danes at Dollar, and slain by
them at Forgan in Fife.[5]
After the great decisive battle of Hafrsfjord in Norway in 872,
because Orkney and Shetland and the Hebrides had become refuges for
the Norse Vikings, who had been expelled from their country or had
left it on the introduction of feudalism with its payment of dues
to the king, but were raiding its shores, Harald Harfagr,[6] king of
Norway, along with Jarl Ragnvald of Maeri attacked and extirpated the
pirate Vikings in their island lairs; and, as compensation to the
jarl for the loss of his son Ivar in battle, Harald transferred his
conquests with the title of Jarl of Orkney and Shetland to Ragnvald,
who, in his turn, with the king's consent, soon made over his new
territories and title to his brother Sigurd.
This new jarl, the second founder of the line of Orkney jarls,
conquered Caithness and Sutherland as far south as Ekkjals-bakki,[7]
which is believed by some to be in Moray, and by others, with more
truth, to be the ranges of hills in Sutherland and Ross lying to the
north and to the south of the River Oykel and its estuary, the Dornoch
Firth; and the second part of the name still happens to survive in the
place-name of Backies in Dunrobin Glen and elsewhere in Cat where the
Norse settled. About the year 890,[8] after challenging Malbrigde
of the Buck-tooth to a fight with forty a side, to which he himself
perfidiously brought eighty men, Sigurd outflanked and defeated his
adversary, and cut off his head and suspended it from his saddle; but
the buck-tooth, by chafing his leg as he rode away from the field,
caused inflammation and death, and Jarl Sigurd's body was laid in howe
on Oykel's Bank at Sigurthar-haugr, or Sigurds-haugr, the Siwards-hoch
of early charters now on modern maps corruptly written Sidera or
Cyderhall, near Dornoch, which, when translated, is Sigurd's Howe.[9]
"Thenceforward," as Professor Hume Brown tells us, "the mainland
was never secure from the attacks of successive jarls, who for long
periods held firm possession of what is now Caithness and Sutherland.
As things now went, this was in truth in the interest of the kings of
Scots themselves. To the north of the Grampians they exercised little
or no authority; and the people of that district were as often their
enemies as their friends. Through the action of the Orkney jarls,
therefore, the Scottish kings were at comparative liberty to extend
their territory towards the south; and the day came when they found
themselves able to crush every hostile element even in the north.[10]
It is this process of consolidation in the north which it is proposed
to describe so far as Sutherland and Caithness are concerned, using
both Norse and Scottish records, and piecing them together as best
we can, and, be it confessed, in many cases filling up great gaps by
necessary guess-work when records fail.
In the reign of the great king Constantine III, between the years 900
and 942, the Danes again gave trouble. In 903 the Irish Danes ravaged
Alban,[11] as Scotland north of the Forth was then called, for a
whole year; in 918 Constantine and his ally, Eldred of Lothian, were
defeated by another expedition of these invaders; and in 934 Athelstan
and his Saxons burst into Strathclyde and Forfar, the heart of
Constantine's kingdom, and the Saxon fleet was sent up even to the
shores of Caithness, as a naval demonstration intended to brave the
Norse, who had joined Constantine, on their own element. Lastly, in
937 Athelstan and Constantine met at Brunanburg, probably Birrenswark
near Ecclefechan, and Constantine and his Norse allies were completely
defeated.[12]
Meantime, since 875, a succession of jarls had endeavoured to hold,
for the kings of Norway, Orkney and Shetland, as well as Cat, which
then included Ness, Strathnavern, and Sudrland.[13] The history of
these early jarls is not told in detail in any surviving contemporary
record, for the Sagas of the jarls as individuals have perished; but
there is a brief account of them in the beginning of the _Orkneyinga
Saga_, another in chapters 99 and 100 of the _St. Olaf's Saga_, and a
fuller one in chapters 179 to 187 of the _Saga of Olaf Tryggvi's Son_,
contained in the _Flatey Book_.[14] From these the following story may
be gathered.
After Jarl Sigurd's death, his son Guthorm ruled for one winter, and
died without issue, so that Sigurd's line came to an end. When Jarl
Ragnvald of Maeri heard of his nephew's death, he sent his son Hallad
over from Norway to Hrossey, as the mainland of Orkney was then
called, and King Harald gave him the title of jarl. Failing in his
efforts to put down the piracy of the Vikings, who continued their
slayings and plunderings, Hallad, the last of the purely Norse jarls,
resigned his jarldom, and returned ignominiously to Norway. In the
absence at war of Hrolf the Ganger, who became Duke of Normandy and
was an ancestor of the kings of England, two others of Ragnvald's
sons, Thorir and Hrollaug, were summoned to meet their father. At
this meeting it was decided that neither of these should go to Orkney,
Thorir's prospects in Norway being good, and Hrollaug's future lying
in Iceland, where, it was said, he was to found a great family. Then
Einar, the Jarl's youngest son by a thrall or slave woman, and thus
not of pure Norse lineage, asked whether he might go, offering as an
inducement to his father that, if he went, he would thus never be seen
by him again. He was told that the sooner he went, and the longer he
stayed away, the better his father would be pleased. A galley, well
equipped, was given to him, and about the year 891 King Harald Harfagr
conferred on him the title of Jarl of Orkney and Shetland, for which
he sailed. On his arrival there, he attacked Kalf Skurfa and Thorir
Treskegg,[15] the pirate Viking leaders, and defeated and slew them
both. He then took possession of the lands of the jarldom; and, from
having taught the people of Turfness in Moray the use of turf or peat
for fuel, was known thenceforward as Torf-Einar. He is said to have
been "a tall man, ugly, with one eye, but very keen-sighted,"[16] a
faculty which he was soon to use.
When Jarl Ragnvald of Maeri, the first of the Orkney jarls, was killed
in Norway by two of Harald Harfagr's sons, one of them, Halfdan Halegg
or Long-shanks fled from their father's vengeance to Orkney. When
Halfdan landed, Torf-Einar took refuge in Scotland, but returned in
force, and after defeating Halfdan--who had usurped the jarldom--in
North Ronaldsay Firth, spied him as a fugitive, in hiding, far off on
Rinarsey or Rinansey (Ninian's Island) now North Ronaldsay, and seized
him, cut a blood-eagle on his back, severed his ribs and pulled out
his lungs, and, after offering him as a victim to Odin, buried his
body there.[17]
Incensed at the shameful slaughter of his son, Harald Harfagr came
over from Norway about the year 900 to avenge him, but, as was then
not unusual, accepted as a wergeld or atonement for his son's death a
fine of sixty marks of gold, which it fell to the islanders to pay. On
their failure to find the money, Torf-Einar paid it himself, taking in
return from the people their odal lands,[18] which were lost to their
families until Jarl Sigurd Hlodverson temporarily restored them as a
recompense for their assistance in the battle fought by him between
969 and 995 against Finleac MacRuari, Maormor of North Moray, at
Skidamyre in Caithness. Whether it was the Orkney jarls or their
superiors, the kings of Norway, who owned them in the meantime, the
odal lands were finally sold back to those entitled to them by descent
by Jarl Ragnvald Kol's son about 1137, in order to raise money for the
completion of Kirkwall Cathedral. Odal tenure in Orkney was thus in
abeyance for over two centuries, save for a short time, and in any
case its inherent principle of subdivision would have killed it, and
after its renewal, in spite of its many safeguards against alienation
to strangers, it gradually died out under feudalism and Scottish law
and lawyers.[19] In Cat it never seems to have taken root.
After holding the jarldom for a long term, Torf-Einar died in his bed,
as the Saga contemptuously tells us, probably in or after the year
920, leaving three sons, Arnkell, Erlend, and Thorfinn Hausa-kliufr or
Skull-splitter, of whom the two first, Arnkell and Erlend, fell with
Eric Bloody-axe, king of Norway, in England. The third son, Thorfinn
Hausa-kliufr or Skull-splitter, himself about three-quarters Norse
by blood, married Grelaud, daughter of Dungadr, or Duncan, the Gaelic
Maormor of Caithness by Groa, daughter of Thorfinn the Red, thus
further Gaelicising the strain of the Norse Jarls of Orkney,[20] but
adding greatly to their mainland territories.
Jarl Thorfinn Hausa-kliufr, who flourished between 920 and 963, is
described as a great chief and fighter; but he, like his father,
died a peaceful death, and was buried at Hoxa, Haugs-eithi or
Mound's-isthmus, which covers the site of a Pictish broch, near the
north-west end of South Ronaldshay.[21]
When Eric Bloody-axe had been defeated and killed, his sons came to
Orkney and seized the jarldom, and his widow, the notoriously wicked
Gunnhild and her daughter Ragnhild settled there for a time. Thorfinn
Hausa-kliufr had five sons, Arnfinn, Havard, Hlodver, Ljotr and
Skuli. Three of these, Arnfinn. Havard and Ljotr, successively married
Ragnhild, and Ragnhild rivalled her mother in wickedness. Arnfinn she
killed at Murkle in Caithness with her own hand; Havard she induced
Einar Oily-tongue, his nephew, to slay, on her promise to marry him,
which she broke; and finally she married Jarl Ljotr instead. Skuli,
the only other surviving son save Hlodver, went to the king of Scots,
who is said to have lightly given away what did not belong to him,
and to have created him Earl of Caithness, which then included
Sudrland.[22] Skuli then raised a force in his new earldom, no doubt
to carry out Scottish policy, and, crossing to Orkney, fought a battle
there with his brother Ljotr, was defeated, and fled to Caithness.
Collecting another army in Scotland, Skuli fought a second battle at
Dalar or Dalr, probably Dale in the upper valley of the Thurso River
in Caithness, and was there defeated and killed by Ljotr, who took
possession of his dominions. Then followed a battle between Ljotr and
a Scottish earl called Magbiod or Macbeth, at Skida Myre or Skitten
Moor in Watten in Caithness, which Ljotr won, but died of his wounds
shortly after, and is said to have been buried at Stenhouse in
Watten.[23] Thus the first Scottish attempt at consolidation of the
north failed.
During the last half of the tenth century there was constant war by
the kings of Alban against the Northmen who had seized the coast of
Moray, and Malcolm I was killed at Ulern near Kinloss, about the year
954, and his successor Indulf fell in the hour of his victory over the
invaders at Cullen in Banff.[24] But on the whole probably the Scots
had succeeded for a time in driving out the Norse from the laigh of
Moray, which the latter needed for its supplies of grain.
Hlodver or Lewis, (963-980), the only surviving son of Thorfinn
Hausa-kliufr, succeeded Ljotr in the jarldom; and by Audna or Edna,
daughter of Kiarval, king of the Hy Ivar of Dublin and Limerick,
Hlodver had a son, the famous Sigurd the Stout, or Sigurd Hlodverson.
Hlodver was, (as Mr. A.W. Johnston points out),[25] by blood slightly
more Norse than Gaelic. We know little of him save that he was a
mighty chief; and, according to the usual reproach of the Saga,
died in his bed and not in battle about 980, and was buried at Hofn,
probably Huna, in Caithness, near John o' Groats, under a howe.[26]
The line of the so-called Norse earls, at the period at which we have
arrived, 980 A.D., was represented by Sigurd Hlodverson, the hero of
the Raven banner, which, as his Irish mother had predicted, was to
bring victory to every host which followed it, but death to every man
who bore it in battle.[27] Sigurd claimed Caithness by the rules
of Pictish succession, as grandson of Grelaud daughter of Duncan of
Duncansby, Maormor of that district. This claim was disputed by
two Celtic chiefs, Hundi (possibly Crinan, Abthane of Dunkeld) and
Melsnati, or Maelsnechtan; and in a battle at Dungal's Noep, near
Duncansby, at which Kari Solmundarson is said in the _Saga of Burnt
Njal_[28] to have been present, Sigurd defeated them, but with
such loss to his own side that he had to retire to Orkney, leaving
Hundi,[29] the survivor of his two enemies, in possession of his lands
in Caithness. Sigurd himself, on his voyage from Orkney, fell into the
hands of the Norse king, Olaf Tryggvi's-son, who was returning from
Dublin to Norway, in the bay of Osmundwall or Kirk Hope in Walls;
and the king insisted on the jarl being baptized on the spot, under
penalty, if he and all the inhabitants of his jarldom did not become
and remain Christians, of losing his eldest son Hundi or Hvelpr,
whom the Norse king seized and retained as a hostage. He also sent
missionaries to evangelize the jarldom. Such was the conversion of
Orkney and its jarl from the worship of Odin, at or about the end of
the first millennium of the Christian era.
On his son's death in captivity, Sigurd seems to have deserted the
Norse for the Scottish side, and to have devoted himself to seeking
the favour, by his assistance in completing the conquest of Moray from
the Norse, of the Scottish king Malcolm II, whose third daughter he
married as his second wife.[30] He was, by race, more than two-thirds
Gaelic, and he clearly at first held Caithness in spite of all
Scottish attacks, and probably later on agreed to hold it from the
Scottish king.
A few other persons are referred to in the Sagas as connected with
Caithness at this time. In the Landnamabok (1.6.5) we find Swart Kell,
or Cathal Dhu, mentioned as having gone from Caithness and taken
land in settlement in Mydalr in Iceland, and his son was Thorkel, the
father of Glum, who took Christendom when he was already old.
About this time also, as appears from the _Saga of Thorgisl_,[31]
there was an Earl Anlaf or Olaf in Caithness, who had a sister, named
Gudrun, whom Swart Ironhead, a pirate, sought in marriage. But Swart
was killed in holmgang, or duel, by Thorgisl, who cut off his head
and married Gudrun, by whom he had a son called Thorlaf. Thorgisl then
tired of Gudrun, and gave her to Thorstan the White on the plea that
he himself wished to go and look after his estate in Iceland, which he
did. Can this Anlaf be the original of the legendary Alane, thane
of Sutherland, whom Macbeth, according to Sir Robert Gordon in his
_Genealogie of the Earles of Southerland_,[32] put to death, and whose
son, Walter, Malcolm Canmore is said to have created first Earl? Or
was Alane, like others, a creation of Sir Robert's inventive brain?
He was certainly no earl of the present Sutherland line; neither was
Walter.[33]
To this period also belongs the romantic story of Barth or Bard,
son of Helgi and Helga Ulfs-datter told in the _Flatey Book_, and
translated at page 369 of the Appendix to Sir George Dasent's Rolls
Edition of the _Orkneyinga Saga_, which is shortly as follows.
In the time of Sigurd Hlodverson, Ulf the Bad, of Sanday in Orkney,
murdered Harald of North Ronaldsay, and seized his lands in the
absence of Harald's son Helgi, a gentle Viking, on a cruise. On his
return, Helgi, to revenge his father's death, slew Bard, Ulf's next of
kin, in fight. Jarl Sigurd blames him for this and for not letting him
settle the feud himself, and Helgi sells all he has, and goes to Ulf's
house and takes his daughter, Helga, away. Ulf follows them up by
sea with a superior force, defeats Helgi off Caithness, and he
jumps overboard with Helga and swims to shore, where a poor farmer,
Thorfinn, as Helgi had always been kind in his "vikings" to such as he
was, has the wedding at his house, and shelters the pair there till
on Ulf's death two years after they can return to Orkney with Bard or
Barth, their infant son. At twelve years of age, Barth desires to fare
away "to those peoples who believe in the God of Heaven Himself," and
fares far away accordingly. Barth works for a farmer, and works so
well that his flocks increase, and gets a cow for himself as a reward,
but meets a beggar who begs the cow of him "for Peter's thanks." Each
year a cow is the reward of Barth's work, and each year he is asked
for the cow, and gives her up, until he has given three cows. Then
St. Peter (for the beggar was no other than he) passes his hands over
Barth, and gives him good luck, and sets a book upon his shoulders;
and he saw far and wide over many lands, and over all Ireland, and he
was baptized, and became a holy hermit and a bishop in Ireland. Such
is the Norse story of Barth, to whom the first Cathedral in Dornoch
was said to have been dedicated. It is far more prettily told in the
Saga.
But St. Barr of Dornoch, in all probability, belongs to the sixth
century,[34] not to the tenth, and was a Pict or Irishman, not a
Norseman. He was never Bishop of Caithness, so far as records tell.
His Fair, like those of other Pictish Saints elsewhere in Cat, is
still celebrated, and is held at Dornoch.
The battle of Clontarf, fought on Good Friday, the 23rd of April 1014,
outside Dublin, between the young heathen king of Dublin, Sigtrigg
Silkbeard, and the aged Christian king, Brian Borumha, was,
notwithstanding Norse representations to the contrary, a decisive
victory for the Irish over the Norse, and for Christianity against
Odinism. Sigurd, Jarl of Orkney, though nominally a Christian, fought
on the heathen side, and fell bearing his Raven banner, and the old
king, Brian, was killed in the hour of his people's victory.
Sigurd's death is the subject of a strange legend, and the occasion
of a weird poem, _The Darratha-Liod_[35] said to have been sung in
Caithness for the first time on the day of Sigurd's death.
The legend is given in the _Niala_[36] as follows:--"On Friday it
happened in Caithness that a man called Dorruthr went out of his house
and saw that twelve men together rode to a certain bower, where they
all disappeared. He went to the bower, and looked in through a window,
and saw that within there were women, who had set up a web. They sang
the poem, calling on the listener, Dorruthr, to learn the song, and
to tell it to others. When the song was over, they tore down the web,
each one retaining what she held in her hand of it. And now Dorruthr
went away from the window and returned home, while they mounted their
horses, riding six to the north and six to the south. A similar vision
appeared to Brand, the son of Gneisti, in the Faroes. At Swinefell in
Iceland blood fell on the cope of a priest on Good Friday, so that he
had to take it off. At Thvatta a priest saw on Good Friday deep sea
before the altar and many terrible wonders therein, and for long he
was unable to sing the Hours."[37]
This strange legend of early telepathy may be explained by the fact
that Thorstein, son of the Icelander Hall o' Side, fought for Sigurd
at Clontarf, and afterwards returned to Iceland and told the story
of the battle, which the Saga preserved; and the English poet, Thomas
Gray, used it as the theme of his well-known poem intituled _The Fatal
Sisters_. The old Norse ballad referred to Sigurd's death at Clontarf
in 1014. It is known as _Darratha-Liod_ or _The Javelin-Song_, and is
translated by the late Eirikr Magnusson and printed in the _Miscellany
of the Viking Society_ with the Old Norse original[38] and the
translator's scholarly notes and explanations. It is said that it was
often sung in Old Norse in North Ronaldsay until the middle of the
eighteenth century.
As translated it is as follows:--
DARRATHA-LIOD.
I.
Widely's warped
To warn of slaughter
The back-beam's rug--
Lo, blood is raining!
Now grey with spears
Is framed the web
Of human kind,
With red woof filled
By maiden friends
Of Randver's slayer.
II.
That web is warped
With human entrails,
And is hard weighted
With heads of people;
Bloodstained darts
Do for treadles,
The forebeam's ironbound
The reed's of arrows;
Swords be sleys[39]
For this web of war.
III.
Hild goes to weave
And Hiorthrimol
Sangrid and Svipol
With swords unsheathed.
Shafts will crack
And shields will burst,
The dog of helms
Will drop on byrnies.
IV.
Wind we, wind we
Web of javelins
Such as the young king
Has waged before.
Forward we go
And rush to the fray,
Where our friends
Engage in fighting.
V.
Wind we, wind we
Web of javelins
Where forward rush
The fighters' standards.
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
VI.
Wind we, wind we
Web of javelins,
And faithfully
The king we follow.
Nor shall we leave
His life to perish;
Among the doomed
Our choice is ample.
VII.
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
There Gunn and Gondul
Who guarded the king
Saw borne by men
Bloody targets.
VIII.
That race will now
Rule the country
Which erstwhile held
But outer nesses.
The mighty king,
Meweens, is doomed.
Now pierced by points
The Earl hath fallen.
IX.
Such bale will now
Betide the Irish
As ne'er grows old
To minding men.
The web's now woven
The wold made red,
Afar will travel
The tale of woe.
X:
An awful sight
The eye beholdeth
As blood-red clouds
Are borne through heaven;
The skies take hue
Of human blood,
Whene'er fight-maidens
Fall to singing.
XI. Willing we chant
Of the youthful king
A lay of victory--
Luck to our singing!
But he who listens
Must learn by heart
This spear-maid's song
And spread it further.
XII.
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
On bare-backed steeds
We start out swiftly
With swords unsheathed
From hence away.
The nine centuries, above referred to, of Roman invasion, intestine
war, and ecclesiastical rivalry between the Pictish, Columban and
Catholic Churches had now, under Malcolm II, produced a kingdom of
Scotland, throughout which the Catholic was in a fair way to become
the predominant Church, and in which the authority of the Scottish
Crown was for the time being, nominally, but in the north merely
nominally, supreme on the mainland from the Tweed to the Pentland
Firth. The Isles of Orkney and Shetland and the whole of the Sudreyar
or Hebrides, however, owed allegiance, whether their jarls admitted
it or not, to the Crown of Norway, and the Scottish kings had no
authority over them.[40] Moreover, the Northmen--Danes and Norsemen
and Gallgaels--held the western seas from the Butt of Lewis to the
Isle of Man, and they had severed the connection between the Scots
of Ulster and the Scots of Argyll. The latter had thus been forced to
move eastwards, in order to avoid constant raids by the Irish Danes
and Norsemen and the Gallgaels, who thus possessed themselves of all
the coast of Scotland then known as Airergaithel or Argyll, which
extended up to Ross and Assynt, west of the Drumalban watershed.
Of the next nine centuries from 1000 to the present time it is
proposed to deal with the first two hundred and seventy years only,
which, with the preceding century and a half, form a chapter of
Scottish history complete in itself. The narrative, as already stated,
will be based largely upon the great Stories or Tales known as the
_Orkneyinga, St. Magnus'_, and _Hakonar Sagas_, and also upon Scottish
and English chronicles and records so far as they throw their fitful
light upon the northern counties of Scotland, and especially upon
Caithness and Sutherland, during the dark periods between these Sagas.
Attention will have to be paid to the Pictish family of Moldan of
Duncansby, of Moddan, created Earl of Caithness by his uncle Duncan I,
and of Moddan "in Dale," each of whom in turn succeeded to much of
the estates of the ancient Maormors of Duncansby, but whose people had
been driven back from most of the best low-lying lands into the upper
valleys and the hills by the foreign invaders of Cat. For, when the
Norse Vikings first attacked Cat and succeeded in conquering the Picts
there, they conquered by no means the whole of that province. They
subdued and held only that part of Ness or modern Caithness which lies
next its north and east coasts, and the rest of the sea-board of Ness,
Strathnavern and Sudrland, forcing their way up the lower parts of
the valleys of these districts, as their place-names still live on to
prove; but they never conquered, so as to occupy and hold them, the
upper parts of these river basins or the hills above them, which
remained in possession of Picts and Gaels throughout the whole period
of the Norse occupation. Further, the Picts and Gaels extended the
area which they retained, until Norse rule was expelled from the
mainland altogether.
In Strathnavern and in the upper valleys of its rivers, and also in
Caithness in the uplands of the river Thurso, and in a large part of
Sudrland the Pictish family and clan of Moddan in its various branches
subsisted all through the Norse occupation, and it is hoped to show
good reason for believing that the family of Moddan, with the Pictish
or Scottish family of Freskyn de Moravia in later times, was the
mainstay of Scottish rule in the extreme north until the shadowy
claims of Norse suzerains over every part of the mainland were
completely repelled, and avowedly abandoned.
Meantime to Norway Orkney and Cat were essential. For their fertile
lands yielded the supplies of grain which Norway required; and when
the Norse were driven from the arable lands of the Moray seaboard,
Orkney and Cat became still more necessary to them and their folk at
home. Cat the Scots could not then reach, for the Norse held the sea,
while on land Pictish Moray, a jealous power, hostile to its southern
neighbours, lay in its mountain fastnesses between the territory of
the Scots in the south and the land of Cat in the extreme north, and
formed a barrier which stretched across Alban from the North Sea to
the shores of Assynt on the Skotlands-fiorthr or Minch.