_Paul and Erlend, Hakon and Magnus._
After Earl Thorfinn's death his sons Paul and Erlend jointly held the
jarldom, but divided the lands. They were "big men both, and handsome,
but wise and modest"[1] like their Norse mother Ingibjorg, known as
Earls'-mother, first cousin of Thora, queen of Norway, mother of King
Olaf Kyrre.
On Thorfinn's death, however, the rest of his territories, nine
Scottish earldoms, it is said, "fell away, and went under those men
who were territorially born to rule over them;" that is to say, they
reverted to Scottish Maormors;[2] but Orkney and Shetland remained
wholly Norse, and under Norse rule.
The date of the succession of Paul and Erlend to the Norse jarldom[3]
was, as we have seen, after 1057. Possibly in 1059, or certainly not
later than 1064 or 1065, Ingibjorg, Thorfinn's widow, as by Norse law
widows alone had the right to do, "gave herself away" to the Scot-King
Malcolm III, known as Malcolm Canmore.[4]
As a matter of policy, the marriage was a wise step. For it would
tend to strengthen not only the hold of Scotland on Caithness and
Sutherland, but also its connection with Orkney and Shetland, because
Ingibjorg's sons, the young jarls Paul and Erlend, would become
stepsons of the Scottish king and earls of Caithness. Nor was the
marriage unsuitable in point either of the age or of the rank of the
contracting parties. Married to Thorfinn about 1044,[5] Ingibjorg, his
widow, need not in 1064 have been more than forty. She may have been
younger, and Malcolm was, in 1064, about thirty-three. If the
marriage was in 1059, Ingibjorg would be only thirty-five and Malcolm
twenty-eight. That Ingibjorg was not old is proved by the fact that
she had by Malcolm one son and possibly three sons,[6] namely, Duncan
II, and, it may be, also Malcolm and Donald. As regards rank, also,
she was equal to Malcolm, being a cousin of the Queen of Norway, and
widow of Thorfinn grandson of Malcolm II, the great jarl of Orkney who
had then recently subdued all the north of Scotland and the Western
Isles and Galloway to himself, while Malcolm III was in exile in
England, whence he had been brought back with the greatest difficulty,
not by a Scottish force but by the help of an English, or at least a
Northumbrian army.
After his marriage with Ingibjorg it is clear that there was peace for
thirty years in the north of Scotland, so far as the Norse jarls
were concerned, a fact which of itself justified the marriage,
which, however, may have afterwards been held to have been within the
prohibited degrees, and therefore void, while its issue would be held
to be illegitimate, and not entitled to succeed to the Scottish crown.
We may add that there is nothing in any Scottish record to prove this
marriage or to disprove it.
The first important event in the lives of Paul and Erlend happened
just before the Norman conquest of England. They joined King Harald
Sigurdson (Hardrada) and his son Prince Olaf, who was their second
cousin on their mother's side,[7] in an attack on England; and, after
Harald's death, and his army's defeat by King Harold Godwinson of
England at Stamford Bridge, in September 1066, (three days before
William the Conqueror landed at Pevensey) the two Orkney jarls were
taken prisoner, but, along with Prince Olaf, they were released.
On their return to Orkney, Paul asked the Archbishop of York to
consecrate a cleric of Orkney as Bishop in Orkney, and the two
brothers ruled harmoniously there until their sons Hakon on the one
hand and Magnus and Erling on the other, who had been engaged in
Viking cruises together as boys, grew up and quarrelled, and, as is
usual, drew their fathers into the strife. This strife was provoked by
Hakon, and apparently lasted for many years,[8] Erlend supporting
his own sons, and driving Hakon abroad to Norway about the year 1090.
Neither Paul nor Erlend seems to have been much in Sutherland or
Caithness, in which the representatives of the Gaelic Maormors or
Chiefs probably regained power, especially the family of Moddan, and
extended their territories.
Meantime King Magnus Barelegs[9] of Norway, instigated by Hakon,
and taking advantage of the contentions between 1093 and 1098 of
the various claimants of the Scottish crown, Donald Bane (whom he
supported), Duncan II, and Edgar, had made his several expeditions, in
the closing years of the eleventh century, against the western islands
and coasts of Scotland and Wales. In the battle of the Menai Straits
in 1098 we find that he had with him young Hakon Paulson, and also
Erling and Magnus, Jarl Erlend's sons, though Magnus, who had repented
of his early Viking ways, after declining to take part in the fight
against an enemy with whom he had no quarrel, escaped to the Scottish
court.[10] In 1098 King Magnus had deposed and carried off Jarls Paul
and Erlend to Norway, where they died soon after; and in the meantime
he had appointed his own son, Sigurd, to be ruler of Orkney and
Shetland in their place.[11] But on King Magnus' death, during his
later expedition to Ireland, where Erling Erlendson probably also
fell, Prince Sigurd had to quit Orkney in order to ascend the
Norwegian throne, leaving the jarldom vacant for the two cousins,
Hakon Paulson and Magnus Erlendson. The latter appears to have stayed
for some years at the Scottish Court and afterwards with a bishop in
Wales, and again in Scotland, but on hearing of his father's death,
went to Caithness, where he was well received and was chosen and
honoured with the title of "earl" about 1103. A winter or two after
King Magnus' death, or about 1105, Hakon came back from Norway with
the title of Jarl, seized Orkney, and slew the king of Norway's
steward, who was protecting Magnus' share, which after a time Magnus
claimed, only to find that Hakon had prepared a force to dispute his
rights. Hakon agreed, however, to give up his claims to Magnus'
half share if Magnus should obtain a grant of it from the Norwegian
king.[12] King Eystein about 1106 gave him this moiety and the title
of Jarl; and the two cousins lived in amity for "many winters,"
joining their forces and fighting and killing Dufnjal,[13] who was one
degree further off than their first cousin, and killing Thorbjorn at
Burrafirth in Unst in Shetland "for good cause." Magnus then married,
probably about 1107, "a high-born lady, and the purest maid of the
noblest stock of Scotland's chiefs, living with her ten winters" as
a maiden. After "some winters" evil-minded men set about spoiling
the friendship of the jarls, and Hakon again seized Magnus' share;
whereupon the latter went to the court of Henry I of England, where he
appears to have charmed everyone, and to have spent a year, probably
1111, in which Hakon seized all Orkney, and also Caithness, which then
included Sutherland, and laid them under his rule with robbery and
wantonness. Leaving Caithness, Hakon at once went to attack Magnus
in Orkney where he had landed; but the "good men" intervened, and an
equal division of Orkney and Shetland and Caithness was made between
the jarls. After some winters, however, they met in battle array in
Mainland, and the fight was again stopped by the principal men
on either side in their own interest, the final settlement being
postponed until a meeting, which was to take place in Egilsay in the
next spring, Magnus arrived first at the meeting-place with the small
following of two ships agreed upon, but Hakon came later in seven or
eight ships with a great force, and, after those present had refused
to let both come away alive, Magnus was treacherously murdered under
Hakon's orders by Hakon's cook on the 16th of April 1116. The dead
jarl's mother, Thora, had prepared a feast in Paplay to celebrate the
reconciliation of the two cousins, which, notwithstanding the murder,
Hakon attended. After the banquet the bereaved mother begged her son's
corpse for burial in holy ground, and obtained it from the drunken
earl after some difficulty and buried it in Christ's Kirk at Birsay.
Twenty-one years after, on the 13th December 1137, Jarl Magnus' relics
were brought[14] to St. Magnus' Cathedral at Kirkwall.
After making due allowance for the legends which generally cluster
round a saint or jarl, and grow with time, and for the desire for
dramatic contrast and effect, we must give credit to the writer of
the _Orkneyinga Saga_, probably the Orkney Bishop Bjarni,[15] for the
vividness and simplicity of his account of St. Magnus' life and of the
two most striking episodes in it--his moral courage as a non-combatant
in the battle of Menai Straits, and his saintly forgiveness of his
murderers in his death-scene on Egilsay; and we must hold him worthy
alike of his aureole and of the noble Norman cathedral afterwards
erected in his memory by his nephew, St. Ragnvald Jarl, at Kirkwall,
which took the place of Thorfinn's church at Birsay as the seat of the
Orkney bishopric. Magnus, it seems, was all through assisted by the
Scottish king, and favoured by the Caithness folk,[16] yet the Saga
jealously claims him as "the Isle-earl,"[17] and adds the following
description of him:--
"He was the most peerless of men, tall of growth, manly, and lively
of look, virtuous in his ways, fortunate in fight, a sage in wit,
ready-tongued and lordly-minded, lavish of money and high spirited,
quick of counsel, and more beloved of his friends than any man;
blithe and of kind speech to wise and good men, but hard and unsparing
against robbers and sea-rovers; he let many men be slain who harried
the freemen and land folk; he made murderers and thieves be taken,
and visited as well on the powerful as on the weak robberies and
thieveries and all ill-deeds. He was no favourer of his friends in his
judgments, for he valued more godly justice than the distinctions of
rank. He was open-handed to chiefs and powerful men, but still he ever
showed most care for poor men. In all things he kept straitly God's
commandments."
As for Hakon, his cousin Magnus' death without issue left him sole
Jarl, "and he made all men take an oath to him who had before served
Earl Magnus. But some winters after, Hakon ... fared south to Rome,
and to Jerusalem, whence he sought the halidoms, and bathed in the
river Jordan, as is palmer's wont.[18] And on his return he became a
good ruler, and kept his realm well at peace." He probably then built
the round church at Orphir in Mainland of Orkney, the only Templar
Church in Scotland.
By Helga, Moddan's daughter, whom he never married, Hakon had a
son Harald Slettmali (smooth-talker, or glib of speech), and two
daughters, Ingibiorg and Margret. Ingibiorg afterwards married Olaf
Bitling, king of the Sudreys; and Ragnvald Gudrodson, the great
Viking, was of her line, and, as we shall see, in 1200 or thereabouts,
had the Caithness earldom conferred upon him for a short time. To
Margret we shall return later. By a lawful wife Hakon had another son,
Paul the Silent, and it seems certain that Paul was not by the same
mother as Margret or Harald Slettmali, and that Paul's mother was not
of Moddan's family.
Moddan, Earl of Caithness, was killed in 1040. His mother, daughter
of Bethoc, must have been born after 1002. If she was married at
seventeen, her son Earl Moddan could not have been more than twenty
when killed in 1040, and any son of his must have been born by 1041 at
latest. This son may have been Moddan in Dale. Dale was the valley of
the upper Thurso River, the only great valley of Caithness, and the
Saga states as follows:--
Moddan[19] "then dwelt in Dale in Caithness, a man of rank and very
wealthy," and "his son Ottar was jarl in Thurso." Frakark, a daughter
of Moddan in Dale, was the wife of Liot Nidingr, or the Dastard, a
Sudrland chief, and during the half century after Thorfinn's death
Moddan's family seems to have owned much of Caithness and Sutherland,
where the Norse steadily lost their hold. We may be sure also that the
Celt always kept his land, if he could, or, if he lost it, regained it
as soon as he could. Amongst its members this family probably held all
the hills and upper parts of the valleys of Strathnavern, Sutherland
and Ness at this time, and, from a centre on the low-lying land at
the head waters of the Naver, Helmsdale and Thurso rivers, kept on
pressing their more Norse neighbours steadily outwards and eastwards.
Shortly after Hakon's death in 1123, King Alexander I and his brother,
David I, began to organise the Catholic Church in Scotland, and also
to introduce feudalism. Even in the north of Scotland, between the
years 1107 and 1153 they founded monasteries and bishoprics, and
introduced Norman knights and barons holding land by feudal service
from the Crown. Long thwarted in their policy by Moray and its Pictish
maormors, who claimed even the throne itself, these two kings pushed
their authority, by organisation and conquest, more and more towards
the north. Alexander I founded the Bishoprics of St. Andrew's,
Dunkeld, and Moray in 1107, and the Monastery of Scone, afterwards
intimately connected with Kildonan in Sutherland, in 1113 or 1114.
David I, that "sair sanct to the croun," who succeeded in 1124,
founded the Bishoprics of Ross and of Caithness in 1128 or 1130, and
of Aberdeen in 1137, and endowed them with lands. The same king[20]
between 1140 and 1145 issued a mandate "to Reinwald Earl of Orkney and
to the Earl and all the men of substance of Caithness and Orkney to
love and maintain free from injury the monks of Durnach and their men
and property," and also in some year between 1145 and 1153, he granted
Hoctor Common[21] near Durnach, to Andrew, Bishop of Caithness, whose
see was then well established there, and he spent the summer of 1150,
while he was superintending the building of the Cistercian abbey
of Kinloss, in the neighbouring Castle of Duffus, whose ruins still
stand, with Freskyn de Moravia, the first known ancestor of the Earls
of Sutherland.[22]
Freskyn, probably about 1130[23] or earlier, had built this castle on
the northern estate, comprising the parish of Spynie near Elgin
and other extensive lands in Moray, which had been given to him in
addition to his southern territories of Strabrock, now Uphall and
Broxburn[24] in Linlithgowshire, which he already held from the
Scottish king. Freskyn was thus no Fleming, but a lowland Pict or
Scot, as the tradition of his house maintains,[25] and he was a
common ancestor of the great Scottish families of Atholl, Bothwell,
Sutherland, and probably Douglas. No member of the Freskyn family is
ever styled "Flandrensis" in any writ.
We find in the extreme north of Scotland, in the first half of the
twelfth century, apart from the Mackays, three leading families with
great followings, which were destined to play an important part in the
future government of Sutherland and Caithness, and with which we shall
have to deal in detail later on.
First, there was the family of the so-called Norse jarls, descended in
twin strains from Paul and Erlend, Thorfinn's sons, owing allegiance
to the Norwegian crown in respect of Orkney and Shetland and also
holding the earldom of Caithness in moieties or in entirety, nominally
from the Scottish king. Secondly, we have the family of Moddan, Celtic
earls or maormors, with extensive territories held under the kings
of Alban and Scotland for many centuries before this time, but
dispossessed in part by the Norse. Thirdly, we have the family of
Freskyn de Moravia then established at Strabrock in Linlithgowshire,
who about 1120 or 1130 received, for his loyalty and services,
extensive lands at Duffus and elsewhere in Morayshire, and probably
about 1196 the lands in south Caithness known as Sudrland or
Sutherland, from the Scottish crown.
Of this third line of De Moravias or Morays, two distinct branches
settled north of the Oykel. First, we have Hugo Freskyn, son, it is
said, but, as we shall see, really grandson, of the original Freskyn
and son of Freskyn's elder or eldest son William.[26] This William no
doubt fought for, and may, or may not, have held land in Sutherland,
but his son Hugo certainly had all Sutherland properly so called, that
is, Sudrland, or the Southland of Caithness comprising the parishes of
Creich, Dornoch, Rogart, Kilmalie (afterwards Golspie), Clyne, Loth,
and most of Lairg and Kildonan,[27] formally granted to him, and he
held also the Duffus Estates in Moray, by sea only thirty miles south
of Dunrobin.
The second branch was that of the younger Freskin de Moravia,
great-great-grandson of the original Freskyn,[28] and ancestor of
the Lords of Duffus, who obtained lands, which were mainly in modern
Caithness, and also in the upper portion of the valley of the Naver
and the valley of Coire-na-fearn in Strathnavern, by marriage with the
Lady Johanna of Strathnaver about 1250.[29] This latter portion
was immediately north of the land granted to Hugo Freskyn; and the
Caithness portion of Johanna's lands marched with Hugo's land on its
eastern boundary. Nor must we forget that a large area of the modern
county of Sutherland, consisting of part of the present parishes
of Eddrachilles and Durness and some part of Tongue and Farr in
Strathnavern, was constantly used as a refuge by Pictish refugees of
the race of MacHeth or MacAoidh, displaced and frequently driven forth
from Moray after the bloody defeat of Stracathro in 1130 and in later
rebellions as part of the policy of the Scottish kings, and first
known as the race of Morgan and then to us as the Clan Mackay.
They chose, indeed, for their refuge and ultimately for their
settlements a rugged and sterile land, to which their original title
was no charter, but their swords. Difficulties, it is said, make
character, and nowhere is this proverbial saying better illustrated
and proved than in the Reay country by its men and women. They
have given their own and other countries many fine regiments and
distinguished generals and statesmen, and none more so than the late
Lord Reay. Their history is to be found in the _Book of Mackay_, a
piece of good pioneer work from original documents by the late Mr.
Angus Mackay, and also in his unfortunately unfinished _Province of
Cat_.
Yet another family, of Norse and Viking lineage, which was settled in
Orkney from the earliest Norse times and afterwards in Caithness and
Sutherland, was that of the Gunns, who were descended in the male line
from Sweyn Asleifarson the great Viking, and on the female side from
the line of Paul, and later were by marriage connected with the Moddan
clan and with the line of Erlend. They have for nine centuries lived
and still live in Sutherland and Caithness, and have been noted
alike for the beauty of their women, and for the high attainments and
character and the distinction of their men, particularly in the art of
war, both by land and sea.
Their descent from Jarl Paul and Sweyn is clear in the Sagas as far as
Snaekoll Gunnison and no further. It was as follows:--Paul Thorfinnson
had four daughters, of whom the third was Herbjorg, who had a daughter
Sigrid, who in turn had a daughter Herbjorg, who married Kolbein
Hruga. One of their sons was Bishop Bjarni and their youngest child
was a daughter Frida, who married Andres, Sweyn Asleifarson's son,
and their son was Gunni, the father, by Ragnhild, Earl and Jarl Harald
Ungi's sister, of Snaekoll Gunnison. We suggest later that Snaekoll
Gunnison was the father, before his flight to Norway, of a daughter,
Johanna of Strathnaver, who inherited the Moddan and Erlend estates,
or that she was otherwise Ragnhild's heiress.
The male line of the Gunns, according to a pedigree which the writer
has seen, was continued after his flight by Snaekoll who, it is
stated, had a son, Ottar, living in 1280. But after Snaekoll's flight
his right to succeed to Ragnhild's estates was doubtless forfeited,
and they were granted on his father's and mother's death to Johanna
on her marriage with Freskin de Moravia of Duffus about 1245 or later,
before Ottar's birth.
With the descent of the Gunns in the male line downwards we are not
here concerned. But Snaekoll's forfeiture probably cost their male
line the Moddan and Erlend lands, which were granted to Johanna of
Strathnaver in Snaekoll's absence abroad.