_The Moddan Family--Jarls Harald and Paul and Ragnvald._
From the short forecast of the future given above, let us turn back to
the point whence we digressed, namely the year 1123, when Jarl Hakon
Paulson died at the close of the reign of Alexander I of Scotland.
Jarl Hakon was succeeded by his sons, Harald the Glib (Slettmali) and
Paul the Silent (Umalgi). Jarl Paul lived mainly in Orkney, while Jarl
Harald "was seated in Sutherland, and held Caithness from the Scot
king" David I, who was crowned in 1124.[1] All Harald's sympathies
seem to have been Scottish, and he was born, bred, and brought up
among Scotsmen, or Picts, probably in North Kildonan. He was always
there with Frakark, daughter of Moddan in Dale, then a widow, her
husband Liot Nidingr or the Dastard being dead; and Frakark and her
sister Helga, Jarl Hakon's mistress, "had a great share in ruling the
land"; while Audhild, daughter of Thorleif, Frakark's sister, also
lived with Frakark,[2] and was the mistress at this time of one of
the strangest characters in the Saga, Sigurd Slembi-diakn, or
the Sham-deacon. Hakon's son Paul being, as appears certain, by a
different mother not of the Moddan line, Frakark and Helga aimed at
obtaining the whole jarldom of Orkney for Harald, Helga's son by Earl
Hakon. With the object of getting rid of Paul, they went over with
Sigurd Slembi-diakn to Orphir in Orkney; and we have the story of
the poisoned shirt,[3] made there by Frakark and Helga, and by them
intended for Paul, but put on, in spite of their expostulations and
entreaties, by Harald, who died of its poison, leaving, however, one
son, Erlend, then an infant.
After this, Jarl Paul banished these ladies from Orkney about 1127,
and they "fared away with all their kith and kin, first to Caithness,
and then up into Sutherland to those homesteads which Frakark owned
there,"[4] and tradition[5] locates her residence at Shenachu or Carn
Shuin, on the east side of the River Helmsdale near Kinbrace above the
road. Possibly, however, they lived at Borrobol, the "Castle Farm";[6]
and there "there were brought up by Frakark Margret, Earl Hakon's
daughter, and Helga, Moddan's daughter," and also Eric Stagbrellir,
Frakark's grandnephew, and son of her niece Audhild by Eric Streita,
a Norseman, as well as Olvir Rosta and Thorbiorn Klerk, both Frakark's
grandsons, all of whom come prominently into our story. Audhild's son,
Eric Stagbrellir, in the end was the survivor of these, as well as of
all males of the Moddan line, and ultimately we hear of no descendants
in Cat of any of them save of Eric, and Eric's marriage with Ingigerd,
St. Ragnvald Jarl's only child, is the link between the line of Erlend
and that of Moddan, which united the Erlend and Moddan estates.
Of the line of Thorfinn we already know the royal origin and descent
from Malcolm II's third daughter.
Of the Moddan line the Saga says[7]--"These men were all of great
family and great for their own sakes, and they all thought they had
a great claim in the Orkneys to those realms which their kinsman Earl
Harald (Slettmali) had owned. The brothers of Frakark were Angus of
the open hand, and Earl Ottir in Thurso: he was a man of birth and
rank." These children of Moddan were probably of royal lineage or
kinship, as Moddan, who had been created Earl of Caithness by King
Duncan I, was that king's sister's son, and was probably, as we have
seen, their ancestor or kinsman. They were also probably descended
more remotely from Moldan, Maormor of Duncansby, a kinsman of Malcolm
II, but had all been driven back from the coast, save Earl Ottir, who
lived at Thurso, and probably owned its valley up to its source in the
Halkirk and Latheron hills.
The death of Harald the Glib by poison left Paul _de facto_ sole jarl
of Orkney. We are told[8] that "Paul was a man of very many friends,
and no speaker at Things or meetings. He let many other men rule the
land with him, was courteous and kind to all the land-folk, liberal of
money, and he spared nothing to his friends. He was not fond of war,
and sate much in quiet." We may be sure that he was little, if
ever, in Sutherland, the country of his enemy Frakark. His rule was,
however, destined to be disturbed, on the one hand by the Moddan
family's plots, and, on the other hand, by a Norse competitor for the
jarldom, Kali, son of Kol and Gunnhild, Jarl St. Magnus' sister, who
had been re-named Ragnvald from his resemblance to the handsome Jarl
Ragnvald Brusi's son, and was afterwards designated Jarl of Orkney by
King Sigurd of Norway, as the representative of the line of Erlend,
Thorfinn's son.
With Jarl Ragnvald, Jarl St. Magnus' sequel in estate, and himself
afterwards St. Ragnvald, who was much in Caithness and Sutherland,
and seems to have held and acquired considerable estates there, begins
what is practically a new Saga, which may be styled "The Story of
Ragnvald, and of Sweyn" the great Viking. Of these two we have perhaps
the finest and most vividly painted pictures of the _Orkneyinga Saga_,
full of dramatic touches, full, too, of interesting historical detail.
First, we have a portrait of the young Ragnvald as Kali Kolson in his
youth at Agdir in Norway, with his mother Gunnhild, sister of Jarl St.
Magnus Erlend's son, and his shrewd old father Kol. We are told that
Kali was "the most hopeful man" or man of promise, "of middle stature,
fine of limb, with light brown hair"; how he "had many friends, and
was a more proper man both in body and mind than most of the other men
of his time, a good player at draughts, a facile writer of runes,
and a reader of books, good at smith's work, ski-ing, shooting, and
rowing, and as skilful at song as at the harp."[9]
At the age of fifteen, he traded to Grimsby, where many Norwegians
and Orkneymen came, and many from the Hebrides; and here he met Harald
Gillikrist, who became his firm friend, and confided in him alone that
he, Harald, was the son of King Magnus Barelegs, asking how he would
be received by King Sigurd of Norway, and obtaining the diplomatic
reply that he would be well received by the king, if others did not
spoil his welcome. Then Kali returns to Bergen in 1116, about the
time of Jarl Magnus' murder by his cousin Jarl Hakon, and after a
friendship and a feud with Jon Peterson, which is amicably settled
by the marriage of Jon with Kali's sister Ingirid, and of which the
description well illustrates the manners and law of the times, is made
Jarl Ragnvald of Orkney by King Sigurd; and on that king's death in
1126 he is confirmed in the title by his friend King Harald, for whom
he fought in the battle for the throne at Floruvoe near Bergen, when
King Magnus was captured, maimed, and deposed by Harald in 1135.
Jarl Paul, however, refused to part with half the isles; and, acting
on Kol's advice, Jarl Ragnvald's messengers apply for aid in obtaining
it to Frakark and her grandson Olvir Rosta in Kildonan, and offer
them Paul's half share if they will help Ragnvald to secure his
half. Frakark, having previously arranged that her niece Margret, the
daughter of Earl Hakon and Helga, should marry Earl Maddad of Athole,
second cousin to David I, as his second wife, thought that Orkney
might be had, with half the jarldom and all Caithness, for Margret's
son Harold Maddadson, then an infant in arms.
Ragnvald and Frakark then made common cause.[10] But in 1136 Paul
defeated Frakark's ships in a sea fight off Tankerness in Deer Sound
in Orkney, and immediately afterwards seized Jarl Ragnvald's fleet in
Yell Sound in Shetland, though Ragnvald and his men escaped to Norway
in merchant vessels, to return later on.[11]
Meantime Olvir Rosta, Frakark's grandson, who had been stunned and
nearly drowned in the sea fight at Tankerness, in which Sweyn's and
Gunni's father, Olaf Hrolf's son, had aided Jarl Paul, burned Olaf
alive in his home at Duncansby, Asleif, Olaf's wife, escaping only
because she was absent at the time. Further, Valthiof, Sweyn's elder
brother, was drowned in the roost of the West-firth, while rowing
south to Jarl Paul's Yule Feast. Sweyn Asleifarson, as he was ever
afterwards called, then went to Paul's Hall at Orphir to complain of
Olvir Rosta. The news of his brother's death, which arrived during
the feast, was considerately withheld from him, and he was greatly
honoured there; but he roused the jarl's anger by slaying Sweyn
Breast-rope, the jarl's forecastle-man, at Orphir, not indeed so much
for the murder, as because Sweyn had fled and did not come to submit
himself after it to the jarl, and so offended him.[12]
Then follow the stories, well worth reading in the Saga itself, of
the raising and lowering of the sails on Ragnvald's ships and of the
mutiny of Paul's followers, and of the dowsing of the beacons on the
Fair Isle by Uni, Ragnvald's ally, of Ragnvald's landing in Westray,
of his suppression of all opposition to him, of the spies at Paul's
Thing, of Sweyn's junction of forces with Ragnvald, of Sweyn's visit
to Margret at Athole, and his dramatic kidnapping of Jarl Paul while
hunting otters near Westness[13] in the Isle of Rousay, in Orkney,
and of the jarl's deportation by Sweyn first to Dufeyra and thence via
Ekkjals-bakki[14] to Athole to his sister Margret, who receives him
with the utmost show of cordiality, and finally of Paul's abdication
in favour of Margret's second son, Harold Maddadson, then a boy
of five years of age, with the instructions to Sweyn to tell the
Orkneymen that Paul himself was blinded, or, worse still, maimed,
so that his friends should not seek him out, and restore him to his
jarldom.[15] Such is one version of the story; the other is a more
sinister tale, that his half-sister Margret cast Jarl Paul into a
dungeon and had him murdered, and, so far as the Saga relates, he left
no issue.
Sweyn then returns to Orkney and tells his version of the affair to
the bishop, the bishop to Ragnvald, and Ragnvald to the "good men" or
_lendirmen_ of Orkney, who express themselves satisfied, and Ragnvald
builds the Cathedral he had vowed to St. Magnus in Kirkwall--a strange
medley of craftiness, murder, and piety.
Next we have the vivid scene[16] of the arrival from Athole at
Knarstead near Scapa, in his blue cope and quaintly cut beard, on a
fine winter's day, of John, Bishop, probably of Glasgow, and formerly
tutor to King David of Scotland, on whom Jarl Ragnvald waits like a
page, and who passes on to Egilsay to Bishop William the Old; and the
two clerics propose to Jarl Ragnvald that Harald Maddadson, who
had already been created sole Earl of Caithness, shall have Paul
Thorfinnson's half of the Orkney jarldom, an arrangement which
Ragnvald accepts, and which is ratified by the people of Orkney and
of Caithness. In due course the boy arrives in 1139, and the tutor
selected for him is, of all others, Frakark's grandson, Thorbiorn
Klerk, who had married Sweyn Asleifarson's sister, Ingirid, and who
was "one of the boldest of men, and the most unfair, overbearing man
in most things,"[17] differing indeed but little in character from
Sweyn himself "who was a wise man and foresighted about many things;
and an unfair overbearing man and reckless towards others," while they
were both said to be men "of power and weight," and at this time they
were fast friends.
Then follows the story of Frakark's Burning, one of the most purely
Sutherland tales in the whole Saga.[18]
Sweyn, to avenge on that lady and her grandson, Olvir Rosta, the
burning of his own father Olaf and of his house in Duncansby, openly
asked Jarl Ragnvald for "two ships well fitted and manned," sailed
to the Moray Firth, the Breithifiorthr or Broadfirth, as it was then
called, "and took the north-west wind to Dufeyra, a market town in
Scotland. Thence he sailed into the land along the shore of Moray
and to Ekkjals-bakki. Thence he fared next of all to Athole to Earl
Maddad, and lay at the place called Elgin and obtained guides, who
knew the paths over fells and wastes whither he wished to go.[19]
Thence he fared the upper way over fells and woods, above all places
where men dwelt, and came out in Strath Helmsdale near the middle of
Sutherland. But Olvir and his men had scouts out everywhere where they
thought that strife was to be looked for from the Orkneys; but in this
way they did not look for warriors. So they were not ware of the
host, before Sweyn and his men had come to the slope at the back of
Frakark's homestead. There came against them Olvir the Unruly with
sixty men; then they fell to battle at once, and there was a short
struggle. Olvir and his men gave way towards the homestead; for they
could not get to the wood. Then there was a great slaughter of men,
but Olvir fled away up to Helmsdale Water and swam across the river
and so up on to the fell: and thence he fared to Skotland's Firth,[20]
and so out to the Southern Isles. And he is out of the story. But when
Olvir drew off, Sweyn and his men fared straight up to the house, and
plundered it of everything; but, after that, they burnt the homestead
and all those men and women who were inside it. And there Frakark lost
her life. Sweyn and his men did there the greatest harm in Sutherland,
ere they fared to their ships."
Such is this Sutherland tale of Sweyn. According to the current
notions of blood feud, he merely discharged the solemn duty of
avenging his father's burning and death by a like burning and slaying
of the household of his father's murderers. But his acts were wholly
unjustifiable by the law of the time, as he had already accepted an
atonement by were-geld from Earl Ottar.
After a round of harrying and piracy, especially in Sutherland, no
doubt among the Moddan clan, Sweyn was heartily welcomed home by Jarl
Ragnvald, from whom he immediately obtained another fleet for another
set of raids on Wales, the coasts of the Bristol Channel and the
Scilly Isles. His murder of Sweyn Breast-rope was committed just after
an adjournment of the feast at Orphir for Nones in the Templar Church
there, and Jarl Ragnvald's gift of the ships for Frakark's punishment
was made while the jarl was piously engaged in completing and adorning
St. Magnus' Cathedral at Kirkwall.
The strategy leading up to the Burning is characteristic of Sweyn and
his stratagems. He _openly_ asks for ships and sails in them, and
thus is expected to land on the coast. But after a purposely
devious course, which has puzzled inquirers into the locality of
Ekkjals-bakki, he came overland by Oykel and Lairg and Strathnaver or
Strathskinsdale, whence he was not looked for.
Thorbiorn Klerk next has his revenges. First he burnt Earl Waltheof
(who had slain his father) in Moray, and next he killed two of Sweyn's
men who had assisted in the burning of Thorbiorn's relative, Frakok,
or Frakark, in Kildonan. Jarl Ragnvald with difficulty reconciles
Thorbiorn and Sweyn, and they start for a joint raid. Soon, however,
they squabble over the spoils, and Thorbiorn puts his wife Ingirid,
Sweyn's sister, away, a deed that reopened their feud.[21]
For a series of robberies in Caithness, Sweyn is besieged by Jarl
Ragnvald in Lambaborg, now known as Freswick Castle, but escapes by
swimming in his armour under the cliffs and landing in Caithness,
whence he passed southwards through Sutherland to Scotland and
Edinburgh, where King David I received him with honour, and reconciled
him with Jarl Ragnvald.[22]
In 1148, Ragnvald decided to visit King Ingi in Norway, taking
Harold Maddadson, then a boy of fifteen, with him.[23] There he meets
Eindridi, who had been long in Micklegarth, as Constantinople was then
called by the Norse, probably in the Emperor's service as one of the
Varangian Guard; and ships are built for a voyage to the East. But
both he and Harold are wrecked in "The Help" and "The Arrow," at
Gulberwick, south of Lerwick, on the Shetland coast, all on board,
however, being saved, and Ragnvald, as usual, making verses and fun of
it all, and of many other things.
At last in 1150 Ragnvald's and Eindridi's ships are "boun"[24] for
their eastern cruise, Eindridi, however, being wrecked off Shetland.
But he gets another ship, and, in 1151, they set sail for the East,
William, the bishop of Orkney, commanding one vessel. Passing down the
east coast of England and through the Channel to France, they reach
Bilbao[25] in Spain, where Ragnvald lands, and refuses to marry Queen
Ermengarde. Afterwards he rounds Galicia, where Eindridi's treachery
robs them of spoil in taking Godfrey's castle, beats through Niorfa
Sound (the Straits of Gibraltar); is deserted by Eindridi, sails along
Sarkland (Barbary), captures the Saracen ship Dromund, and burns her,
sells the prisoners in Barbary, but releases their prince, coasts
along Crete, lands at Acre, and bathes in Jordan on St. Lawrence's
Day, the 10th of August 1152. After a visit to Jerusalem they come
at last to Constantinople, where the Varangian Guard heartily welcome
them, although Eindridi, who has arrived there before him, tries to
set everyone against them; and Ragnvald finally returns to Bulgaria
and Apulia and Rome, and thence overland to Denmark and Norway.[26]
When Ragnvald reached Norway in 1153, he heard what had been going on
at home during his absence in the east. King Eystein of Norway, King
Harald Gilli's son, had seized Jarl Harold Maddadson, then a young
man of twenty, at Thurso, and made him swear allegiance to himself,
letting him go on his paying three marks of gold as his ransom. Then
Maddad, his father, Earl of Athole, died; and the widowed Margret,
Harold's mother, came north to Orkney, still dangerous, still
beautiful and attractive, especially to Gunni, Sweyn's brother, by
whom she had a child, for which Gunni was outlawed, a punishment which
alienated his brother Sweyn from Harold Maddadson.[27]
Erlend, only son of Harald Slettmali, and really entitled to the whole
earldom, obtained from his relative[28] King Malcolm, then a boy of
under twelve, through his powerful kin, a grant of half of the earldom
of Caithness jointly with Harold Maddadson, who objected to give
him half the Orkney jarldom unless King Eystein confirmed the grant.
Erlend then went to Norway to get it confirmed. Meantime Sweyn seized
a ship of Harold's; but, to help Erlend, tried to reconcile Harold to
him, as King Eystein (said Erlend) had given him half of Orkney. And
the half given to him was, he added, Harold's half.[29]
Sweyn and Erlend then force Harold, who had then just come of age, to
agree to give up this half, under duress, in order to secure his own
liberty, and the Orkney folk agree that Erlend shall have this half,
Ragnvald having the other. This, Sweyn knew, Harold would not stand,
and, as he drank at a feast with his house-carles in his castle in
Gairsay,[30] the wily Viking said, slily rubbing his nose, "I think
Harold is now on his voyage to the isles," a shrewd surmise which
proved correct in spite of the midwinter storm then prevailing.
Harold's expedition, however, failed, and he went back to Caithness to
raise a force to kill a man called Erlend the Young who had seized his
mother Margret and taken her by force to Shetland, where he fortified
Mousa Broch[31] and held her prisoner there. After a siege, Harold,
who had followed them, at last allowed their marriage, Erlend the
Young becoming his ally, and going that summer with his wife and
Harold to Norway. When that was heard in the Orkneys, Sweyn and Earl
Erlend went raiding off the east coast of Scotland and afterwards
a-viking to North Berwick, and got much plunder, and Harold returned
in the autumn to Orkney. In the winter Jarl Ragnvald came back from
the east to Turfness (Burghead), whence he went about Yule 1153 to
Orkney, to find that the Orkney-men want himself and Erlend, not
himself and Harold, as joint jarls over them.
Harold had then to fight for his own hand; and, finding that Earl
Erlend and Sweyn were in Shetland, he sought them out but missed them,
and afterwards, though he hated Jarl Ragnvald, tried to get him on his
side.
We come to another Sutherland event, historically of the first
importance to us, in 1154.[32] "Jarl Ragnvald was then up the country
in Sutherland, and sat there at a wedding at which he gave his only
daughter and child Ingirid or Ingigerd, to Eric Stagbrellir," who, as
we have seen, as Audhild's son, had been brought up in Kildonan.
"News came to him at once that Earl Harold was come into Thurso.
Jarl Ragnvald, rode down with a great company to Thurso from the
bridal.[33] Eric was Harold's kinsman and tried to reconcile the
earls."
There was a fight in Thurso between their followers, Thorbiorn Klerk
instigating it, no doubt because after Eric's marriage with Ingigerd,
Ragnvald's daughter, he knew he could not hope to force Eric to give
up the Moddan lands in Strathnavern and in the upper valleys and
hills of Sudrland and Caithness, to which he had a claim. Thirteen
of Ragnvald's men fell in the fray, and he himself was wounded in the
face. Ultimately, the earls were reconciled on the 25th of September
1154, and about 1156 joined forces and went to Orkney against Sweyn
and Erlend, who pretended they were sailing for the Hebrides, but
put their ships about at Store[34] Point in Assynt, and after all but
seizing Jarl Ragnvald at Orphir in Orkney, captured his ships, though
he and Harold escaped, each in a small boat, across the Pentland Firth
to Caithness.[35] Returning thence, in Sweyn's absence for the night
they attacked Erlend, who had disregarded all Sweyn's warnings and
advice to keep a good look-out, off Damsey, near Finstown. In this
fight Jarl Erlend, the last descendant in the male line of Thorfinn
then alive, was slain, while drunk, his body being found next day
transfixed by a spear, and he left no issue to inherit his title
of earl or the other Moddan lands, left to him by Earl Ottar, which
probably devolved on Eric Stagbrellir in 1156, as he could hold them
against Thorbiorn Klerk.
All Erlend's success, if we are to believe the Saga, this portion of
which is written largely to glorify Sweyn, probably by his relative
Bishop Bjarni, had been arranged by Sweyn's really marvellous cunning;
and Ragnvald, no doubt feeling how dangerous an enemy Sweyn was, and
that he was backed by the Scottish king, immediately sent for him in
order to reconcile him to Harold. But Harold, soon afterwards, robbed
Sweyn's house in Gairsay; and Sweyn, in his turn, attacked the house
where Harold was, and nearly succeeded in burning him alive. Later on
Harold all but caught Sweyn off Kirkwall, but Sweyn gave him the slip,
by running his ship into a tidal cave in Ellarholm, off Elwick in
Shapinsay, in 1155, and disappearing till the coast was clear, when he
got away in a small boat.
Afterwards Sweyn and Earl Harold were reconciled, and Sweyn and
Thorbiorn Klerk and Eric Stagbrellir went on a viking cruise to the
Hebrides, and, after a great victory at the Scilly Isles, returned
with much booty to Orkney.[36]
In the year 1157 or 1158, Sweyn defeated Gilli Odran, steward of Earl
Ragnvald's lands in Caithness, who had fled to the west and was caught
in Murkfjord (possibly Loch Glendhu at Kylestrome in Eddrachilles) and
was slain there with fifty of his men by Sweyn.[37]
In 1158, Ragnvald and Harold went, as they did every year, to hunt
red deer and reindeer[38] in Caithness, their hunting ground being
probably near the Ben-y-griams, which lay on the way to Kildonan, or
Strathnaver, where Eric probably lived; and some think there are still
remains of walls used as a pen for driven deer on Ben-y-griam
Beg, though these are more probably the ancient ramparts of a
hill-fort.[39] When they landed at Thurso, they heard that Thorbiorn
Klerk was hiding and lying in wait in Thorsdale[40] in order to make
an onslaught on Ragnvald, if he got a chance. After riding with a band
of a hundred men, twenty of them mounted, they spent the night at a
place where there was what the Celts call an "erg" (_airigh_) but
the Norse call "setr," the modern sheiling. Next day, as they rode
up along Calfdale, Ragnvald was in advance of the party, and, at
a homestead called Force,[41] Halvard hailed him loudly by name.
Thorbiorn was inside the house, and burst out through an old doorway,
and dealt Ragnvald a great wound, and the jarl fell, his foot sticking
in his stirrup, when Stephen, an accomplice, gave him a spear thrust;
whereupon Thorbiorn, after dealing him another wound, and receiving
a spear thrust in the thigh himself, fled to the moor. Earl Harold at
first would not interfere; and though Magnus son of Havard Gunni's son
insisted, Earl Harold again declined to pursue Thorbiorn to the death,
but left Magnus to besiege him at Asgrim's Ergin or Shielings,[42] now
Assary, near Loch Calder, where, by setting fire to the hut in which
he was, his pursuers succeeded in smoking him out and killing him.
They then brought the jarl's body from Force to Thurso, and thence
took it over to Orkney, to be buried in the choir of St. Magnus'
Cathedral, which he had founded and built in his uncle's honour.
"Jarl Ragnvald's death was a very great grief, for he was very much
beloved there in the Isles, and far and wide elsewhere." It took place
on the 20th August 1158.
"He had been a very great helper," the Saga adds, "to many men,
bountiful of money, gentle, and a steadfast friend; a great man for
feats of strength, and a good skald" or poet. In 1192 he was canonised
as St. Ragnvald[43] with, it is said, full Papal sanction. Save during
Harold Maddadson's minority he was never Earl of Caithness, and then
had the title only as guardian of his ward Harold.
Ragnvald left a daughter, his only surviving child, Ingirid or
Ingigerd, whom as we have seen, Audhild's son, Eric Stagbrellir had
married four years before her father's death; and their children, who
come into the story afterwards, were three sons, Harald Ungi or Harald
the Young, Magnus nick-named Mangi, and Ragnvald, and three daughters,
Ingibiorg, Elin[44] and Ragnhild, all of whom, so far as the Saga
relates, died childless save Ragnhild, whose son by her second husband
Gunni, was Snaekoll Gunni's son, who about 1230 claimed the Ragnvald
lands in Orkney from Earl John, son of Earl Harold Maddadson,[45]
and complained that Earl John was keeping him out of his rights in
Caithness to Ragnvald's share of the earldom lands there.
After Thorbiorn Klerk's death, Olvir Rosta being "out of the story,"
Eric's children, who were mainly Norse in blood, were the only heirs
left in Caithness not only for Jarl Ragnvald's lands, but also for the
upper parts of the river valleys of Strathnavern and Ness, which the
Moddan family had held through the whole Norse occupation of Caithness
and Sutherland, along with the hill country in Halkirk and Latheron
and Strathnavern and probably also in Sutherland, lands on which few
Norse place-names are found, and which came to Eric through Audhild
his mother on the deaths of Earls Ottar and Erlend Haraldson without
issue. These lands would of right descend to Eric's eldest son, Harald
Ungi, and on his death without issue, to his brothers if alive, and,
failing them, to his sisters and their heirs, as happened in the case
of Ragnhild and her son Snaekoll Gunni's son, neither Ingibiorg
nor Elin receiving any share of this property, for reasons now
undiscoverable, but which we shall endeavour to explain later, by
presuming that one of them had died unmarried, or had married abroad,
while the other and her descendants were amply provided for otherwise
by marriage with Gilchrist, Earl of Angus.