Allowing for exaggeration, it is not too much to say that Thorfinn and his cousin Macbeth must, after the death of their cousin Duncan in 1040, between them have held all that is now Scotland save the Lothians, until about 1057, when Macbeth was slain. To us it is interesting to note[14] that Duncan died, not in old age, (as Shakespeare, following Boece and the English chronicler Holinshed would have us believe) but a young man of thirty-nine years, either in, or after, Thorfinn's battle, and that he fell a victim not of Groa, Macbeth's wife's cup of poison, but possibly of her husband's dagger at Bothgowanan or Pitgavenny, a smithy about two miles from Elgin. We should also note that Thorfinn's cruelty made it difficult for him ever to hope to obtain and keep the throne of Scotland, which thus fell to Macbeth.

Meantime Jarl Brusi had died about 1031, and though he left a son Ragnvald, this son was long abroad in Norway, where he was taught all the accomplishments suitable to his rank, and remained there at the time of his father's death.[15] Ragnvald Brusi-son was "one of the handsomest of men, his hair long and yellow as silk, and he was stout and tall and an able splendid man of great mind and polite manners." He had saved King Olaf's brother Harald Sigurdson at the great battle of Stiklastad, after King Olaf, Ragnvald's own foster-father, was killed, and had fought with great distinction in Russia. Shortly after his father's death, Ragnvald returned, and, fortified by a grant from King Magnus of Norway, whom he had helped to gain the throne, claimed his father's two trithings of the Orkney jarldom. To this Thorfinn, who after 1034 had his hands full with his war with King Duncan, and had always wars with the Hebrides and the Irish, agreed, and the two joined forces, and sailed on Viking raids to the Hebrides and England.[16]

About 1044 Thorfinn married Ingibjorg,[17] Finn Arnason's daughter, and it is interesting to find that in the Saga Book of the Viking Club, Vol. IV, page 171, Mr. Collingwood suggests that the King of Catanesse, who fought for years to gain possession of Gratiana, the lost wife of William the Wanderer, was Thorfinn. If this story be founded on fact, as it probably is, this may account for his somewhat late marriage with Ingibjorg.

Thorfinn next claimed two trithings of Orkney from his nephew Ragnvald, who demurred to giving up what the Norse king had conferred on him, but, finding he could not cope with Thorfinn's Orkney, Caithness and Scottish forces, Ragnvald fled to King Magnus, who gave him a force of picked men, and bade Kalf Arnason also to help him, although Kalf was Thorfinn's friend, and near connection by marriage.

The two jarls met in battle in the Pentland Firth, off Rautharbiorg or Rattar Brough in Caithness, east of Dunnet Head, Kalf Arnason with his six ships standing out of the fight. Thorfinn had sixty ships, smaller, and, save Thorfinn's own, lower in the waist than those of his enemy, who thus easily boarded them, and then attacked Thorfinn. Surrounded and boarded on both sides, Thorfinn cut his ship free and rowed to land. Arrived there, he removed his seventy dead, and all his wounded. Next he persuaded Kalf Arnason to join him with his six ships, and renewed and won the fight, though Ragnvald himself escaped to Norway.[18]

Sailing thence in 1046 with one ship and a picked crew, Ragnvald surrounded Thorfinn,[19] who was wintering in Mainland of Orkney, and set fire to the Hall at Orphir in which he was, but the earl tore out a panel at the back, and, escaping through it with his young wife Ingibjorg in his arms, rowed in the dark over to Caithness, where he remained in hiding among his friends, all in Orkney believing him dead. Ragnvald then seized all the islands, and lived at Kirkwall.

But, while Ragnvald was in Little Papey—now Papa Stronsay—to fetch malt for Yuletide, Thorfinn returned, and surrounded the house in which Ragnvald was, by night; and, on his escaping by leaping through the besiegers in priestly disguise, Thorfinn's men followed him, and, led by his lapdog's barking, discovered him among the rocks by the sea, where Thorkel Fostri slew him, Thorfinn meanwhile annihilating his following, save one man. This man, who like the rest, was one of King Magnus' bodyguard, he bade go to his king and tell the tale, and he seized Kirkwall by stratagem. Jarl Ragnvald is said to have been a man of large stature and great strength, and to have been buried in Papa Westray, but a grave nearly eight feet long, that would fit him, has been found where he fell in Papa Stronsay.

All this left Thorfinn with his great aim achieved. He was now sole jarl of Orkney and Shetland, and sole earl of Caithness and Sutherland, and he also held Ross and the western islands and coast down to Galloway, and part of Ireland, as his rikis or conquered tributary lands.

The fourth and last period of his career now begins with his dramatic visit to King Magnus in Norway; and, on the death of that king, he became the friend of his successor, Harald Hardrada, in 1047, and after visiting King Sweyn in Denmark, and Henry III, Emperor of Germany, rode south to Rome probably in 1050 along with, it is said, his cousin Macbeth, king, and a good king, of Scotland, returning thence to Orkney to his Hall at Birsay at the north-west corner of Mainland. Thorfinn went to the Pope not only for absolution, but to get Thorolf appointed bishop in Orkney, according to Adam of Bremen, c. 243.

We now come to the last years of the fourth period of his life, when "the earl sate down quietly and kept peace over all his realm. Then he left off warfare, and he turned his mind to ruling his people and land, and to law-giving. He sate almost always in Birsay, and let them build there Christchurch,[20] a splendid Minster. There first was set up a bishop's seat in the Orkneys."

The Annals of Tighernac record a great Norse expedition with the aid of the Galls of Orkney and Innse Gall and Dublin to subdue the Saxons in 1057, which failed. It is strange that we hear nothing of Thorfinn in this, and the question arises whether he had died before it took place. Had he been alive, such an expedition would hardly have been possible without him.[21] It is interesting to note that so accurate a chronicler as Sir Archibald Dunbar dates his widow Ingibjorg's marriage to Malcolm III in 1059. (See Scottish Kings, p. 27.)

Thorfinn's life forms the subject of no less than twenty-six chapters of the Orkneyinga Saga.[22] In his childhood, and later at all the main turning points of his life, he was blessed with the constant care and touching devotion, and with the able counsel and active assistance of his foster-father, Thorkel Fostri, the slayer of his three chief competitors—Jarl Einar and Earl Moddan and Jarl Ragnvald Brusi-son—the captain of his armies, the collector of his revenues and the guardian, in his absence on his Viking cruises and in his travels abroad, of his widespread dominions. There is a tradition[23] that Thorkel founded the rock-castle of Borve, near Farr on the north coast of Sutherland, which was demolished by the Earl of Sutherland in 1556; but Thorkel is a common name among Vikings, and the story is otherwise unauthenticated.

According to the Saga, Thorfinn died of sickness "in the latter days of Harald Hardrada," (who was killed in September 1066), near the church which he founded, in his Hall at Birsay, north of Marwick Head in the north-west corner of Mainland of Orkney, within a few miles of the scene of Earl Kitchener's recent death at sea, so that the greatest of our jarls and of our earls rest near each other, the great Viking on the shore, and the great soldier in the ocean.

The chronology of Thorfinn and Ingibjorg his wife is extremely difficult, but on the whole we incline to think that he was born in 1008, and, as grandson of the king regnant, was created an earl at his birth, married Ingibjorg, then quite young, in 1044, and died in 1057 or 1058, after being an earl for his whole life of "fifty years," while his widow married Malcolm III in 1059. The phrase "in the latter days of Harald Hardrada" is after all an expression wide enough to cover the last seven years of a reign of twenty-one years, and it is unlikely that a marriage of policy would be postponed for more than the year or two after Malcolm's accession in 1057, during which he was engaged in defeating the claims of Lulach to his throne and settling his kingdom.



CHAPTER V.

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.



CHAPTER VI.

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.



CHAPTER VII.

Harold Maddadson and the Freskyns.

After the death of Jarl Ragnvald in 1158, Harold Maddadson at the age of twenty-five "took all the isles under his rule, and became sole chief over them."[1] Ever since 1139 he had been sole Earl of Cat save for Erlend Haraldson's grant,[2] though Jarl Ragnvald seems to have had a share of its lands and managed the Earldom of Caithness for Harold during his minority, bearing the title of his ward till the latter attained his majority in 1154. Harold had married Afreka, daughter of Duncan, Earl of Fife, one of the most loyal supporters of the Scottish kings, and their children were two sons, Henry, who afterwards claimed Ross, and of whom we hear no more, and Hakon, Sweyn Asleifarson's foster-child, and two daughters, Helena and Margret, of whom we hear nothing save their names. Hakon, from boyhood, went with Sweyn on all his spring and autumn "vikings" or piratical cruises, undertaken every year to the Hebrides, Man, and Ireland, in one of which Sweyn took two English ships near Dublin, and returned to Orkney laden with broadcloth, wine, and English mead.[3] Sweyn's life is thus described in c. 114 of the Orkneyinga Saga. "He sat through the winter at home in Gairsay, and there he kept always about him eighty men at his beck. He had so great a drinking-hall that there was not another as great in all the Orkneys. Sweyn had in the spring hard work, and made them lay down very much seed, and looked much after it himself. But when that toil was ended, he fared away every spring on a Viking-voyage, and harried about among the southern isles and Ireland, and came home after midsummer. That he called spring-viking. Then he was at home until the cornfields were reaped down, and the grain seen to and stored. Then he fared away on a viking-voyage, and then he did not come home till the winter was one month spent, and that he called his autumn-viking." At last, in a cruise to Dublin, which he captured, Sweyn was killed by stratagem on landing to receive payment of its ransom from the town, and the boy Hakon probably fell there with him in 1171. "And," the Saga adds, "it is the common saying of Sweyn that he was the most masterful man in the western lands, both of yore and now-a-days, among those men who had no higher rank than himself." Sweyn was, in fact the greatest man of his time. For he robbed whom he pleased, made and undid jarls and earls as he chose, and was the friend or tool of more than one Scottish king.

Earl Harold had put his wife Afreka away, and probably after Sweyn's death formed a union, at a date which it seems impossible to fix, with Hvarflod or Gormflaith, daughter of Malcolm MacHeth of Moray, who was in rebellion in 1134, and was imprisoned in Roxburgh Castle until 1157, when he was released and created Earl of Ross, so that Gormflaith, who could hardly have been born during her father's imprisonment, must have been born either before 1135 or after 1157. Harold and Gormflaith's children were Thorfinn, who predeceased him, and also David and John, both afterwards in succession earls of Caithness and jarls of Orkney, and three daughters, Gunnhilda, Herborga, and Langlif; and of the daughters the Saga-writers tell us nothing, except that the Icelander Saemund, Magnus Barelegs' grandson, wished to marry Langlif but did not do so;[4] and her son Jon Langlifson, according to the Saga of Hakon was in 1263 a spy on the Norse side.

Here the Orkneyinga Saga ends. But additions to its generally received text are found in the Flatey Book,[5] and the additions are by no means so trustworthy as the Saga proper. From these we learn that of Eric Stagbrellir and Ingigerd's children, who were settled in Sutherland, the sons, Harald Ungi, Magnus, and Ragnvald Eric's son, fared east to Norway to King Magnus Erling's son, where young Magnus Eric's son fell with that king in the battle of Norafjord in Sogn in 1184.[6] Probably some of them were, on Eric Stagbrellir's death, subjected to exactions in respect of their lands by Harold Maddadson.

Having arrived, under the guidance of the Orkneyinga, at the closing years of the 12th century, so far as the affairs of Orkney and Shetland and Sutherland and Caithness are concerned, it remains for us to turn and observe the tide of civilisation and order which under our Scottish kings was now setting strongly northwards and ever further north in each successive reign, the Catholic Church and the feudal baron being the chosen instruments of national organisation and discipline, and the charter being the method of establishing them in the land.

To this tide the Pictish and Columban Churches, and the Province of Moray and its Maormors had formed the main barriers and obstacles; and the Saxon nobility, introduced by the elder sons of Malcolm Canmore's second queen, St. Margaret, had proved quite unable to break them down. The Pict of Moray was obstinately hostile to the Scots, and his leaders and rulers aspired to, and claimed the crown of Scotland itself. Rebellion after rebellion took place, and it was not until King David I had introduced the feudal baron with his mail-clad tenants, and settled them on the land by charter, that any success in establishing peace and civil order was achieved in the vast Pictish province of Ross and Moray, which stretched across Scotland from the North Sea to the Minch, and whose people resisted to the utmost.

It is not part of our purpose to treat generally of the feudal and largely Norman families, which gradually asserted their power over the Picts in the north, and were accepted as Chiefs, such as were the Umphraville Earls of Angus, the Roses of Kilravock, the Chisholms of Strath Farrer, the Bissets and Fresels or Frasers of Beauly, the Grants of Moray and Inverness, and the Comyns of Badenoch; for none of these held land north of the Oykel. But later on in the thirteenth century we shall have more particularly to note the Chens or Cheynes in Caithness, and the Scottish or Pictish family of Freskyn of Strabrock and Moray, in its two branches, that of Hugo of Sutherland and that of his grandson Freskin the younger in Sutherland and Caithness.

Of Freskyn or Fretheskin I, the founder of the line, we have no mention in any charter direct to him,[7] either of his Linlithgowshire lands at Strabrock, or of his estate near Spynie in Moray with its Castle at Duffus.

To us he is as Melchizedek; for neither his father nor his mother is known. We believe him to have been born before 1100, and so to have been a contemporary of Frakark, Thorbiorn Klerk, and Olvir Rosta, of Jarl Ragnvald, of Margret of Athole, Erlend Haraldson and Sweyn, and also of Harold Maddadson; and to have won his Duffus estate, as an addition to his lands at Strabrock, about 1120 or at latest 1130, before or after the crushing defeat, at Stracathro, of the Picts of Angus and Moray; and between these dates to have built the Castle of Duffus on the bank of Loch Spynie, in order to check Norse raids on the Moray coast while the Norse held Turfness or Burghead; and we know that he entertained King David I there during the whole summer of 1150, while that king was superintending the building of the Abbey of Kinloss. From notices in a charter of King William the Lion granting and confirming to Freskyn's son, William, his father's lands of Strabrock in West Lothian and of Duffus, Roseisle, Inchkeile, Macher and Kintrai,[8] forming almost the whole parish of Spynie, we believe him to have been dead by 1166, or, at the latest, 1171, the year of Sweyn Asleifarson's death, and we know that he held all these lands from David I, with probably many more in Moray. Contrary to the general impression, it seems probable that Freskyn had not one son, but two sons, William above mentioned and also Hugo, who witnessed a charter, not necessarily spurious, granting Lohworuora, now Borthwick, Church to Herbert, bishop of Glasgow, about 1150. But of this Hugo's existence we have no definite record, and of him we know nothing more than that he witnessed the document above referred to, and one other about 1195, namely, a Charter of Strathyla, in which the words occur "Willelmo filio Freskyn, Hugone filio Freskyn" quoted by Shaw, page 406, App. No. xxvii, in the edition of 1775. This Hugo thus seems to have been uncle of, and not identical with Hugo de Moravia, grantee of Sutherland, known as Hugo Freskyn.

William, son of Freskyn, held those lands in West Lothian and Moray probably until near the end of the twelfth century; and this William, son of Freskyn, had at least three sons,[9] (1) Hugo Freskyn, the ancestor of the de Moravias, or Murrays, of Sutherland, (2) William of Petty, and (3) Andrew, parson[10] of Duffus, who appears in a writ as a son of Freskyn, and as a brother of Hugo Freskyn of Sutherland.[11] Andrew was alive in 1190, and lived probably till 1221, and has been taken to have been the same person as Andrew Bishop of Moray who built Elgin Cathedral. More probably he was that Bishop's uncle, and refused the bishopric of Ross. He witnessed the great Charter of Bishop Bricius founding the Cathedral at Spynie between 1208 and 1215. (Reg. Morav. c. 39).

William, son of Freskyn, probably had several other sons from one of whom were descended the Earls of Atholl.[12]

William, son of William, and so grandson of Freskyn, with whom, as he was not interested in Caithness or Sutherland, we have nothing to do, frequently appears as witness to charters in and after 1195 along with his elder brother Hugo, whom in one charter, William being the younger, is reported to call "his lord and brother."[13] This William, son of William son of Freskyn, was lord of Petty, near Fort George, and of Bracholy, Boharm, and Artildol, and died before 1226, leaving an eldest son Walter of Petty, a cousin of Sir Walter of Duffus, and from Walter of Petty are descended the great family, notorious in Orkney, of Bothwell, his great-great-grandson having been Sir Andrew of Bothwell, Wardane of Scotland, who died in 1338. William of Petty, to whom and whose descendants we now bid adieu, was probably sheriff of Invernarrin or Invernairn in 1204,[14] and uncle of another William who became first earl of Sutherland.

In Hugo, the elder son of William son of Freskyn, we are deeply interested. For, if his father "William son of Freskyn" had no grant of Sutherland, Hugo Freskyn certainly had not only such a grant but possession as well. Two Charters, the Carta de Suthirland and Alia Carta Suthirlandiae appear in the list of documents in the Treasury of Edinburgh in 1282, and one or both of these may have been the original grant or grants of his Sutherland estate.[15] They may, on the other hand, have been the later grants of the earldom, or still later charters relating to it. They have, however, disappeared.

Notwithstanding their disappearance, ample evidence of the tenure of the estate of Sutherland by Hugo Freskyn has been preserved until the present day in the Charter-room at Dunrobin; and the documents are happily as legible as they were over 700 years ago.

By a charter,[16] dated about 1211, Hugo granted to Master Gilbert, Archdeacon of Moray and to those heirs of his family whom he should choose and their heirs, all his land of Skelbo in Sutherland and of Fernebuchlyn and Inner-Schyn, and also his whole land of Sutherland towards the west which lay between the aforenamed land and the marches of Ross, to be held to himself and to his own heirs for ever from the granter and his heirs, performing for such lands the service of one bowman and the forinsec service due to the king in respect of such lands; and this grant was confirmed by King William the Lion (who died in December 1214) on the 29th of April, probably in 1212, at Seleschirche, now Selkirk, and was also confirmed by Hugo's son William, Lord of Sutherland, about 1214.[17] This renders it certain that Hugo himself had died before December 1214, the latest possible limit of the date of this charter. He was buried in the Church of Duffus, as the Register of Moray states,[18] and he can hardly have been the Hugo who witnessed the Charter of the Church of Lohworuora sixty-two years at least before, to which Prince Henry, who died in 1152, was a witness.[19] For Hugo of Sutherland would then have been too young to have been selected as a witness, and he was not Hugo, son of Freskyn (Hug. filio Fresechin), but Freskyn's grandson.

Hugo Freskyn of Sutherland had three sons, (1) William, great-grandson of the original Freskyn, dominus or Lord of Sutherland, and afterwards first earl, (2) Walter, who succeeded to Strabrock in Linlithgowshire and to Duffus and the family estates in Moray, which were thus severed in ownership from Sutherland, and (3) Andrew. Walter of Duffus married Euphamia, daughter of the most able and renowned general of his time, Ferchar Mac-in-Tagart, Earl of Ross;[20] and Walter was known as Sir Walter de Moravia, and lived till 1243, but was dead by 1248, his widow surviving him, and later on we shall come to another Freskin, their eldest son, (who was dominus de Duffus on 20th March 1248), in Strathnaver and Caithness. Hugo's third son, Andrew, was the parson of Duffus[21] who became Bishop of Moray, and moved the see from Spynie to Elgin, where he erected a specially beautiful Cathedral, the predecessor of that whose splendid ruins still stand. According to the Chronicle of Melrose he died in 1242.

Hugo Freskyn's eldest son, William, Lord of Sutherland, was simply "William de Sutherlandia" on the 31st August 1232, and "W. de Suthyrland" appears as a witness to a grant of a mill on 10th October 1237. But William, Hugo's son, was by Alexander II created Earl of Sutherland, as we hope to show, soon after 1237, probably as a reward for long and loyal service to William the Lion and to Alexander II, between the year 1200 and the date of his creation, in the various difficulties and rebellions in Moray and Caithness, between which two centres of disaffection his territory of Sutherland lay.[22] For William's family had then its "three descents" and more, and its chief had a sufficient body of retainers settled on the land to entitle him to the dignity of an earldom. That he was earl there is no doubt, because a deed of 1275 settling litigation between the Earl William of that date and the Bishop of Caithness refers to William of glorious memory and William his son, earls of Sutherland, nobiles viros, Willelmum clare memorie et Willelmum ejus filium, comites Sutthirlandie, (c.f. The Sutherland Book, p. 7).

The first four generations of the Freskyn family seem to be also clearly proved in one line of a grant by William the Lion to Gaufrid Blundus, burgess of Inverness, of 2nd May (year omitted) which is attested "Willelmo filio Freskin Hugone filio suo et Willelmo filio ejus," which is strange Latin, but embraces all four generations. It is quoted in the New Spalding Club's Records of Elgin, p. 4, as from Act Parl. Scot, vol. 1, p. 79. The Charter is dated at Elgin probably near the end of the twelfth century, when William Mac-Frisgyn, Hugo, and William of Sutherland were all alive. Not a single member of the family was, as every Fleming was, styled "Flandrensis" in any charter or writ, and Fretheskin is probably a Gaelic name, of which the latter part may mean "knife" or "dagger." The name does not mean Flemish or Frisian.

Having now introduced the various prominent persons in the north of Scotland over seven hundred years ago, both on the Norse and on the Scottish sides, let us now look more closely and in detail at the main events which had been taking place there and elsewhere since the end of the reign of David I, when his grandson Malcolm IV, known as The Maiden, succeeded in 1153.

The first event in the brilliant reign of this boy king was the invasion and plundering of Aberdeen by Eystein king of Norway about 1153,[23] in repelling which the feudal Barons of Moray and Angus, including the first Freskyn of Duffus and his son William MacFrisgyn, must have been of service. In the same year Somarled of Argyll and the sons of MacHeth engaged in a joint rebellion, which lasted three years until the eldest of them, Donald, was taken and placed as a prisoner with his father in Roxburgh Castle, leaving Somarled to continue the war alone. This war was put an end to by the release of Malcolm MacHeth, who was created Earl, probably of Ross,[24] after another civil war in Somarled's own country had called Somarled back to the Isles; and the young king Malcolm joined Henry II of England in his wars in France. During King Malcolm's absence abroad Fereteth, Earl of Stratherne, and five other earls, of whom Harold Maddadson was probably one, rebelled in 1160; and, on failing in an attempt to kidnap the young king, who had returned to quell the disturbance, the six earls were reconciled to him; and in the same year he subdued another rising in Galloway, and yet another in Moray. The subjugation of Moray is said to have been carried out with the greatest severity. According to Fordun[25] the king "removed the rebel nation of Moray men and scattered them throughout the other districts of Scotland, both beyond the hills and this side thereof," though Robertson in his Early Kings expresses the opinion that this clearance took place in the reign of David his predecessor.[26] He is probably right, but whenever it took place, it doubtless gave Sutherland the first of its Mackays, originally MacHeths, who were at first refugees from Moray, and ultimately in the thirteenth century are found settled in Durness in the north-western parts of the modern county of Sutherland. It was at this time, too, that the Innes family, afterwards so well known in Caithness and Sutherland, were, in the person of Berowald the Fleming, given their lands in Moray,[27] William MacFrisgyn, Freskyn's eldest son, and father of Hugo Freskyn of Sutherland, witnessing the charter, a neighbourly turn which has ever since caused some to believe wrongly that the Freskyns were Flemings.

Malcolm next defeated another rising by Somarled, who was killed in 1164, by treachery or surprise, in a skirmish at Renfrew,[28] and was not Somarled the freeman, who is said in the Orkneyinga Saga to have been slain by Sweyn in the Isles, in his pursuit and defeat of Gilli Odran in the Myrkfjord about seven years earlier.[29]

Then King Malcolm, after a short but brilliant reign, died in his 24th year. He was succeeded by his brother William the Lion, who was forthwith crowned at Scone on Christmas Eve 1165 in his twenty-second year.

We may now try to state how things stood in the north at the date of his accession. Soon after this time his grandfather's friend, the first Freskyn, died between 1166 and 1171, and was succeeded by his son William MacFrisgyn, whose son Hugo would then be quite young. Harold Maddadson had in 1165 been for twenty-six years Earl of Caithness, and Jarl of Orkney and Shetland for nineteen years jointly with Ragnvald, and for seven years sole jarl of those islands.[30] He had probably put away his first wife Afreka of Fife about 1165, but he afterwards lived with Gormflaith, the daughter of Malcolm MacHeth from a date which cannot be fixed with certainty. Led by her, it is said, Harold was openly hostile to the Scottish king, of whom, however, he held the earldom of Caithness, which at that time included not only the parishes of Creich, Dornoch, Rogart, Kilmalie or Golspie, Clyne, Loth, and most of Kildonan and of Lairg, then called by the Norse Sudrland, but also the districts of Strathnavern, Eddrachilles, and Durness (where Mackay refugees had not yet permanently settled) as well as Ness, which is now known as the County of Caithness.

The diocese of Caithness, which then was co-terminous with the earldom and comprised all the above districts which now form the modern counties of Caithness and Sutherland, had in 1165 been in existence for about thirty-five years; its chief church being at first at Halkirk in Caithness and thereafter being the old Church of St. Bar at Dornoch, but it was scantily endowed, and therefore its clergy were but few.[31] Its Bishop was Andrew, a Culdean monk of Dunfermline, and probably Abbot of Dunkeld, who had been promoted to the see of Caithness before 1146, and died at Dunfermline on the 30th December 1184. Ingigerd, Earl Ragnvald's daughter, would at this time be a young wife and mother living with some of the elder of her six children, probably near Loch Naver, on part of the Moddan family lands there with her husband, Audhild's son Eric Stagbrellir, until their sons, Harald Ungi, Magnus, and Ragnvald, should grow up. But these sons, possibly on their father's death, and certainly before 1184, when young Magnus Mangi was killed[32] at the battle of Norafjord, emigrated to Norway to obtain the Orkney jarldom about ten or fifteen years after King William's accession; while of Ingigerd's daughters, Ingibiorg, Elin, and Ragnhild, nothing is recorded at this time, though Ragnhild appears later on, and one of her sisters is believed to have married Gilchrist, Earl of Angus during the last twenty years of the twelfth century. The other may have married in Norway, or died young and unmarried.

All these children and their descendants successively according to sex and seniority would have claims as being of the line of Erlend Thorfinnson, to half the Caithness earldom and Jarl Ragnvald's lands there, claims which, however, it would be impracticable, while Harold Maddadson lived, to enforce.

Harold Maddadson's children by his first wife, namely Henry of Ross, Hakon, Helena and Margaret would, in 1165, all be born, but would be well under twenty-one, while of his second family, if Gormflaith was born by 1135, which is unlikely, his eldest son, Thorfinn could have been born, and some of the others. Thorfinn is mentioned by name in a grant[33] of a silver mark per annum to the Church of Scone issuing out of Harold's lands, of which the date is after 1166, but no one can say how much before the 30th December 1184, the date of the death of one of its witnesses, Andrew, Bishop of Caithness.

If the union with Gormflaith took place after 1174, no child of that union would exist until 1175. That this is in fact true is rendered more probable because their union is not mentioned in the Flatey Book until after the death of Sweyn in 1171. But the passage is of doubtful authenticity, (see Rolls Edition p. 224), and inconclusive even if genuine. From the various allusions to Harold's union with Gormflaith, it would seem that Harold lived with her before he married her for many years, but married her legally after his first wife Afreka's death after 1198 when William the Lion stipulated that he should take Afreka back, and the subsequent legal marriage might in those days, under the Canon and Roman law, suffice to make Gormflaith's children, though born in adultery, legitimate and capable of succeeding to the earldom (see Dalrymple's Collections, p. 221).

In 1165 Sweyn Asleifarson, the great Viking, would be cruising on the northern and western coasts with Harold's son, Hakon, on board, until their deaths in Dublin in 1171.

As for those in authority, Harold Maddadson would have as contemporaries, Freskyn of Duffus till his death between 1166 and 1171, and his son William till his death near the end of the 12th century, when Hugo, son of William, would succeed to the Morayshire estates, though probably he had previously obtained a grant of the land then known as Sudrland or Sutherland, which is defined above. Hugo probably received this grant after William the Lion's first conquest of Sutherland and Caithness in 1196, shortly before the time when, as we shall see, Harald Ungi obtained in right of his mother a grant of half Orkney from the Norse king, and another from the king of Scotland of half Caithness, and probably a confirmation of his title to the Moddan lands in Strathnaver and in Halkirk and Latheron, to which he was heir in right of his father and grandmother Audhild of the Moddan line. But this half of Caithness would be conferred on Harald Ungi subject to the prior grant of Sudrland to Hugo Freskyn. For Harold Maddadson must, in the opinion of so eminent an authority as Lord Hailes, have been forfeited in 1196, if not earlier, for both he and his son Thorfinn were then in open rebellion against the Scottish Crown.[34]

Further deprivations of lands, it is conjectured, must have attended Harold Maddadson's later rebellions, and the events which must have led to those deprivations may now be recounted, though it is very difficult to reconcile Scottish and Norse records during the period.

In 1179 King William the Lion had marched an army into Ross, and subdued it to his sway; and, ere he left it, caused two castles of Eddirdovir on the site of Redcastle in the Black Isle on the Beauly Firth, and of Dunskaith[35] on the northern Suter of Cromarty, which is full of Norse remains, to be built, to enable him to hold his conquests.

Two years later he made war on Donald Ban MacWilliam, who claimed the Scottish Crown itself, as the third son of William FitzDuncan only son of Duncan II, who was himself the eldest son of Malcolm Canmore by Malcolm's first marriage, so productive of civil war in Scotland, with Ingibjorg, widow of Earl Thorfinn. Civil war ensued, and lasted for six or seven years, when, by good luck, Roland of Galloway fell in with a force of the rebels at an unknown spot called Mamgarvie near Inverness, and routed them, killing Donald Ban MacWilliam there on the 31st July 1187.[36]

In 1196, Harold Maddadson, who through the ambition of Gormflaith had, as we have seen, designs on Ross and Moray, sent an expedition southwards to occupy those districts, of which probably Gormflaith's father, Malcolm MacHeth, had been Earl at his death after 1160. But William collected an army,[37] and, after defeating Harold's son Thorfinn near Inverness, crossed the Oykel, entered Sutherland, subdued it and Caithness, and pursued Harold up to his castle at Thurso, and destroyed it in his sight. Harold then submitted, and promised to surrender his son and heir, Thorfinn, as a hostage, with others of his friends to be delivered to the king at Nairn. Harold left all his hostages close by at Lochloy, and went alone to the king at Nairn, and endeavoured to excuse himself by offering two grandsons to the king and stating that Thorfinn was his heir[38] and could not therefore be given up; but was taken prisoner himself and lodged in Edinburgh Castle, till his son Thorfinn came to take his place. On this occasion Harold Maddadson was deprived of Sudrland or Sutherland, which had been given to Hugo Freskyn; and in the next year, or soon after, half of the earldom of Caithness, which the Flatey Book states Jarl Ragnvald had held,[39] was conferred by King William the Lion on Harald Ungi or The Young, as grandson of Jarl Ragnvald, and son of Eric, who, however, had to make good the grant by conquest. Harald Ungi had, as stated above, already obtained a grant from King Sverri of half Orkney by a visit to the Norwegian Court.

In order to enforce his rights under both these grants, Harald Ungi collected a force, and, together with Sigurd Murt, and Lifolf Baldpate, the first husband of his youngest sister Ragnhild, invaded Orkney, while Harold the Old fled to the Isle of Man; but, on his namesake following him thither, he doubled back to Orkney, and, after killing all the adherents of his enemies there, crossed over to Caithness with a strong force. In a pitched battle "near Wick," said to have been fought at Clairdon near Thurso, he slew Harald Ungi, and utterly defeated his army, in 1198.[40] Harold the Old then endeavoured to make terms with the king, and offered him a large sum for the redemption of Caithness. The king, however, attached as conditions to any regrant, that the earl should put away Gormflaith, the daughter of MacHeth, and take back his wife, Afreka of Fife, and deliver up Laurentius, his priest, and Honaver, son of Ingemund, as hostages.[41] The earl, on his part, refused the terms; and, the earldom thus remaining forfeited, King William at once invited Ragnvald Gudrodson, the great Viking king of the Sudreys and Man, and then his friend and ally, to assemble a force and drive Harold out of Caithness, promising to confer that earldom upon his general, if successful in the campaign.