Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time

lend, Hakon

ands. They were "big men both, and handsome, but wise and modest"1 like their Norse mother Ingib

away, and went under those men who were territorially born to rule over them;" that is to say, they

sibly in 1059, or certainly not later than 1064 or 1065, Ingibjorg, Thorfinn's widow, as by Norse law wid

orfinn 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, a

were concerned, a fact which of itself justified the marriage, which, however, may have afterwards been held to have been within the pro

in any Scottish record to prove

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

nt 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

fe 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,

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 a

s 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

ng 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 r

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

n'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 a

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 king20 between 1140 and 1145 issued a mandate "to Reinwald Earl of Orkney and to the Earl and all the men of substan

his southern territories of Strabrock, now Uphall and Broxburn24 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 h

ays, three leading families with great followings, which were destined to play an important part in the

m 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 Morav

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

naver 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 T

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 mor

weyn 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 liv

er 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'

d 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 g

d. But Snaekoll's forfeiture probably cost their male line the Moddan and Erlend