Chapter V

Paul and Erlend, Hakon and Magnus.

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.

"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."

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:—

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.

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.