United States or Guinea-Bissau ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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, and was the mistress at this time of one of the strangest characters in the Saga, Sigurd Slembi-diakn, or the Sham-deacon.
In this section of the work we have the subtly conceived and Hamlet-like figure of Earl Harald, in whose interest Frakark, a Norse Lady Macbeth, plots the murder of Earl Paul, only to bring upon Harald himself the terrible death that she has planned for his brother.
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," and tradition locates her residence at Shenachu or Carn Shuin, on the east side of the River Helmsdale near Kinbrace above the road.
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, 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.
Duncan of Duncansby or Dungall of Dungallsby, as he is variously called, allowed part at least of his dominions to pass by marriage to the Norse jarls; but both Moddan and Earl Ottar, whose heir was Earl Erlend Haraldson, who left no heir, owned land extensively in Ness and elsewhere, while Moddan "in Dale" had daughters also owning land, one of whom, Frakark, widow of Liot Nidingr, had many homesteads in upper Kildonan in Sudrland and elsewhere, and possibly it is her sister Helga's name that lingers in a place-name lower down that strath near Helmsdale, at Helgarie.
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.
Moddan "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 are told 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.
Of the line of Thorfinn we already know the royal origin and descent from Malcolm II's third daughter. The brothers of Frakark were Angus of the open hand, and Earl Ottir in Thurso: he was a man of birth and rank."
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.
Word Of The Day