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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.
This was the first of his glorious victories, of which the Skalds reckon up some fourteen or thirteen very glorious indeed, mostly in the Western and Southern countries, most of all in England; till the name of Olaf Haraldson became quite famous in the Viking and strategic world.
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.
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.
The king named the boy Olaf, and in giving him his blessing said that he would one day be a very great man. This same Olaf Haraldson afterwards became the King of Norway and a very great evangelist. He is known in history by the title of Olaf the Saint, and he is to this day regarded as the patron saint of Norway.
<i>Olaf the Saint, King in Norway; the slaying of Thorbiorn Tardy; Grettir goes to Norway</i>. Early the spring after came out a ship from Norway; and that was before the Thing; these folk knew many things to tell, and first that there was change of rulers in Norway, for Olaf Haraldson was come to be king, and Earl Svein had fled the country in the spring after the fight at Ness.
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