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In other words, as conquerors coming from the sea, the Norsemen seized and held the better Pictish lands near the coast, which had been cultivated for centuries, and on which crops would ripen with regularity and certainty year after year. But as time went on the Pictish Maormor pressed the Norse Jarl more and more outwards and eastwards in Cat.
The Maormor and afterwards the earl doubtless had demesne lands, but he was in early times, ex officio, mainly a superior and receiver of dues for his king; and this possibly shows why very early Scottish earldoms, as for instance that of Sutherland, in the absence of male heirs, often descended to females, unless the grant or custom excluded them.
His mother Aud thereupon built a ship in Caithness, and sailed for the Faroes and Iceland with her retinue and possessions, marrying off two grand-daughters on the way, one, called Groa, to Duncan, Maormor of Duncansby in Caithness, the most ancient Pictish chief of whom we hear in that district, and probably ancestor of the Moldan, or Moddan, line in Cat.
Sigurd claimed Caithness by the rules of Pictish succession, as grandson of Grelaud daughter of Duncan of Duncansby, Maormor of that district.
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.
They belonged to septs and clans, and each sept would have its Maor, and each clan or province its Maormor or big chief, succession being derived through females, a custom which no doubt originated in remote pre-Christian ages when the paternity of children was uncertain. Being Celts, the Picts would shun the open sea.
Malcolm's second daughter, Donada, he married to Finnleac or Finlay Mac Ruari, Maormor of North Moray, and a chief of the northern Picts, and they had a son, Macbeth, born about 1005, who succeeded Duncan I on his death in 1040 as King of Scotland, but left no issue.
The third son, Thorfinn Hausa-kliufr or Skull-splitter, himself about three-quarters Norse by blood, married Grelaud, daughter of Dungadr, or Duncan, the Gaelic Maormor of Caithness by Groa, daughter of Thorfinn the Red, thus further Gaelicising the strain of the Norse Jarls of Orkney, but adding greatly to their mainland territories.
On their failure to find the money, Torf-Einar paid it himself, taking in return from the people their odal lands, which were lost to their families until Jarl Sigurd Hlodverson temporarily restored them as a recompense for their assistance in the battle fought by him between 969 and 995 against Finleac MacRuari, Maormor of North Moray, at Skidamyre in Caithness.
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