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Updated: May 11, 2025
Ragnvald Gudrodson, it may here be noted, had, if we pass over his own illegitimacy, in the absence of direct male heirs of Earl Hakon since Erlend Haraldson's death in 1156, probably the best title to receive a grant of the jarldom of Orkney and Shetland and the earldom of Caithness of all the surviving descendants of Earl Thorfinn Sigurd's son.
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.
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.
Magnus' sister, who had been re-named Ragnvald from his resemblance to the handsome Jarl Ragnvald Brusi's son, and was afterwards designated Jarl of Orkney by King Sigurd of Norway, as the representative of the line of Erlend, Thorfinn's son. With Jarl Ragnvald, Jarl St. Magnus' sequel in estate, and himself afterwards St.
For it would tend to strengthen not only the hold of Scotland on Caithness and Sutherland, but also its connection with Orkney and Shetland, because Ingibjorg's sons, the young jarls Paul and Erlend, would become stepsons of the Scottish king and earls of Caithness. Nor was the marriage unsuitable in point either of the age or of the rank of the contracting parties.
Skene's paper, on mere probabilities; and we hold that the converse is true, and that Johanna was no daughter of John, and that it was the Erlend half of the Caithness earldom lands that went to her and her husband Freskin de Moravia of Duffus, while the moiety of Paul, in our opinion, remained with a nameless daughter of John, and went along with the title of Earl of Caithness, to her husband Magnus, and so to the Angus earls of Caithness, though the lands which went with it were then much curtailed in extent.
Freskin de Moravia, dominus de Duffus by 1248, who about that date had married the Lady Johanna, had with her obtained not only her lands in Strathnaver and Caithness, but also the bulk of the Erlend share of the earldom lands of Caithness, while Magnus held the rest of Caithness, and William, second Earl of Sutherland, then a mere boy, had succeeded to that earldom on his father's death in 1248.
Magnus and Erlend Thorfinn's son or some lands of equal value, and the reason why she had such very large estates as those which she brought to her husband and the Chen family as their successors would be made clear.
Audhild's son, Eric Stagbrellir, in the end was the survivor of these, as well as of all males of the Moddan line, and ultimately we hear of no descendants in Cat of any of them save of Eric, and Eric's marriage with Ingigerd, St. Ragnvald Jarl's only child, is the link between the line of Erlend and that of Moddan, which united the Erlend and Moddan estates.
Clairs, who, by inter-marriage with the descendants in the female line of a branch of the Freskyns, possessed themselves not only of the lands of the family of Moddan but of most of the mainland territories of the Erlend line, through Johanna of Strathnaver's daughters and great-grand-daughters.
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