United States or Saint Lucia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Magnus at Kirkwall, itself the finest specimen of Norman architecture in Scotland, survives on the mainland from Viking days; nor, so far as is known, was any such edifice built there by any Norseman; but the original High Church of Halkirk, and also the old church of St. Bar at Dornoch, which preceded and is believed to have occupied a site immediately to the east of St.
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.
Owing to subsequent additions of territory, it is impossible at the present time to say exactly what all the lands owned by an independent title by Lady Johanna of Strathnaver were, but some guidance towards the further identification of her lands in Caithness is found in the fact that later charters give the names of the lands which her sequel in all her estate, Reginald Chen III, known as "Lord Schein" or "Morar na Shein" held, and that he lived in and hunted from a castle at the exit of the river Thurso from Loch More above Dirlot or Dilred in Strathmore in Halkirk parish, but never owned Brawl, a capital residence of the Caithness earls, but did own to the end of his life "half Caithness," and acquired South Caithness after 1340 by purchase.
The diocese of Caithness, which then was co-terminous with the earldom and comprised all the above districts which now form the modern counties of Caithness and Sutherland, had in 1165 been in existence for about thirty-five years; its chief church being at first at Halkirk in Caithness and thereafter being the old Church of St.
Hugo probably received this grant after William the Lion's first conquest of Sutherland and Caithness in 1196, shortly before the time when, as we shall see, Harald Ungi obtained in right of his mother a grant of half Orkney from the Norse king, and another from the king of Scotland of half Caithness, and probably a confirmation of his title to the Moddan lands in Strathnaver and in Halkirk and Latheron, to which he was heir in right of his father and grandmother Audhild of the Moddan line.
Gilbert's later Cathedral, may have been used by the later jarls, and a few miles south of Halkirk are the foundations of the Spittal of St. Magnus, part of which, and of St. Peter's Church at Thurso may be Norse.
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.
It is suggested that the ownership of these lands in Strathnaver and of the other upland territories in Halkirk and Latheron parishes, held by her descendants and sequels in all her estate, the Chens, connects the Lady Johanna with the family of Moddan "in dale" in Caithness and with Earl Ottar, and with Frakark and Audhild her niece, and that Johanna was entitled to these lands in their entirety in her own right as the sole descendant remaining in Scotland after 1232 of Harald Ungi's younger surviving sister Ragnhild, possibly through her son Snaekoll by Gunni, and that Snaekoll was next heir to these lands before he went abroad, and either that he was Johanna's father, or that she became Ragnhild's heir in his place.
Word Of The Day