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The other may have married in Norway, or died young and unmarried. All these children and their descendants successively according to sex and seniority would have claims as being of the line of Erlend Thorfinnson, to half the Caithness earldom and Jarl Ragnvald's lands there, claims which, however, it would be impracticable, while Harold Maddadson lived, to enforce.
In 1196, Harold Maddadson, who through the ambition of Gormflaith had, as we have seen, designs on Ross and Moray, sent an expedition southwards to occupy those districts, of which probably Gormflaith's father, Malcolm MacHeth, had been Earl at his death after 1160.
The pedigree of the descendants of Earl Harold Maddadson, and particularly of his daughters, who are named in the Orkneyinga Saga, ceases; and that of Earl John's family and of Harald Ungi and his sisters downwards stops also, save in the case of Ragnhild, the youngest of them, whose son Snaekoll Gunni's son is mentioned as claimant in 1231 from Earl John of certain lands in Orkney and in Caithness as well.
In 1148, Ragnvald decided to visit King Ingi in Norway, taking Harold Maddadson, then a boy of fifteen, with him. There he meets Eindridi, who had been long in Micklegarth, as Constantinople was then called by the Norse, probably in the Emperor's service as one of the Varangian Guard; and ships are built for a voyage to the East.
When Ragnvald reached Norway in 1153, he heard what had been going on at home during his absence in the east. King Eystein of Norway, King Harald Gilli's son, had seized Jarl Harold Maddadson, then a young man of twenty, at Thurso, and made him swear allegiance to himself, letting him go on his paying three marks of gold as his ransom.
Then Maddad, his father, Earl of Athole, died; and the widowed Margret, Harold's mother, came north to Orkney, still dangerous, still beautiful and attractive, especially to Gunni, Sweyn's brother, by whom she had a child, for which Gunni was outlawed, a punishment which alienated his brother Sweyn from Harold Maddadson.
But this half of Caithness would be conferred on Harald Ungi subject to the prior grant of Sudrland to Hugo Freskyn. For Harold Maddadson must, in the opinion of so eminent an authority as Lord Hailes, have been forfeited in 1196, if not earlier, for both he and his son Thorfinn were then in open rebellion against the Scottish Crown.
For Ragnvald Gudrodson was the grandson of Ingibjorg, Earl Hakon's elder daughter, while Harold Maddadson was the son of Ingibjorg's younger sister, Margret of Athole. Magnus, through the female line of Erlend Thorfinnson, as being descended successively from Gunnhild, Erlend's daughter, her son Ragnvald Jarl and Saint, and Ingigerd his only child.
During King Malcolm's absence abroad Fereteth, Earl of Stratherne, and five other earls, of whom Harold Maddadson was probably one, rebelled in 1160; and, on failing in an attempt to kidnap the young king, who had returned to quell the disturbance, the six earls were reconciled to him; and in the same year he subdued another rising in Galloway, and yet another in Moray.
Probably some of them were, on Eric Stagbrellir's death, subjected to exactions in respect of their lands by Harold Maddadson.
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