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We suggest later that Snaekoll Gunnison was the father, before his flight to Norway, of a daughter, Johanna of Strathnaver, who inherited the Moddan and Erlend estates, or that she was otherwise Ragnhild's heiress. The male line of the Gunns, according to a pedigree which the writer has seen, was continued after his flight by Snaekoll who, it is stated, had a son, Ottar, living in 1280.
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.
Eric was Harold's kinsman and tried to reconcile the earls." There was a fight in Thurso between their followers, Thorbiorn Klerk instigating it, no doubt because after Eric's marriage with Ingigerd, Ragnvald's daughter, he knew he could not hope to force Eric to give up the Moddan lands in Strathnavern and in the upper valleys and hills of Sudrland and Caithness, to which he had a claim.
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.
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.
Ragnvald, Eric Stagbrellir and Harald Ungi line remaining in Scotland, who had probably about this time succeeded, or at least was recognised as next heir to the Moddan family estates in Strathnaver and Caithness, approached Earl John in 1231, and demanded from him Jarl Ragnvald's lands in Orkney.
When the conquerors settled in the land, they enslaved such of its inhabitants as remained among them for a time, and gave to the best coastal lands and lower valley farms the Norse names which they still bear, but they left the heads of the river valleys and the hills mainly to the Moddan family and their Pictish followers and clansmen, who held them tenaciously and extended their holdings, as the Norse became less hostile through inter-marriage, or less strong.
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