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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.
But Snaekoll's forfeiture probably cost their male line the Moddan and Erlend lands, which were granted to Johanna of Strathnaver in Snaekoll's absence abroad. The Moddan Family Jarls Harald and Paul and Ragnvald.
The queen's name was Joanna, and Johanna of Strathnaver may have been called after her, as Earl John had possibly been called after her father King John of England, the friend of Earl John's father, Harold Maddadson. We now have to fix the date of Freskin de Moravia, nephew of William, dominus Sutherlandiae since about 1214.
The eastern portion of Strathnavern, and particularly the neighbourhood of Loch Coire and Loch Naver, and all the Strathnaver valley were probably insecurely held by members of the Erlend and Moddan family after Harald Ungi's death at the battle of Clairdon in 1198; and Gunni, probably a grandson of Sweyn Asleifarson, who had married Ragnhild, Harald Ungi's youngest sister, after the death in the same battle of Lifolf Baldpate, her first husband, became chief of the Moddan Clan there and in Caithness.
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.
These lands in Strathnaver are roughly hatched on the map of Cat in this volume, and, as she gave them away in charitable trust, they probably formed only a small part of her whole estate after her marriage with Freskin de Moravia, which probably comprised the old Parish of Farr, now divided into Tongue, Farr, and Reay.
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.
"It was originally," Munro said; "but I have filled up the gaps with men from Nithsdale and the south. I was pressed for time, and our glens of Farre and Strathnaver had already been cleared of all their best men. The other companies are all commanded by men who were with us at St. Andrews Balfour, George Hamilton, and James Scott." "That is well," Hepburn said.
The name of Johanna, on which Skene mainly founds his assertion that Johanna of Strathnaver was Earl John's daughter, is just as easily explicable, and with equal verisimilitude, if she was not. Snaekoll went to Norway in 1232, leaving behind him, on our hypothesis, one child, an infant daughter of tender years, or possibly as yet unborn.
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.
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