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Updated: September 29, 2024
As for those in authority, Harold Maddadson would have as contemporaries, Freskyn of Duffus till his death between 1166 and 1171, and his son William till his death near the end of the 12th century, when Hugo, son of William, would succeed to the Morayshire estates, though probably he had previously obtained a grant of the land then known as Sudrland or Sutherland, which is defined above.
"Then Earl Thorfinn fared after them, and laid under him Sudrland and Ross and harried far and wide over Scotland; thence he turned back to Caithness," and "sate at Duncansby, and had there five long-ships ... and just enough force to man them well."
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.
With a force collected in Sudrland, which thus appears to have been on the Scottish side, Moddan tried to make good his title, but Thorfinn raised an army in Caithness, and Thorkel collected another for him in Orkney, and the Scots retired before superior numbers.
In Strathnavern and in the upper valleys of its rivers, and also in Caithness in the uplands of the river Thurso, and in a large part of Sudrland the Pictish family and clan of Moddan in its various branches subsisted all through the Norse occupation, and it is hoped to show good reason for believing that the family of Moddan, with the Pictish or Scottish family of Freskyn de Moravia in later times, was the mainstay of Scottish rule in the extreme north until the shadowy claims of Norse suzerains over every part of the mainland were completely repelled, and avowedly abandoned.
Like Cæsar's Gaul, Cat was "divided into three parts"; first, Ness, which was co-extensive with the modern county of Caithness, a treeless land, excellent in crops and highly cultivated in the north-east, but elsewhere mainly made up of peat mosses, flagstones and flatness, save in its western and south-western borderland of hills; secondly, to the west of Ness, Strathnavern, a land of dales and hills, and, especially in its western parts, of peaks; and, thirdly, to the south of Strathnavern, Sudrland, or the Southland, a riviera of pastoral links and fertile ploughland, sheltered on the north by its own forests and hills, and sloping, throughout its whole length from the Oykel to the Ord of Caithness, towards the Breithisjorthr, Broadfjord, or Moray Firth, its southern sea.
Skuli, the only other surviving son save Hlodver, went to the king of Scots, who is said to have lightly given away what did not belong to him, and to have created him Earl of Caithness, which then included Sudrland.
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.
Notwithstanding agricultural operations, foundations of 145 brochs can still be traced in Ness and 67 in Strathnavern and Sudrland, but they were not all in use at the same time, and they are mostly on sites taken over later on by the Norse, because they were already cultivated and agriculturally the best. A well-known authority on such subjects, the late Dr.
Duncan of Duncansby or Dungall of Dungallsby, as he is variously called, allowed part at least of his dominions to pass by marriage to the Norse jarls; but both Moddan and Earl Ottar, whose heir was Earl Erlend Haraldson, who left no heir, owned land extensively in Ness and elsewhere, while Moddan "in Dale" had daughters also owning land, one of whom, Frakark, widow of Liot Nidingr, had many homesteads in upper Kildonan in Sudrland and elsewhere, and possibly it is her sister Helga's name that lingers in a place-name lower down that strath near Helmsdale, at Helgarie.
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