CHAPTER VI.

The Moddan Family—Jarls Harald and Paul and Ragnvald.

From the short forecast of the future given above, let us turn back to the point whence we digressed, namely the year 1123, when Jarl Hakon Paulson died at the close of the reign of Alexander I of Scotland.

Jarl Hakon was succeeded by his sons, Harald the Glib (Slettmali) and Paul the Silent (Umalgi). Jarl Paul lived mainly in Orkney, while Jarl Harald "was seated in Sutherland, and held Caithness from the Scot king" David I, who was crowned in 1124.[¹] All Harald's sympathies seem to have been Scottish, and he was born, bred, and brought up among Scotsmen, or Picts, probably in North Kildonan. He was always there with Frakark, daughter of Moddan in Dale, then a widow, her husband Liot Nidingr or the Dastard being dead; and Frakark and her sister Helga, Jarl Hakon's mistress, "had a great share in ruling the land"; while Audhild, daughter of Thorleif, Frakark's sister, also lived with Frakark,[²] and was the mistress at this time of one of the strangest characters in the Saga, Sigurd Slembi-diakn, or the Sham-deacon. Hakon's son Paul being, as appears certain, by a different mother not of the Moddan line, Frakark and Helga aimed at obtaining the whole jarldom of Orkney for Harald, Helga's son by Earl Hakon. With the object of getting rid of Paul, they went over with Sigurd Slembi-diakn to Orphir in Orkney; and we have the story of the poisoned shirt,[³] made there by Frakark and Helga, and by them intended for Paul, but put on, in spite of their expostulations and entreaties, by Harald, who died of its poison, leaving, however, one son, Erlend, then an infant.

After this, Jarl Paul banished these ladies from Orkney about 1127, and they "fared away with all their kith and kin, first to Caithness, and then up into Sutherland to those homesteads which Frakark owned there,"[⁴] and tradition [⁵] locates her residence at Shenachu or Carn Shuin, on the east side of the River Helmsdale near Kinbrace above the road. Possibly, however, they lived at Borrobol, the "Castle Farm";[⁶] and there "there were brought up by Frakark Margret, Earl Hakon's daughter, and Helga, Moddan's daughter," and also Eric Stagbrellir, Frakark's grandnephew, and son of her niece Audhild by Eric Streita, a Norseman, as well as Olvir Rosta and Thorbiorn Klerk, both Frakark's grandsons, all of whom come prominently into our story. Audhild's son, Eric Stagbrellir, in the end was the survivor of these, as well as of all males of the Moddan line, and ultimately we hear of no descendants in Cat of any of them save of Eric, and Eric's marriage with Ingigerd, St. Ragnvald Jarl's only child, is the link between the line of Erlend and that of Moddan, which united the Erlend and Moddan estates.

Of the line of Thorfinn we already know the royal origin and descent from Malcolm II's third daughter.

Of the Moddan line the Saga says [⁷]—"These men were all of great family and great for their own sakes, and they all thought they had a great claim in the Orkneys to those realms which their kinsman Earl Harald (Slettmali) had owned. The brothers of Frakark were Angus of the open hand, and Earl Ottir in Thurso: he was a man of birth and rank." These children of Moddan were probably of royal lineage or kinship, as Moddan, who had been created Earl of Caithness by King Duncan I, was that king's sister's son, and was probably, as we have seen, their ancestor or kinsman. 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. We are told [⁸] that "Paul was a man of very many friends, and no speaker at Things or meetings. He let many other men rule the land with him, was courteous and kind to all the land-folk, liberal of money, and he spared nothing to his friends. He was not fond of war, and sate much in quiet." We may be sure that he was little, if ever, in Sutherland, the country of his enemy Frakark. His rule was, however, destined to be disturbed, on the one hand by the Moddan family's plots, and, on the other hand, by a Norse competitor for the jarldom, Kali, son of Kol and Gunnhild, Jarl St. Magnus' sister, who had been re-named Ragnvald from his resemblance to the handsome Jarl Ragnvald Brusi's son, and was afterwards designated Jarl of Orkney by King Sigurd of Norway, as the representative of the line of Erlend, Thorfinn's son.

With Jarl Ragnvald, Jarl St. Magnus' sequel in estate, and himself afterwards St. Ragnvald, who was much in Caithness and Sutherland, and seems to have held and acquired considerable estates there, begins what is practically a new Saga, which may be styled "The Story of Ragnvald, and of Sweyn" the great Viking. Of these two we have perhaps the finest and most vividly painted pictures of the Orkneyinga Saga, full of dramatic touches, full, too, of interesting historical detail.

First, we have a portrait of the young Ragnvald as Kali Kolson in his youth at Agdir in Norway, with his mother Gunnhild, sister of Jarl St. Magnus Erlend's son, and his shrewd old father Kol. We are told that Kali was "the most hopeful man" or man of promise, "of middle stature, fine of limb, with light brown hair"; how he "had many friends, and was a more proper man both in body and mind than most of the other men of his time, a good player at draughts, a facile writer of runes, and a reader of books, good at smith's work, ski-ing, shooting, and rowing, and as skilful at song as at the harp."[⁹]

At the age of fifteen, he traded to Grimsby, where many Norwegians and Orkneymen came, and many from the Hebrides; and here he met Harald Gillikrist, who became his firm friend, and confided in him alone that he, Harald, was the son of King Magnus Barelegs, asking how he would be received by King Sigurd of Norway, and obtaining the diplomatic reply that he would be well received by the king, if others did not spoil his welcome. Then Kali returns to Bergen in 1116, about the time of Jarl Magnus' murder by his cousin Jarl Hakon, and after a friendship and a feud with Jon Peterson, which is amicably settled by the marriage of Jon with Kali's sister Ingirid, and of which the description well illustrates the manners and law of the times, is made Jarl Ragnvald of Orkney by King Sigurd; and on that king's death in 1126 he is confirmed in the title by his friend King Harald, for whom he fought in the battle for the throne at Floruvoe near Bergen, when King Magnus was captured, maimed, and deposed by Harald in 1135.

Jarl Paul, however, refused to part with half the isles; and, acting on Kol's advice, Jarl Ragnvald's messengers apply for aid in obtaining it to Frakark and her grandson Olvir Rosta in Kildonan, and offer them Paul's half share if they will help Ragnvald to secure his half. Frakark, having previously arranged that her niece Margret, the daughter of Earl Hakon and Helga, should marry Earl Maddad of Athole, second cousin to David I, as his second wife, thought that Orkney might be had, with half the jarldom and all Caithness, for Margret's son Harold Maddadson, then an infant in arms.

Ragnvald and Frakark then made common cause.[¹⁰] But in 1136 Paul defeated Frakark's ships in a sea fight off Tankerness in Deer Sound in Orkney, and immediately afterwards seized Jarl Ragnvald's fleet in Yell Sound in Shetland, though Ragnvald and his men escaped to Norway in merchant vessels, to return later on.[¹¹]

Meantime Olvir Rosta, Frakark's grandson, who had been stunned and nearly drowned in the sea fight at Tankerness, in which Sweyn's and Gunni's father, Olaf Hrolf's son, had aided Jarl Paul, burned Olaf alive in his home at Duncansby, Asleif, Olaf's wife, escaping only because she was absent at the time. Further, Valthiof, Sweyn's elder brother, was drowned in the roost of the West-firth, while rowing south to Jarl Paul's Yule Feast. Sweyn Asleifarson, as he was ever afterwards called, then went to Paul's Hall at Orphir to complain of Olvir Rosta. The news of his brother's death, which arrived during the feast, was considerately withheld from him, and he was greatly honoured there; but he roused the jarl's anger by slaying Sweyn Breast-rope, the jarl's forecastle-man, at Orphir, not indeed so much for the murder, as because Sweyn had fled and did not come to submit himself after it to the jarl, and so offended him.[¹²]

Then follow the stories, well worth reading in the Saga itself, of the raising and lowering of the sails on Ragnvald's ships and of the mutiny of Paul's followers, and of the dowsing of the beacons on the Fair Isle by Uni, Ragnvald's ally, of Ragnvald's landing in Westray, of his suppression of all opposition to him, of the spies at Paul's Thing, of Sweyn's junction of forces with Ragnvald, of Sweyn's visit to Margret at Athole, and his dramatic kidnapping of Jarl Paul while hunting otters near Westness [¹³] in the Isle of Rousay, in Orkney, and of the jarl's deportation by Sweyn first to Dufeyra and thence via Ekkjals-bakki [¹⁴] to Athole to his sister Margret, who receives him with the utmost show of cordiality, and finally of Paul's abdication in favour of Margret's second son, Harold Maddadson, then a boy of five years of age, with the instructions to Sweyn to tell the Orkneymen that Paul himself was blinded, or, worse still, maimed, so that his friends should not seek him out, and restore him to his jarldom.[¹⁵] Such is one version of the story; the other is a more sinister tale, that his half-sister Margret cast Jarl Paul into a dungeon and had him murdered, and, so far as the Saga relates, he left no issue.

Sweyn then returns to Orkney and tells his version of the affair to the bishop, the bishop to Ragnvald, and Ragnvald to the "good men" or lendirmen of Orkney, who express themselves satisfied, and Ragnvald builds the Cathedral he had vowed to St. Magnus in Kirkwall—a strange medley of craftiness, murder, and piety.

Next we have the vivid scene [¹⁶] of the arrival from Athole at Knarstead near Scapa, in his blue cope and quaintly cut beard, on a fine winter's day, of John, Bishop, probably of Glasgow, and formerly tutor to King David of Scotland, on whom Jarl Ragnvald waits like a page, and who passes on to Egilsay to Bishop William the Old; and the two clerics propose to Jarl Ragnvald that Harald Maddadson, who had already been created sole Earl of Caithness, shall have Paul Thorfinnson's half of the Orkney jarldom, an arrangement which Ragnvald accepts, and which is ratified by the people of Orkney and of Caithness. In due course the boy arrives in 1139, and the tutor selected for him is, of all others, Frakark's grandson, Thorbiorn Klerk, who had married Sweyn Asleifarson's sister, Ingirid, and who was "one of the boldest of men, and the most unfair, overbearing man in most things,"[¹⁷] differing indeed but little in character from Sweyn himself "who was a wise man and foresighted about many things; and an unfair overbearing man and reckless towards others," while they were both said to be men "of power and weight," and at this time they were fast friends.

Then follows the story of Frakark's Burning, one of the most purely Sutherland tales in the whole Saga.[¹⁸]

Sweyn, to avenge on that lady and her grandson, Olvir Rosta, the burning of his own father Olaf and of his house in Duncansby, openly asked Jarl Ragnvald for "two ships well fitted and manned," sailed to the Moray Firth, the Breithifiorthr or Broadfirth, as it was then called, "and took the north-west wind to Dufeyra, a market town in Scotland. Thence he sailed into the land along the shore of Moray and to Ekkjals-bakki. Thence he fared next of all to Athole to Earl Maddad, and lay at the place called Elgin and obtained guides, who knew the paths over fells and wastes whither he wished to go.[¹⁹] Thence he fared the upper way over fells and woods, above all places where men dwelt, and came out in Strath Helmsdale near the middle of Sutherland. But Olvir and his men had scouts out everywhere where they thought that strife was to be looked for from the Orkneys; but in this way they did not look for warriors. So they were not ware of the host, before Sweyn and his men had come to the slope at the back of Frakark's homestead. There came against them Olvir the Unruly with sixty men; then they fell to battle at once, and there was a short struggle. Olvir and his men gave way towards the homestead; for they could not get to the wood. Then there was a great slaughter of men, but Olvir fled away up to Helmsdale Water and swam across the river and so up on to the fell: and thence he fared to Skotland's Firth,[²⁰] and so out to the Southern Isles. And he is out of the story. But when Olvir drew off, Sweyn and his men fared straight up to the house, and plundered it of everything; but, after that, they burnt the homestead and all those men and women who were inside it. And there Frakark lost her life. Sweyn and his men did there the greatest harm in Sutherland, ere they fared to their ships."

Such is this Sutherland tale of Sweyn. According to the current notions of blood feud, he merely discharged the solemn duty of avenging his father's burning and death by a like burning and slaying of the household of his father's murderers. But his acts were wholly unjustifiable by the law of the time, as he had already accepted an atonement by were-geld from Earl Ottar.

After a round of harrying and piracy, especially in Sutherland, no doubt among the Moddan clan, Sweyn was heartily welcomed home by Jarl Ragnvald, from whom he immediately obtained another fleet for another set of raids on Wales, the coasts of the Bristol Channel and the Scilly Isles. His murder of Sweyn Breast-rope was committed just after an adjournment of the feast at Orphir for Nones in the Templar Church there, and Jarl Ragnvald's gift of the ships for Frakark's punishment was made while the jarl was piously engaged in completing and adorning St. Magnus' Cathedral at Kirkwall.

The strategy leading up to the Burning is characteristic of Sweyn and his stratagems. He openly asks for ships and sails in them, and thus is expected to land on the coast. But after a purposely devious course, which has puzzled inquirers into the locality of Ekkjals-bakki, he came overland by Oykel and Lairg and Strathnaver or Strathskinsdale, whence he was not looked for.

Thorbiorn Klerk next has his revenges. First he burnt Earl Waltheof (who had slain his father) in Moray, and next he killed two of Sweyn's men who had assisted in the burning of Thorbiorn's relative, Frakok, or Frakark, in Kildonan. Jarl Ragnvald with difficulty reconciles Thorbiorn and Sweyn, and they start for a joint raid. Soon, however, they squabble over the spoils, and Thorbiorn puts his wife Ingirid, Sweyn's sister, away, a deed that reopened their feud.[²¹]

For a series of robberies in Caithness, Sweyn is besieged by Jarl Ragnvald in Lambaborg, now known as Freswick Castle, but escapes by swimming in his armour under the cliffs and landing in Caithness, whence he passed southwards through Sutherland to Scotland and Edinburgh, where King David I received him with honour, and reconciled him with Jarl Ragnvald.[²²]

In 1148, Ragnvald decided to visit King Ingi in Norway, taking Harold Maddadson, then a boy of fifteen, with him.[²³] 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. But both he and Harold are wrecked in "The Help" and "The Arrow," at Gulberwick, south of Lerwick, on the Shetland coast, all on board, however, being saved, and Ragnvald, as usual, making verses and fun of it all, and of many other things.

At last in 1150 Ragnvald's and Eindridi's ships are "boun"[²⁴] for their eastern cruise, Eindridi, however, being wrecked off Shetland. But he gets another ship, and, in 1151, they set sail for the East, William, the bishop of Orkney, commanding one vessel. Passing down the east coast of England and through the Channel to France, they reach Bilbao [²⁵] in Spain, where Ragnvald lands, and refuses to marry Queen Ermengarde. Afterwards he rounds Galicia, where Eindridi's treachery robs them of spoil in taking Godfrey's castle, beats through Niorfa Sound (the Straits of Gibraltar); is deserted by Eindridi, sails along Sarkland (Barbary), captures the Saracen ship Dromund, and burns her, sells the prisoners in Barbary, but releases their prince, coasts along Crete, lands at Acre, and bathes in Jordan on St. Lawrence's Day, the 10th of August 1152. After a visit to Jerusalem they come at last to Constantinople, where the Varangian Guard heartily welcome them, although Eindridi, who has arrived there before him, tries to set everyone against them; and Ragnvald finally returns to Bulgaria and Apulia and Rome, and thence overland to Denmark and Norway.[²⁶]

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.[²⁷]

Erlend, only son of Harald Slettmali, and really entitled to the whole earldom, obtained from his relative [²⁸] King Malcolm, then a boy of under twelve, through his powerful kin, a grant of half of the earldom of Caithness jointly with Harold Maddadson, who objected to give him half the Orkney jarldom unless King Eystein confirmed the grant. Erlend then went to Norway to get it confirmed. Meantime Sweyn seized a ship of Harold's; but, to help Erlend, tried to reconcile Harold to him, as King Eystein (said Erlend) had given him half of Orkney. And the half given to him was, he added, Harold's half.[²⁹]

Sweyn and Erlend then force Harold, who had then just come of age, to agree to give up this half, under duress, in order to secure his own liberty, and the Orkney folk agree that Erlend shall have this half, Ragnvald having the other. This, Sweyn knew, Harold would not stand, and, as he drank at a feast with his house-carles in his castle in Gairsay,[³⁰] the wily Viking said, slily rubbing his nose, "I think Harold is now on his voyage to the isles," a shrewd surmise which proved correct in spite of the midwinter storm then prevailing. Harold's expedition, however, failed, and he went back to Caithness to raise a force to kill a man called Erlend the Young who had seized his mother Margret and taken her by force to Shetland, where he fortified Mousa Broch [³¹] and held her prisoner there. After a siege, Harold, who had followed them, at last allowed their marriage, Erlend the Young becoming his ally, and going that summer with his wife and Harold to Norway. When that was heard in the Orkneys, Sweyn and Earl Erlend went raiding off the east coast of Scotland and afterwards a-viking to North Berwick, and got much plunder, and Harold returned in the autumn to Orkney. In the winter Jarl Ragnvald came back from the east to Turfness (Burghead), whence he went about Yule 1153 to Orkney, to find that the Orkney-men want himself and Erlend, not himself and Harold, as joint jarls over them.

Harold had then to fight for his own hand; and, finding that Earl Erlend and Sweyn were in Shetland, he sought them out but missed them, and afterwards, though he hated Jarl Ragnvald, tried to get him on his side.

We come to another Sutherland event, historically of the first importance to us, in 1154.[³²] "Jarl Ragnvald was then up the country in Sutherland, and sat there at a wedding at which he gave his only daughter and child Ingirid or Ingigerd, to Eric Stagbrellir," who, as we have seen, as Audhild's son, had been brought up in Kildonan. "News came to him at once that Earl Harold was come into Thurso. Jarl Ragnvald, rode down with a great company to Thurso from the bridal.[³³] 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. Thirteen of Ragnvald's men fell in the fray, and he himself was wounded in the face. Ultimately, the earls were reconciled on the 25th of September 1154, and about 1156 joined forces and went to Orkney against Sweyn and Erlend, who pretended they were sailing for the Hebrides, but put their ships about at Store [³⁴] Point in Assynt, and after all but seizing Jarl Ragnvald at Orphir in Orkney, captured his ships, though he and Harold escaped, each in a small boat, across the Pentland Firth to Caithness.[³⁵] Returning thence, in Sweyn's absence for the night they attacked Erlend, who had disregarded all Sweyn's warnings and advice to keep a good look-out, off Damsey, near Finstown. In this fight Jarl Erlend, the last descendant in the male line of Thorfinn then alive, was slain, while drunk, his body being found next day transfixed by a spear, and he left no issue to inherit his title of earl or the other Moddan lands, left to him by Earl Ottar, which probably devolved on Eric Stagbrellir in 1156, as he could hold them against Thorbiorn Klerk.

All Erlend's success, if we are to believe the Saga, this portion of which is written largely to glorify Sweyn, probably by his relative Bishop Bjarni, had been arranged by Sweyn's really marvellous cunning; and Ragnvald, no doubt feeling how dangerous an enemy Sweyn was, and that he was backed by the Scottish king, immediately sent for him in order to reconcile him to Harold. But Harold, soon afterwards, robbed Sweyn's house in Gairsay; and Sweyn, in his turn, attacked the house where Harold was, and nearly succeeded in burning him alive. Later on Harold all but caught Sweyn off Kirkwall, but Sweyn gave him the slip, by running his ship into a tidal cave in Ellarholm, off Elwick in Shapinsay, in 1155, and disappearing till the coast was clear, when he got away in a small boat.

Afterwards Sweyn and Earl Harold were reconciled, and Sweyn and Thorbiorn Klerk and Eric Stagbrellir went on a viking cruise to the Hebrides, and, after a great victory at the Scilly Isles, returned with much booty to Orkney.[³⁶]

In the year 1157 or 1158, Sweyn defeated Gilli Odran, steward of Earl Ragnvald's lands in Caithness, who had fled to the west and was caught in Murkfjord (possibly Loch Glendhu at Kylestrome in Eddrachilles) and was slain there with fifty of his men by Sweyn.[³⁷]

In 1158, Ragnvald and Harold went, as they did every year, to hunt red deer and reindeer [³⁸] in Caithness, their hunting ground being probably near the Ben-y-griams, which lay on the way to Kildonan, or Strathnaver, where Eric probably lived; and some think there are still remains of walls used as a pen for driven deer on Ben-y-griam Beg, though these are more probably the ancient ramparts of a hill-fort.[³⁹] When they landed at Thurso, they heard that Thorbiorn Klerk was hiding and lying in wait in Thorsdale [⁴⁰] in order to make an onslaught on Ragnvald, if he got a chance. After riding with a band of a hundred men, twenty of them mounted, they spent the night at a place where there was what the Celts call an "erg" (airigh) but the Norse call "setr," the modern sheiling. Next day, as they rode up along Calfdale, Ragnvald was in advance of the party, and, at a homestead called Force,[⁴¹] Halvard hailed him loudly by name. Thorbiorn was inside the house, and burst out through an old doorway, and dealt Ragnvald a great wound, and the jarl fell, his foot sticking in his stirrup, when Stephen, an accomplice, gave him a spear thrust; whereupon Thorbiorn, after dealing him another wound, and receiving a spear thrust in the thigh himself, fled to the moor. Earl Harold at first would not interfere; and though Magnus son of Havard Gunni's son insisted, Earl Harold again declined to pursue Thorbiorn to the death, but left Magnus to besiege him at Asgrim's Ergin or Shielings,[⁴²] now Assary, near Loch Calder, where, by setting fire to the hut in which he was, his pursuers succeeded in smoking him out and killing him. They then brought the jarl's body from Force to Thurso, and thence took it over to Orkney, to be buried in the choir of St. Magnus' Cathedral, which he had founded and built in his uncle's honour.

"Jarl Ragnvald's death was a very great grief, for he was very much beloved there in the Isles, and far and wide elsewhere." It took place on the 20th August 1158.

"He had been a very great helper," the Saga adds, "to many men, bountiful of money, gentle, and a steadfast friend; a great man for feats of strength, and a good skald" or poet. In 1192 he was canonised as St. Ragnvald [⁴³] with, it is said, full Papal sanction. Save during Harold Maddadson's minority he was never Earl of Caithness, and then had the title only as guardian of his ward Harold.

Ragnvald left a daughter, his only surviving child, Ingirid or Ingigerd, whom as we have seen, Audhild's son, Eric Stagbrellir had married four years before her father's death; and their children, who come into the story afterwards, were three sons, Harald Ungi or Harald the Young, Magnus nick-named Mangi, and Ragnvald, and three daughters, Ingibiorg, Elin [⁴⁴] and Ragnhild, all of whom, so far as the Saga relates, died childless save Ragnhild, whose son by her second husband Gunni, was Snaekoll Gunni's son, who about 1230 claimed the Ragnvald lands in Orkney from Earl John, son of Earl Harold Maddadson,[⁴⁵] and complained that Earl John was keeping him out of his rights in Caithness to Ragnvald's share of the earldom lands there.

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. These lands would of right descend to Eric's eldest son, Harald Ungi, and on his death without issue, to his brothers if alive, and, failing them, to his sisters and their heirs, as happened in the case of Ragnhild and her son Snaekoll Gunni's son, neither Ingibiorg nor Elin receiving any share of this property, for reasons now undiscoverable, but which we shall endeavour to explain later, by presuming that one of them had died unmarried, or had married abroad, while the other and her descendants were amply provided for otherwise by marriage with Gilchrist, Earl of Angus.