We may now try to state how things stood in the north at the date of his accession. Soon after this time his grandfather's friend, the first Freskyn, died between 1166 and 1171, and was succeeded by his son William MacFrisgyn, whose son Hugo would then be quite young. Harold Maddadson had in 1165 been for twenty-six years Earl of Caithness, and Jarl of Orkney and Shetland for nineteen years jointly with Ragnvald, and for seven years sole jarl of those islands.[30] He had probably put away his first wife Afreka of Fife about 1165, but he afterwards lived with Gormflaith, the daughter of Malcolm MacHeth from a date which cannot be fixed with certainty. Led by her, it is said, Harold was openly hostile to the Scottish king, of whom, however, he held the earldom of Caithness, which at that time included not only the parishes of Creich, Dornoch, Rogart, Kilmalie or Golspie, Clyne, Loth, and most of Kildonan and of Lairg, then called by the Norse Sudrland, but also the districts of Strathnavern, Eddrachilles, and Durness (where Mackay refugees had not yet permanently settled) as well as Ness, which is now known as the County of Caithness.
The diocese of Caithness, which then was co-terminous with the earldom and comprised all the above districts which now form the modern counties of Caithness and Sutherland, had in 1165 been in existence for about thirty-five years; its chief church being at first at Halkirk in Caithness and thereafter being the old Church of St. Bar at Dornoch, but it was scantily endowed, and therefore its clergy were but few.[31] Its Bishop was Andrew, a Culdean monk of Dunfermline, and probably Abbot of Dunkeld, who had been promoted to the see of Caithness before 1146, and died at Dunfermline on the 30th December 1184. Ingigerd, Earl Ragnvald's daughter, would at this time be a young wife and mother living with some of the elder of her six children, probably near Loch Naver, on part of the Moddan family lands there with her husband, Audhild's son Eric Stagbrellir, until their sons, Harald Ungi, Magnus, and Ragnvald, should grow up. But these sons, possibly on their father's death, and certainly before 1184, when young Magnus Mangi was killed[32] at the battle of Norafjord, emigrated to Norway to obtain the Orkney jarldom about ten or fifteen years after King William's accession; while of Ingigerd's daughters, Ingibiorg, Elin, and Ragnhild, nothing is recorded at this time, though Ragnhild appears later on, and one of her sisters is believed to have married Gilchrist, Earl of Angus during the last twenty years of the twelfth century. 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.
Harold Maddadson's children by his first wife, namely Henry of Ross, Hakon, Helena and Margaret would, in 1165, all be born, but would be well under twenty-one, while of his second family, if Gormflaith was born by 1135, which is unlikely, his eldest son, Thorfinn could have been born, and some of the others. Thorfinn is mentioned by name in a grant[33] of a silver mark per annum to the Church of Scone issuing out of Harold's lands, of which the date is after 1166, but no one can say how much before the 30th December 1184, the date of the death of one of its witnesses, Andrew, Bishop of Caithness.
If the union with Gormflaith took place after 1174, no child of that union would exist until 1175. That this is in fact true is rendered more probable because their union is not mentioned in the Flatey Book until after the death of Sweyn in 1171. But the passage is of doubtful authenticity, (see Rolls Edition p. 224), and inconclusive even if genuine. From the various allusions to Harold's union with Gormflaith, it would seem that Harold lived with her before he married her for many years, but married her legally after his first wife Afreka's death after 1198 when William the Lion stipulated that he should take Afreka back, and the subsequent legal marriage might in those days, under the Canon and Roman law, suffice to make Gormflaith's children, though born in adultery, legitimate and capable of succeeding to the earldom (see Dalrymple's Collections, p. 221).
In 1165 Sweyn Asleifarson, the great Viking, would be cruising on the northern and western coasts with Harold's son, Hakon, on board, until their deaths in Dublin in 1171.
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. 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. 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.[34]
Further deprivations of lands, it is conjectured, must have attended Harold Maddadson's later rebellions, and the events which must have led to those deprivations may now be recounted, though it is very difficult to reconcile Scottish and Norse records during the period.
In 1179 King William the Lion had marched an army into Ross, and subdued it to his sway; and, ere he left it, caused two castles of Eddirdovir on the site of Redcastle in the Black Isle on the Beauly Firth, and of Dunskaith[35] on the northern Suter of Cromarty, which is full of Norse remains, to be built, to enable him to hold his conquests.
Two years later he made war on Donald Ban MacWilliam, who claimed the Scottish Crown itself, as the third son of William FitzDuncan only son of Duncan II, who was himself the eldest son of Malcolm Canmore by Malcolm's first marriage, so productive of civil war in Scotland, with Ingibjorg, widow of Earl Thorfinn. Civil war ensued, and lasted for six or seven years, when, by good luck, Roland of Galloway fell in with a force of the rebels at an unknown spot called Mamgarvie near Inverness, and routed them, killing Donald Ban MacWilliam there on the 31st July 1187.[36]