“He was the most peerless of men, tall of growth, manly, and lively of look, virtuous in his ways, fortunate in fight, a sage in wit, ready-tongued and lordly-minded, lavish of money and high spirited, quick of counsel, and more beloved of his friends than any man; blithe and of kind speech to wise and good men, but hard and unsparing against robbers and sea-rovers; he let many men be slain who harried the freemen and land folk; he made murderers and thieves be taken, and visited as well on the powerful as on the weak robberies and thieveries and all ill-deeds.  He was no favourer of his friends in his judgments, for he valued more godly justice than the distinctions of rank.  He was open-handed to chiefs and powerful men, but still he ever showed most care for poor men.  In all things he kept straitly God’s commandments.”

As for Hakon, his cousin Magnus’ death without issue left him sole Jarl, “and he made all men take an oath to him who had before served Earl Magnus.  But some winters after, Hakon ... fared south to Rome, and to Jerusalem, whence he sought the halidoms, and bathed in the river Jordan, as is palmer’s wont.[18] And on his return he became a good ruler, and kept his realm well at peace.”  He probably then built the round church at Orphir in Mainland of Orkney, the only Templar Church in Scotland.

By Helga, Moddan’s daughter, whom he never married, Hakon had a son Harald Slettmali (smooth-talker, or glib of speech), and two daughters, Ingibiorg and Margret.  Ingibiorg afterwards married Olaf Bitling, king of the Sudreys; and Ragnvald Gudrodson, the great Viking, was of her line, and, as we shall see, in 1200 or thereabouts, had the Caithness earldom conferred upon him for a short time.  To Margret we shall return later.  By a lawful wife Hakon had another son, Paul the Silent, and it seems certain that Paul was not by the same mother as Margret or Harald Slettmali, and that Paul’s mother was not of Moddan’s family.

Moddan, Earl of Caithness, was killed in 1040.  His mother, daughter of Bethoc, must have been born after 1002.  If she was married at seventeen, her son Earl Moddan could not have been more than twenty when killed in 1040, and any son of his must have been born by 1041 at latest.  This son may have been Moddan in Dale.  Dale was the valley of the upper Thurso River, the only great valley of Caithness, and the Saga states as follows:—­

Moddan[19] “then dwelt in Dale in Caithness, a man of rank and very wealthy,” and “his son Ottar was jarl in Thurso.”  Frakark, a daughter of Moddan in Dale, was the wife of Liot Nidingr, or the Dastard, a Sudrland chief, and during the half century after Thorfinn’s death Moddan’s family seems to have owned much of Caithness and Sutherland, where the Norse steadily lost their hold.  We may be sure also that the Celt always kept his land, if he could, or, if he lost it, regained it as soon as he could.  Amongst its members this family probably held all the hills and upper parts of the valleys of Strathnavern, Sutherland and Ness at this time, and, from a centre on the low-lying land at the head waters of the Naver, Helmsdale and Thurso rivers, kept on pressing their more Norse neighbours steadily outwards and eastwards.