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.

CHAPTER VII.

Harold Maddadson and the Freskyns.

After the death of Jarl Ragnvald in 1158, Harold Maddadson at the age of twenty-five “took all the isles under his rule, and became sole chief over them."[1] Ever since 1139 he had been sole Earl of Cat save for Erlend Haraldson’s grant,[2] though Jarl Ragnvald seems to have had a share of its lands and managed the Earldom of Caithness for Harold during his minority, bearing the title of his ward till the latter attained his majority in 1154.  Harold had married Afreka, daughter of Duncan, Earl of Fife, one of the most loyal supporters of the Scottish kings, and their children were two sons, Henry, who afterwards claimed Ross, and of whom we hear no more, and Hakon, Sweyn Asleifarson’s foster-child, and two daughters, Helena and Margret, of whom we hear nothing save their names.  Hakon, from boyhood, went with Sweyn on all his spring and autumn “vikings” or piratical cruises, undertaken every year to the Hebrides,