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