probably Huna, in Caithness, near John o' Groats, under a howe.[26]

The line of the so-called Norse earls, at the period at which we have
arrived, 980 A.D., was represented by Sigurd Hlodverson, the hero of
the Raven banner, which, as his Irish mother had predicted, was to
bring victory to every host which followed it, but death to every man
who bore it in battle.[27] Sigurd claimed Caithness by the rules
of Pictish succession, as grandson of Grelaud daughter of Duncan of
Duncansby, Maormor of that district. This claim was disputed by
two Celtic chiefs, Hundi (possibly Crinan, Abthane of Dunkeld) and
Melsnati, or Maelsnechtan; and in a battle at Dungal's Noep, near
Duncansby, at which Kari Solmundarson is said in the _Saga of Burnt
Njal_[28] to have been present, Sigurd defeated them, but with
such loss to his own side that he had to retire to Orkney, leaving
Hundi,[29] the survivor of his two enemies, in possession of his lands
in Caithness. Sigurd himself, on his voyage from Orkney, fell into the
hands of the Norse king, Olaf Tryggvi's-son, who was returning from
Dublin to Norway, in the bay of Osmundwall or Kirk Hope in Walls;
and the king insisted on the jarl being baptized on the spot, under
penalty, if he and all the inhabitants of his jarldom did not become
and remain Christians, of losing his eldest son Hundi or Hvelpr,
whom the Norse king seized and retained as a hostage. He also sent
missionaries to evangelize the jarldom. Such was the conversion of
Orkney and its jarl from the worship of Odin, at or about the end of
the first millennium of the Christian era.

On his son's death in captivity, Sigurd seems to have deserted the
Norse for the Scottish side, and to have devoted himself to seeking
the favour, by his assistance in completing the conquest of Moray from
the Norse, of the Scottish king Malcolm II, whose third daughter he
married as his second wife.[30] He was, by race, more than two-thirds
Gaelic, and he clearly at first held Caithness in spite of all
Scottish attacks, and probably later on agreed to hold it from the
Scottish king.

A few other persons are referred to in the Sagas as connected with
Caithness at this time. In the Landnamabok (1.6.5) we find Swart Kell,
or Cathal Dhu, mentioned as having gone from Caithness and taken
land in settlement in Mydalr in Iceland, and his son was Thorkel, the
father of Glum, who took Christendom when he was already old.

About this time also, as appears f