Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time | Page 3

Register House, 1867.
Sutherland Book, by Sir William Fraser. Edinburgh, 1892.
Sutherland and the Reay Country, by the Rev. Adam Gunn. Glasgow,
John Mackay, Celtic Monthly Office, 1897.
Sverri's Saga. Translation by J. Sephton. London, David Nutt, 1899.
Tacitus--Agricola.
Thorgisl's Saga in Origines Islandicae (as above).

Viking Club. Caithness and Sutherland Records.} London Viking Club.
Old Lore Miscellany. } 29 Ashburnham Viking Society. Saga Books,
&c. } Mansions, Chelsea
William the Wanderer, by W.G. Collingwood. G.C. Brown Langham &
Co., 47 Great Russell Street, London, W.C., 1904.
Worsaae. Danes and Norwegians. London, John Murray, 1852.
Worsaae. The Prehistory of the North. London, Trübner, 1886.
Wyntoun's Chronicle. Edinburgh, Edmonston & Douglas, 1872.
[Footnote 1: An excellent Bibliography of Caithness, by Mr. John
Mowat, was published by W. Rae, Wick, in 1909, and of Caithness and
Sutherland by The Viking Club, 1910, by the same author.]
[Footnote 2: The Capitals and abbreviations placed in brackets after
certain authorities, give their initial letters and short titles, (e.g. (O.S.)
Orkneyinga Saga), as used in the notes at the end of this volume.]
Early Sources of Scottish History, A.D. 500 to 1286, by Alan O.
Anderson. Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh.
NOTE.--Since this little book was printed, the above great work has
appeared. To the student of the Norse invasions its value is inestimable.

[Transcriber's note: The following errata have been applied to the text.]
_ERRATA._
Page 1, line 13, for "they" read "Man." " 28, line 9, for "or" read "of." "
40, line 23, for "Kundason" read "Hundason." " 42, line 24, after "note"
reference[14] omitted. " 50, line 17, for "mainland of" read "Unst in." "
65, line 35, for "burnings" read "revenges." " 65, line 37, for "burnt"
read "killed." " 87, line 18, for "Earl Ragnvald" read "Jarl Ragnvald." "
104, lines 4 and 5, for "Magnus' great-grandson's granddaughter's
husband" read "Magnus' granddaughter's great-grandson." " 117, line
16, omit "a child of."

SUTHERLAND AND CAITHNESS IN SAGA-TIME OR, THE
JARLS AND THE FRESKYNS.

CHAPTER I.
_Introductory._

In the following pages an attempt is made to fit together facts derived,
on the one hand, from those portions of the Orkneyinga, St. Magnus
and Hakonar Sagas which relate to the extreme north end of the
mainland of Scotland, and, on the other hand, from such scanty English
and Scottish records, bearing on its history, as have survived, so as to
form a connected account, from the Scottish point of view, of the Norse
occupation of most of the more fertile parts of Sutherland and
Caithness from its beginning about 870 until its close, when these
counties were freed from Norse influence, and Man and the Hebrides
were incorporated in the kingdom of Scotland by treaty with Norway in
1266.
References to the authorities mentioned above and to later works
bearing on the subject have been inserted in the hope that others, more
leisured and more competent, may supplement them by further research,
and convert those portions of the narrative which are at present largely
conjectural from story into history.
What manner of men the prehistoric races which in early ages
successively inhabited the northern end of the Scottish mainland may
have been, we can now hardly imagine. Dr. Joseph Anderson's classical
volumes[1] on Scotland in Pagan Times tell us something, indeed all
that can now be known, of some of them, and in the Royal
Commission's[2] Reports and Inventories of the Early Monuments of
Sutherland and of Caithness respectively, Mr. Curle has classified their
visible remains, and may, let us hope, with the aid of legislation, save
those relics from the roadmaker or dykebuilder. Lastly, such
superstitions, or survivals of beliefs, as remain in the north of Scotland
from early days have been collected, arranged, and explained by the
late Mr. George Henderson in an able book on that subject.[3]
Enquiries such as these, however, belong to the provinces of
archæology and folk-psychology, and not to that of history, still less to
that of contemporary history, which began in the north, as elsewhere,
with oral tradition, handed down at first by men of recording memories,
and then committed to writing, and afterwards to print; and both in
Norway and Iceland on the one hand, and in the Highlands on the other
such men were by no means rare, and were deservedly held in the

highest honour.
Writing arrived in Sutherland and Caithness very late, and was not even
then a common indigenous product. Clerks, or scholars who could read
and write, were at first very few, and in the north of Scotland hardly
any such were known before the twelfth century of our era, save
perhaps in the Pictish and Columban settlements of hermits and
missionaries. Of their writings, if they ever existed, little or nothing of
historical value is extant at the