The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

CHAP. IX] OF SCOTLAxND 369
Edderachylis, Duirnes, and Assint, which are included in the
same county at present, formed no part of the ancient earldom,
but belonged the first to Caithness, while the others constituted,
as we have seen, the ancient district of Ness. This district,
therefore, included merely the eastern portion of the county, and
although it is unquestionably of a mountainous and Highland
character, yet it did not, like the other Highland districts, retain
its Gaelic population in spite of the Norwegian conquest, but
became entirely colonized by the Norse, who thus effected a permanent
change in its population. This result, however, arose
from circumstances altogether peculiar to the district of Suther-
land, and which, in no respect, apply to the case of other
Highland regions.
It will be in the recollection of the reader, that the principal
cause of the extensive conquest of Thorfinn, the Norwegian larl
of Orkney, on the mainland of Scotland, in the year 1034, was
from the king of Scotland having bestowed Caithness and
Sutherland upon Moddan, his sister's son, with commands
to wrest these districts from the Norwegian larl, to whom they
had been ceded by the preceding monarch. But there is con-
siderable reason to think, from the expressions of the Norse
writers, and from the events which followed, that Moddan must
have been the Gaelic chief or Maormor of Sutherland ; for
independently of the improbability of this district having been
bestowed on any other Gaelic chief than its own proper
Maormor, when the only object of the king was to wrest it from
the hands of the Norwegians, the Saga expressly mentions that
Moddan went north to take possessions of these two districts, and
levied his army for that purpose in Sutherland,—a fact which, in
these times, is sufficient to prove Moddan to have been the
Maormor of Sudrland. The natural consequence of the com-
plete success of Thorfinn, and of the total overthrow of his
opponents must have been, in accordance with the manners of
the times, that his vengeance would be peculiarly directed
against the Gaelic chiefs, to whose race Moddan belonged, and
against the Gaelic population who had principally supported him
in his war with Thorfinn. We may hence conclude with certainty,
that on the establishment of the Norwegian kingdom of
Thorfinn, the Gaelic inhabitants of Sudrland would be altogether
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