north failed.

During the last half of the tenth century there was constant war by
the kings of Alban against the Northmen who had seized the coast of
Moray, and Malcolm I was killed at Ulern near Kinloss, about the year
954, and his successor Indulf fell in the hour of his victory over the
invaders at Cullen in Banff.[24] But on the whole probably the Scots
had succeeded for a time in driving out the Norse from the laigh of
Moray, which the latter needed for its supplies of grain.

Hlodver or Lewis, (963-980), the only surviving son of Thorfinn
Hausa-kliufr, succeeded Ljotr in the jarldom; and by Audna or Edna,
daughter of Kiarval, king of the Hy Ivar of Dublin and Limerick,
Hlodver had a son, the famous Sigurd the Stout, or Sigurd Hlodverson.
Hlodver was, (as Mr. A.W. Johnston points out),[25] by blood slightly
more Norse than Gaelic. We know little of him save that he was a
mighty chief; and, according to the usual reproach of the Saga,
died in his bed and not in battle about 980, and was buried at Hofn,
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