subdued and held only that part of Ness or modern Caithness which lies
next its north and east coasts, and the rest of the sea-board of Ness,
Strathnavern and Sudrland, forcing their way up the lower parts of
the valleys of these districts, as their place-names still live on to
prove; but they never conquered, so as to occupy and hold them, the
upper parts of these river basins or the hills above them, which
remained in possession of Picts and Gaels throughout the whole period
of the Norse occupation. Further, the Picts and Gaels extended the
area which they retained, until Norse rule was expelled from the
mainland altogether.

In Strathnavern and in the upper valleys of its rivers, and also in
Caithness in the uplands of the river Thurso, and in a large part of
Sudrland the Pictish family and clan of Moddan in its various branches
subsisted all through the Norse occupation, and it is hoped to show
good reason for believing that the family of Moddan, with the Pictish
or Scottish family of Freskyn de Moravia in later times, was the
mainstay of Scottish rule in the extreme north until the shadowy
claims of Norse suzerains over every part of the mainland were
completely repelled, and avowedly abandoned.

Meantime to Norway Orkney and Cat were essential. For their fertile
lands yielded the supplies of grain which Norway required; and when
the Norse were driven from the arable lands of the Moray seaboard,
Orkney and Cat became still more necessary to them and their folk at
home. Cat the Scots could not then reach, for the Norse held the sea,
while on land Pictish Moray, a jealous power, hostile to its southern
neighbours, lay in its mountain fastnesses between the territory of
the Scots in the south and the land of Cat in the extreme north, and
formed a barrier which stretched across Alban from the North Sea to