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
the shores of Assynt on the Skotlands-fiorthr or Minch.
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