In a pitched battle "near Wick," said
to have been fought at Clairdon near Thurso, he slew Harald Ungi,
and utterly defeated his army, in 1198.[40] Harold the Old then
endeavoured to make terms with the king, and offered him a large
sum for the redemption of Caithness. The king, however, attached as
conditions to any regrant, that the earl should put away Gormflaith,
the daughter of MacHeth, and take back his wife, Afreka of Fife, and
deliver up Laurentius, his priest, and Honaver, son of Ingemund,
as hostages.[41] The earl, on his part, refused the terms; and,
the earldom thus remaining forfeited, King William at once invited
Ragnvald Gudrodson, the great Viking king of the Sudreys and Man, and
then his friend and ally, to assemble a force and drive Harold out
of Caithness, promising to confer that earldom upon his general, if
successful in the campaign.
Ragnvald Gudrodson, it may here be noted, had, if we pass over his own
illegitimacy, in the absence of direct male heirs of Earl Hakon since
Erlend Haraldson's death in 1156, probably the best title to receive
a grant of the jarldom of Orkney and Shetland and the earldom of
Caithness of all the surviving descendants of Earl Thorfinn Sigurd's
son.
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