rier which stretched across Alban from the North Sea to
the shores of Assynt on the Skotlands-fiorthr or Minch.

CHAPTER IV.

_Thorfinn--Earl and Jarl._

Malcolm II, with whom Scottish contemporary records may be said to
begin, ascended the Scottish throne in 1005, and defeated the Norse at
Mortlach in Moray in 1010, and drove them from its fertile seaboard,
probably with the help of Sigurd Hlodverson, Jarl of Orkney. The men
of Moray, however, and their Pictish Maormors remained ungrateful, and
irreconcilably opposed to Scottish rule; and Moray, then stretching
across almost from ocean to ocean,[1] barred the way of the Scots to
the north.

What he could not achieve by arms, Malcolm, both before and after his
accession, decided to secure by a series of matrimonial alliances.
He had no son; but he had three available daughters,[2] of whom the
eldest was Bethoc, and the two others are said to have been called
Donada or Doada and Plantula.

1. _Bethoc_ he married to the most powerful Pictish leader of the
time, Crinan, Abthane of Dunkeld, the capital of the southern Picts,
and they had issue

(a) _Duncan_, afterwards Duncan I of Scotland, born about 1001;

(b) _Maldred_ of Cumbria, whose eldest son was Gospatrick, and whose
second son was Dolfin; but with Maldred we are not concerned;

(c) _A daughter_, who became the mother of Moddan, whom Duncan
I, after his accession in 1034, created Earl of Caithness or Cat,
probably about 1040, his father being possibly of the family of Moldan
of Duncansby, whose sons Gritgard and Snaekolf, if we may believe the
_Njal Saga_, were slain by Helgi Njal's son and Kari Solmundarson,
Moldan being said to be a kinsman of Malcolm the Scots king.

2. Malcolm's second daughter, _Donada_, he married to Finnleac or
Finlay Mac Ruari, Maormor of North Moray, and a chief of the northern
Picts, and they had a son, Macbeth, born about 1005, who succeeded
Duncan I on his death in 1040 as King of Scotland, but left no
issue.[3]

3. Malcolm's third daughter, said to have been called _Plantula_, he
gave, about 1007, as his second wife to Sigurd Hlodverson, who, as we
have seen, was killed in 1014 at the decisive battle of Clontarf, his
wife having died probably before that event; and their only child was
a son, born about 1008 and created Earl of Caithness and Sutherland,
who became the great Earl and Jarl _Thorfinn_.

The three marriages were intended to secure to Malcolm the south