of Caithness (then including Sutherland) was confirmed when his cousin, the five-year-old Harald Maddadsson, was given the title of earl and half the lands of the earldom of Orkney, in addition to Scottish Caithness. Throughout the 1140s Caithness and Sutherland were brought back under the Scottish zone of control. Sometime before 1146, David appointed a native Scot called Aindréas to be the first bishop of Caithness, a bishopric which was based at Halkirk, near Thurso, in an area which was ethnically Scandinavian. David soon found himself active and personally present in the north of Scotland because of the death of his cousin William fitz Duncan. William died sometime between 1147 and 1151, putting the huge lordship of Moray back into David's hands. David was in the north in the year 1150, founding Kinloss Abbey, while at the same time establishing new and reinforcing old castles which formed a line running from Banff on the borders of the mormaerdom of Buchan to Inverness. At about this time, or perhaps in the following year, David visited Aberdeen. This visit is recorded in the notitiae on the margins of the Book of Deer. All of the witnesses, mormaers, bishops and lower-ranking landlords, were Gaels with interests in the north of Scotland. The charter in question was a grant to the old monastery of Deer of exemption from all kinds of lay exactions. Later in the year, a charter issued at Dunfermline in favour of the new abbey church there records the presence at David's court of the most notable Gaelic magnates and church officials of the north, namely Gartnait, mormaer of Buchan, Morggán, mormaer of Mar, Aindréas, bishop of Caithness, Symeon, bishop of Ross and Edward, bishop of Aberdeen. These activities and pieces of charter evidence are enough to show that consolidation of royal authority there was David's biggest priority in the first years of the 1150s. In 1150, it looked like Caithness and the whole earldom of Orkney were going to come under permanent Scottish control. However, David's plans for the north soon began to encounter problems. In 1151, King Eystein II of Norway put a spanner in the works by sailing through the waterways of Orkney with a large fleet and catching the young Harald unawares in his residence at Thurso. Eystein forced Harald to pay fealty as a condition of his release. Later in the year David hastily responded by