The battle was named for the Parish of Barry, rather than the village, and was formerly thought to have taken place at the mouth of the Lochty burn, in the vicinity of the area that is now occupied by Carnoustie High Street.

[4] Boece informs us that Sueno, king of Denmark and England, unhappy with news of his army's defeat at Mortlach, ordered a naval task force to set sail for Scotland.

[4] According to the legendary account, the army camped at St Abb's Head for several days before sailing north, landing at Lunan Bay in Angus.

[5][6] Afterwards King Malcolm is said to have dipped his fingers in Camus' blood and to have run them along the top of Robert's shield, thus creating the red and gold striped design still used today in the Keith coat of arms.

At length, the grace of the Holy Ghost working within him, he set his heart upon increasing the worship of God ; so he established a new episcopal see at Marthillach (Mortlach), not far from the spot where he had overcome the Norwegians, and gained the victory; and endowed it with churches, and the rents of many estates.

Mortlach is nearby the site of the battle in which Máel Coluim mac Donnchada (Malcolm III) wrested power from Lulach.

For example, Gordon quotes Robert Maule from his 'De Antiquitate Gentis Scotorum' (1609): About eight miles from Brechin, at Karboddo [Kirkbuddo], a place belongs to the Earl of Crawford, are to be seen the vestiges of a Danish camp, fortified with a rampart and ditch, and vulgarly called Norway Dikes; near which is the village of Panbridge [Panbride], where anciently was a church dedicated to St Brigide, because on that saint's day which preceded the battle, Camus, general of the Danes, pitched his camp there.

[15] The story of the battle appears to have originated due to a romantic misinterpretation of the numerous tumuli that existed towards the eastern boundary of Barry Parish, near the Lochty burn before the town of Carnoustie was founded in the late 18th century.

There are seene manie bones of the Danes in those places where they were buried, there lieng bare above ground even unto this day, the sands (as it often chanceth) being blowen from them.

[8]Doubt was cast on this by Robert Dickson in 1878, when he pointed out that, while relatively high-status goods were found in some of the graves disinterred during early building work in Carnoustie, there was a lack of weapons.

[9] Subsequent finds pointed to the area being a domestic Pictish Long-Cist cemetery, including the remains of a female aged between 40 and 50 with osteoarthritis, who apparently died of tuberculosis.