The MacKinnon tradition runs that Findanus, the fourth chief of his clan and great-grandson of Alpín mac Echdach, brought Dunakin - the older name for Caisteal Maol - into the family through his marriage to a Norse princess. Saucy Mary's chain became a profitable arrangement. The princess is said to be buried on Beinn na Caillich, the hill above the village, her face reputedly turned toward Norway. Whatever the truth of the chain story, the connection to Norway is real enough. King Haakon IV is thought to have assembled his fleet here before the Battle of Largs in 1263, which is why the village is called Kyleakin - Haakon's kyle. Medieval documents also call the castle Dunakin, or Dun-Haakon, which is suggestive on its own.

Haakon's defeat at Largs effectively ended Norse domination of the Scottish islands. The longships that had gathered in the kyle below the castle sailed south expecting victory and returned, in much smaller numbers, having lost. Within three years the 1266 Treaty of Perth ceded the Hebrides to Scotland. Whatever Findanus's chain might once have collected, the castle now sat at the western edge of a Scottish kingdom rather than the eastern edge of a Norwegian one. The MacKinnons remained in possession. The present structure - a rectangular keep of three storeys, walls dating from the late 15th or early 16th century by document and carbon dating - was built or rebuilt several centuries after the original tradition begins.

In 1513, the chiefs of the Hebridean clans met inside this keep and agreed to support Donald MacDonald as Lord of the Isles. It was one of the last great gatherings of an old order - the Lordship of the Isles had been forfeited to the Scottish crown in 1493, and the clans were trying, unsuccessfully, to recover it. The last occupant of Caisteal Maol was Neill MacKinnon, a nephew of the 26th chief, who is recorded as living here around 1601. After that the castle was abandoned to weather and gravity. The basement level - believed to have contained the kitchen - is filled with rubble and has never been excavated. The main floor, once a public dining space, is open to anyone who climbs up to it.

On 14 February 2018, a lightning strike destroyed part of the surviving ruins. The lightning was probably not the first to hit the castle in five centuries, but it was the one that brought the conservators. Historic Environment Scotland subsequently stabilised what remained. The keep now stands as a partial silhouette above the village, walls thick enough to last another five hundred years if the weather and the rock allow it. Kyleakin itself has changed beyond Findanus's recognition - the Skye Bridge opened in 1995 a short walk north of the village, replacing the ferry that ran from the harbour, and Saucy Mary is now mostly a name on a hotel and a passing tour-guide story. The chain across the kyle, if it ever existed, is long dissolved. The position remains.