General View.—Anglo-Saxon and Danish-Norman England.—Sympathies
for Denmark.—The Dane in England.
The various kinds of Danish and Danish-Norwegian memorials which I have
alluded to, such as names of places, coins, and peculiarities of
language (not to mention contemporary letters-patent and laws), afford
so many incontrovertible proofs that the Danish influence in England was
neither of short duration, nor, on the whole, of a transient nature.
Future and more successful investigations and comparisons, more
particularly in England itself, will undoubtedly much extend the circle
of known Danish memorials existing there. So much, however, is already
placed beyond all doubt, that in no country out of the present homes of
the Scandinavian race have its colonists left such various, such
considerable, and such clear traces of their existence, as the Danes,
especially, have left in England. The Scandinavian spirit has not ruled
with so much power in any other, still less in any greater, European
kingdom; nor been able to retain so powerful a dominion for such a
length of time.
The Danes, and their successors the Normans, did not content themselves
with the temporary overthrow of the Anglo-Saxon dominion; they
annihilated it for ever. In this the Danes may be said to have been more
active than the Normans. They not only gradually settled themselves
under their own laws and their own chiefs, in half of England, but
spread themselves over the whole of it. In the time of Alfred the Great,
they once held all England in subjection; and at an early period
obtained places amongst the highest ecclesiastical and secular
aristocracy of the country. In the tenth century, the Anglo-Saxon king
Edgar favoured the Danes so much, that during his reign the Danish power
had an opportunity to consolidate and extend itself. Even the
Anglo-Saxon royal family became mixed with Danish blood. Among the
Anglo-Saxons, both high and low, weakness and proneness to vice went on
continually increasing; whilst the Danish dominion, prepared by two
centuries of independent Viking expeditions, and by the subsequent
settlements of the Northmen, established itself completely, as soon as
the sea kings and wandering Vikings were succeeded by Danish monarchs
with considerable fleets at their command.
All England yielded to the conqueror Canute, and under his wise,
powerful, and just administration, enjoyed that tranquillity and
happiness of which it had long felt the want. The Anglo-Saxons and Danes
now became more amalgamated. But Canute’s sons wanted their father’s
ability and strength of purpose. The old dissensions and quarrels broke
out afresh; whilst violent internal disturbances in the newly
Christianized Scandinavian North, where the Viking spirit became
extinguished, deprived the Danes in England of the succour necessary in
their contests with the natives. The Danish power in England fell, but
left the population completely mixed and saturated with Danish elements.
The Anglo-Saxon royal race, as it was called, was now half Danish. The
higher clergy and nobility were connected by the closest ties of
relationship with the Danes and their chiefs, in whose hands several of
the most important fiefs remained. The Danes had acquired considerable
influence in many of the largest cities; and in about half of England
the majority of the population was of Danish extraction, and possessed
Danish laws and other Danish characteristics. The Danes who, naturally
enough, could not forget that they had been absolute masters in that
conquered land, obeyed unwillingly a king of another race, though they
had not the power to place one of their own race upon the throne. The
unmixed Saxon population, on the other hand, could not endure that the
royal sceptre should continue to be borne, in the once independent
country of their forefathers, by foreign conquerors from Denmark, whose
power, besides, seemed at that time on the wane. Inward dissensions
increased; the kings were too feeble to maintain efficiently their
difficult position; and the power falling more and more out of the hands
of the degenerate Anglo-Saxons, passed over to the stronger Danes and
their Norman kinsmen.
With an unmixed population, England would have been able to maintain
herself united and powerful in the hour of danger, and when threatened
by foreign conquerors. But split and divided as she now was among
different races contending for the mastery, real unanimity was
impossible; and, in case of a powerful attack from without, dissolution
was inevitable. Through the Danish expeditions, the Danish
colonizations, and finally through the fall of the Danish supremacy, it
became practicable for William of Normandy to conquer England with an
army of only 60,000 men. Had not those events prepared the way, it would
be inconceivable that with such a force a foreign conqueror should have
been able to subdue a country so extensive, so well peopled, and so
favoured by nature; still less that he should have succeeded in
retaining such a conquest for any length of time. William won the battle
of Hastings, which decided the fate of England, only because Harald
Godvinsön’s Anglo-Saxon army entered the field weakened and exhausted by
the sanguinary battle of Stamford Bridge. This was fought against the
Norwegian king, Harald Haardraade, and the discontented Scandinavians in
the north of England, who wanted to re-establish a king of their own
race on the English throne.
The Danish-Norwegian settlements, and the Danish dominion in England, by
subduing for a time the political power of the Anglo-Saxons, had not
only prepared the way for the first victory of the Normans, but also for
the future progress and establishment of the Norman power in England,
and especially for the ultimate triumph of the Norman popular spirit
over the remains of the ancient Saxon nationality. The Danes, by
expelling the Anglo-Saxons from the northern and eastern parts of
England, as well as by mixing with them in the south, had by degrees
undermined their national independence and their popular
characteristics, and had thus prepared an entrance for the Scandinavian
spirit, which was so nearly allied to the Norman, into a great, if not
the greater, portion of the English population. The bold and chivalrous
spirit of the Norman aristocracy, their love of daring adventures, and
their lofty feeling of freedom, completely agreed with the
characteristics of the Scandinavians settled in England at an earlier
period. The Normans found among the Scandinavian population of England,
and particularly the Danish portion of it, several of those free
institutions already in full force which they themselves, with much
advantage to liberty, afterwards extended to the whole country.
Thus the conquest of England by Danish Normans, undoubtedly prepared,
or, more properly speaking, was the indispensable and necessary
foundation of the subsequent French-Norman conquest; and it may
therefore be justly called the first act of that great historical drama,
“The Norman Conquest,” of which William of Normandy’s conquest is only
the concluding act.
But many will undoubtedly ask, was the Norman conquest, on the whole,
beneficial to England? Would it not have been better had the Anglo-Saxon
nationality been permitted to develope itself, instead of being arrested
by such violent devastations and by such bloodshed as the Danish-Norman
expeditions occasioned? And is it not a proof of the nobleness of the
Anglo-Saxon nationality, that it has since prevailed so preponderantly
in England?
On this point let us hear a learned and impartial Englishman. The latest
and most celebrated Anglo-Saxon historian, Mr. Kemble, says, in his
preface to the before-mentioned Collection of Anglo-Saxon
Diplomas:—“With the close of the fourth volume of this work we arrive at
the reign of Harald, and the Norman conquest of England; an event which
our contemporary forefathers could only regard as deplorable, but which
we must look back upon with gratitude and pride, as the remote origin of
our own peculiar character and power. It is hardly possible to compare
the signatures to the charters contained respectively in this and in the
previous volumes, without seeing how widely a foreign element had become
predominant. The Scandinavians of Ingwar, Guðorm, Swegen, and Cnut,
successively prepared the way for the descendants of other Scandinavians
under William; and the Saxon national character, like the national
dynasty, was too weak to offer a successful resistance. Defeated, yet
still holding a portion of its domain with unabated perseverance,
yielding somewhat in one place, to break out with unshaken obstinacy at
another, it accommodated itself partially to the peculiar habits of each
successive invader; till, after the closing scene of the great drama
commenced at Hastings, it ceased to exist as a national character, and
the beaten, ruined, and demoralized Anglo-Saxon, found himself launched
in a new career of honour, and rising into all the might and dignity of
an Englishman. Let us reflect that defeats upon the Thames and Avon were
probably necessary preliminaries to victories upon the Sutlej.”
The weakness and degeneracy of the Anglo-Saxon national character
contained the seeds of its decay. It has long since been agreed that, in
an historical view, we ought not to complain that the degenerate, though
highly-civilized, Romans in Britain were compelled to make way for the
rude Anglo-Saxons, since the latter brought with them the germ of a new
and higher development. In like manner we can hardly regret that the
degenerate, but to a certain degree civilized, Anglo-Saxons, were in
turn expelled by the more powerful, but ruder Danes; since these also
were to prepare, and lay the foundation of a new and more flourishing
state of society. Under the reign of Ethelred the Second, the supremacy
of the Anglo-Saxons had already passed away. As a people, they sank
entirely, and left only a part of their civilization and of their
institutions to their successors in dominion, the Danes and Normans. The
transition took place amidst the same shocks and the same bloodshed
which still mark every important and radical revolution in the history
of nations. The Danish-Norman, or perhaps more properly, the
Scandinavian national character, usurped the place of the Anglo-Saxon.
It was certainly built upon the foundation laid by the Anglo-Saxons, but
it must be observed that it has made greater progress in all respects.
To it especially is owing the development in England of a maritime skill
before unknown, of a bold and manly spirit of enterprise, and of a
political liberty, which, by preserving a balance between the freedom of
the nobles and of the rest of the people, has long ensured to England a
powerful and comparatively peaceful and fortunate existence.
The Englishman is justly proud of his native land, of its internal
freedom, and external greatness. But when he extols his country in
respect only of its being “Anglo-Saxon,” or praises the merits of the
Anglo-Saxons and Norman-French, whilst he unconditionally condemns the
Danish expeditions and settlements, as having been merely devastating
and destructive, he commits both an historical error and an evident
injustice. The Anglo-Saxons performed their share in the civilization of
England, and the Norman-French did still more; but it ought not to be
forgotten—and least of all by Englishmen, who are so nearly related to
the Danes—that the latter also very essentially contributed to win
freedom and greatness for England, and that this freedom, and this
greatness, are in no slight degree sealed with Danish blood. From at
least the Danish-Normanic conquest (about the year 1000), the
Danish-Normanic, or Scandinavian, national character has been the
prevailing and leading one in England’s history, and so it certainly
continues to be at the present day.
A perceptible and very remarkable evidence of this is the sympathy which
the English people in general feel for the North, the ancient home of
their fathers, and particularly for Denmark. The Englishman himself will
generally aver, with a sort of pride, that he derives his descent from
the North. A Dane travelling in England will everywhere find an
unusually cordial reception. He will in general be regarded more as a
countryman than as a foreigner, merely because he is a Dane. He will
discover that the English, instead of having forgotten their kinsmen
beyond the sea, with whom they were formerly united, feel themselves
attracted to them by the ties of blood and friendship. He will
continually hear complaints of the deplorable attitude which the policy
of England assumed with regard to Denmark at the commencement of the
present century; and he will adopt the conviction that in this mistaken
policy, the people themselves, at least, were not to blame. He will at
times be induced to forget that he is at a distance from his native land
and from his nearest relatives; for the highly-striking agreement
between the character of the English and that of their Scandinavian
kinsmen causes a Dane to imagine that he is still among his own friends,
in the home which he has long since left. It was certainly also
something more than mere accident that, during the last war in Denmark,
the Danish cause nowhere, out of the North itself, awakened such general
sympathy among the people, nor found so many bold champions, both in
speeches and publications, as in England. May we not in these facts
trace the effects of near relationship, and perceive the ties of blood?
It should not pass altogether unnoticed that the sympathies of the
English for Denmark, and their fraternal feeling towards the Danish
people, have increased in proportion as they have been obliged to
acknowledge that the Danes of modern times still know how to defend
their independence, liberty, and honour, with the bravery inherited from
their forefathers. Not to speak of the last contest, so glorious for
Denmark, it is particularly the battle in Copenhagen Roads, the 2nd of
April, 1801, which has maintained in England the ancient fame of Danish
valour. The English regard this action not only as one of Nelson’s
greatest triumphs, but as one of their most glorious naval battles,
particularly on account of the sturdy resistance which they encountered.
On Nelson’s monument in Westminster Abbey, on which his most glorious
battles are recorded, that of Copenhagen is named first. Nelson himself
describes the action as the bloodiest and most desperate he had ever
beheld. That he is correct in this respect, and that he has not extolled
the bravery of our nation merely to enhance his own, we Danes, at least,
cannot doubt, since we cannot even admit that the battle must be
unconditionally regarded as lost by us.
For the rest, it is remarkable how frequently the English confound the
battle in Copenhagen Roads in 1801 with the carrying off of our fleet in
1807, and place these two entirely distinct events under one and the
same head. The English historians have endeavoured gradually to conceal
the dishonour attaching to the robbery of our fleet in 1807; and this
has even been carried to such an extent, that the rising generation but
too often reckons that ignominious act amongst Nelson’s triumphs. They
imagine that the surrender of our fleet was the result of the battle in
the Roads; and yet Nelson had fallen two years before, at the battle of
Trafalgar, in 1805. Fortunately for his honour, he was thus spared from
partaking in the robbery of the fleet of a nearly-related people, with
whom England was at peace.
But this is not the only error which the Dane must correct when he hears
in England the name of Nelson extolled at the expense of Denmark and of
historical truth. Yet he will find it difficult to refute another
similar mistake, namely, a firm belief in Nelson’s “_complete victory_”
in the battle of 1801. It is just as unshaken an article of faith among
the British people that Nelson then gained a brilliant victory, as it is
an acknowledged certainty, founded on fact, that at all events the
battle was neither won by the English nor lost by the Danes. Nay it is
certain that almost the whole of Nelson’s fleet would have been
destroyed, or taken, if the Crown Prince of Denmark—for fear of engaging
in a lengthened war with England, and from other purely political
reasons, as well as, it must also be observed, at Nelson’s own
request—had not put a stop to the battle. Curiously enough, in two of
the finest poems which the English and Danish people can produce,
Campbell’s “Battle of the Baltic,” and Hertz’s “Slaget paa Rheden,” the
combat is represented in each as honourable to the respective nations.
Not long since, a Dane in England was led into a warm argument
respecting the disputed result of this battle; when the master of the
house suddenly recollected that an old invalid, who looked after the
boats on the canals in the garden, had served under Nelson. He called
out to him that “here was a Dane, and that he had certainly seen that
sort of folks before.” “Yes, master,” answered the honest tar, “but on
that day the Danes made it much hotter than we liked.”
This terminated the dispute. The time, however, in the order of Nature,
cannot be far distant when the Dane in England may look in vain for such
support from men who were present at the battle. He must then be
contented to state his opinion, without the least hope of its carrying
any weight; though he can, at all events, console himself with the
reflection that, when the conversation turns on the mutual relations
between England and Denmark, the latter may point to conquests of a very
different, as well as far more important and altogether undisputed kind.
In the long series of brilliant victories, won not only by the Danish
sword, but by the Danish national character in England, and which, by
the conquest of that country, essentially contributed to found there a
greatness and a power before unknown, the Danish people possess
memorials so proud and brilliant, that they may be reckoned among the
most beautiful ornaments in that glorious wreath which from time
immemorial encircles the Danish name. We may safely leave them by the
side of the best and most imposing memorials of most other nations.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
NORWEGIANS IN SCOTLAND.
----------
SECTION I.
Nature of Scotland.—The Highlands and Lowlands.—Population.—Original
Inhabitants.
None of the seas of Europe are so rough and stormy as that which washes
its northern and north-western coasts. Even in Jutland the effects of
the cold north-west wind which sweeps down from the icy sea between
Norway, Iceland, and Scotland, are severely felt. Along its west coast,
for a distance of several miles inland, there are no woods, but only low
stunted oak bushes, which in many places scarcely rise above the tall
heather. Still farther eastward, and even in Funen and Zealand, which
the north-west wind does not reach till it has passed over considerable
tracts of land, it has such an influence on the woods, that in their
western outskirts the trees are bent, and as it were scorched or
blighted at the top. The North Sea, whose surges, breaking on the coast
of Jutland, are heard even in calm weather far in the interior, rises to
a fearful height during a storm. It would long since have washed over
Jutland, and perhaps the whole of Denmark, if Nature had not placed
sand-banks or shoals along the coast, as a sort of bulwark, against
which the highest waves break harmlessly.
The North Sea is, however, an enclosed one, and little more than a bay
of the Atlantic. Its swell is not so great, nor its storms so violent,
as those of the open sea beyond, towards the north and west; where the
Atlantic breaks on one side against Greenland and North America, and on
the other against Norway, Scotland, and Ireland. The sand-banks and
shoals which form a sufficient defence for Jutland against the North
Sea, would there scarcely be able to resist the open and agitated ocean.
On the extreme north-western coasts of Europe, the Atlantic has
completely washed away the earth and sand; the bare cliffs, which often
rise to a considerable height, alone remain, and still defy the fury of
the waves. These rocky coasts, with their numerous towering and ragged
crags, with their many and deeply-indented fiords, convey an idea of the
power and greatness of the sea as striking as it is true. Everywhere
outside lie rocky islands, which, like outposts, stop the advancing
waves, and only allow them, if with increased speed, yet with diminished
power, to approach the land through narrow channels, or sounds. During
violent storms some of the islands are flooded by the sea, which, as it
rolls forwards, strives to overtop the cliffs; whence it glides back,
again to repeat the same vain attempt. The firm, rocky, isle-bound
coasts of Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, are evidently for Europe what
the sand-banks and shoals of Jutland are for Denmark.
It is natural, therefore, that those countries which in the
north-westernmost part of Europe lie farthest out towards the Atlantic
Ocean—such as the Scandinavian Peninsula, Scotland, Ireland, and part of
England—should have their highest and wildest mountains and cliffs
towards the west, and in the neighbourhood of the sea. This is more
clearly seen the farther we proceed northwards: namely, in the
Scandinavian Peninsula and in Scotland.
In Norway the rocks often rise almost perpendicularly out of the sea. In
the neighbourhood of the coast they reach a considerable height, and
then sink gradually towards the east, until they lose themselves in the
broad and comparatively low valleys of Sweden. Whole rows of islands lie
scattered along the west coast of Norway, round which the sea often
whirls in impetuous eddies. On the coast itself, where the land is most
exposed to the bleak sea winds, such extensive forests are not to be
seen as in the interior of the country; nor do any fertilizing streams
wind their way through the short and narrow valleys. It is only here and
there that the water from the rocky springs or melted snows, leaps,
after a short course, over the edge of the cliff into the open sea, or
into the deep fiords with which the coasts are everywhere indented. The
greatest rivers in Norway take a more eastern course, and often make
their way from the Norwegian highlands through the richly-wooded
lowlands of Sweden to the Baltic. In Sweden the coasts are neither so
steep nor so indented as in Norway. The waves of the enclosed and
comparatively quiet Baltic do not require to be resisted like those of
the Atlantic Ocean.
Very similar features are found in Scotland. The whole of the northern
and western coast lying towards the Atlantic is wild and rocky, with
numerous islands, deep firths, and steep shores; behind which, rock
towers upon rock, as if to form an impenetrable barrier against the sea.
The country is almost without forests, the streams and the valleys are
of small extent, and fertility consequently very limited. But by degrees
the rocks sink down towards the south-east and east, till they terminate
in the broad, well-watered, and fertile coast districts along the North
Sea; which, on account of their inconsiderable elevation, are called the
Lowlands of Scotland. Thus the Highlands answer very nearly to Norway,
and the Lowlands to Sweden. But as the Scandinavian Peninsula is larger
than Scotland, so also are its natural features on the whole on a
grander scale. The rocks of Norway are mountains of primitive granite,
which in some places rise to a height of 8000 feet, and of which large
ranges are covered with eternal snow and ice. Scotland, on the contrary,
has transition rocks, whose highest peak, Ben Nevis, which is only
somewhat more than 4300 feet above the sea, is not even always covered
with snow. Nor can the Scottish Lowlands be compared as to extent to the
Swedish valleys, with their immense forests and their large rivers and
lakes. Nevertheless the natural features of Scotland are in their way no
less beautiful than those of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The sea, which
indents the coasts on all sides; the well-cultivated, and partly also
well-wooded plains, which, particularly towards the mountain districts,
undulate in hill and dale; and lastly the Highland itself, with its many
streams, waterfalls, firths, and lakes, afford the richest and most
magnificent variety. To these features may be added a milder climate,
and in the Lowlands a far richer fertility, than in Norway and Sweden;
which have considerably contributed to give the landscapes of Scotland,
even in the wildest districts of the Highlands, a somewhat softer tinge
than is found in the high Scandinavian North.
A very marked difference exists between the Scottish Highlands and
Lowlands, not only with regard to the nature of the country, but also to
the original descent and the characteristics of the present population.
The Lowlands, which are the seat of a highly-developed agricultural,
domestic, and manufacturing industry, are inhabited by a strong and
laborious people, speaking a peculiar dialect of the English language,
and descended partly from the Celtic Scots, but more particularly from
immigrant Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Norwegians, Normans, and Flemings.
Commerce and trade, carried on by means of canals, railways, steamships,
and similar easy means of communication, thrive vigorously in large and
wealthy cities.
The Highlands, on the contrary, which only a century ago were almost
inaccessible from the land side, have scarcely a large town. Rocks and
heaths are found instead of the fruitful fields of the Lowlands. With
the exception of a few districts farthest towards the north-east, where
the soil is more fertile, there are only seen in the valleys, along the
firths, and by the sea, small fields of barley and oats, which would not
yield the most scanty subsistence to the poor inhabitants if the rocks
did not afford pasture for cattle and numerous flocks of sheep; and if
the sea, the firths, which abound with fish, as well as the rivers and
lakes, did not contribute some part of their riches. The hardy Highland
Scots, a great part of whom do not understand, or at all events do not
speak English, but still commonly use the Celtic or Gaelic tongue, live
here thinly scattered in poor and low peat cabins, which it is often
difficult to distinguish from the surrounding rocks. The Highlanders in
the districts farthest towards the west and north have preserved their
language and other national characteristics purest; for farther towards
the Lowlands, a more modern civilization has gradually forced its way
forwards, in spite of the mountains. The old warlike dress which
formerly distinguished the Highlander, particularly so long as clanship
was in full vigour, has, since the annihilation of that system, become
every day more rare. The kilt, or short skirt, has almost entirely given
place to more modern clothing; the tartan plaid alone is still seen
wrapped in the old fashion round the shoulders of the Highlander.
In our days the various tribes of the Highland and Lowland populations
live in peaceful union under one and the same government. But during
several centuries Scotland was the theatre of the most sanguinary
contests between the Celtic Highlanders and the Teutonic Lowlanders. The
former, who were animated with an inveterate hatred of the Lowlanders,
continually made hostile incursions into the Lowlands, and, after
burning and ravaging the country, retired with cattle and other booty to
their mountains, whither they knew well the Lowlanders durst not follow
them. The exasperation and hatred of the Highlanders were not entirely
without foundation. In ancient times they had been sole masters in
Scotland, from the Cheviot Hills to the Orkneys and the Shetland Isles,
and from the Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea; and they had retained this
mastery even long after their kinsmen, the Britons in England, had been
compelled to yield to the Romans and Anglo-Saxons.
The celebrated Roman commander, Agricola, had, it is true, in the first
century after the birth of Christ, made his way so far into the Lowlands
that, as a defence against the Highlanders—the much-dreaded Caledonians,
or Picts—he constructed a wall with a deep ditch before it, from the
Firth of Forth to that of Clyde, in the low tract through which the
Glasgow Canal has since been conducted. The Romans even extended their
conquests farther northwards, as far as Burghead on the Moray Firth, to
which place they formed regular high roads. But they were not able to
defend themselves against the persevering attacks of the Caledonians, or
Picts, and were soon obliged to retreat to the south of the Cheviot
Hills; where the great wall, with its many towers and deep ditches,
which they had built from the Solway Firth to the River Tyne, became
their chief defence against the harassing inroads of the Highland
warriors. But this wall also was surmounted by the Picts, whose courage
and daring increased in proportion as the power of the Romans, both at
home and abroad, was rapidly waning. At last the Picts destroyed the
wall, and after the fall of the Roman dominion, made incursions into
England, where neither the descendants of the Romans, nor the Britons,
found any means to repel them. It was not till the Anglo-Saxon conquest
of England that the Picts were again compelled to fly towards the north
over the Cheviot Hills, where they found sufficient employment in
defending their own homes.
For, whilst they were spreading themselves over the rich plains of the
north of England, a foreign, though nearly related, Celtic people, the
Scots from Ireland, had taken possession of their south-western frontier
districts. Hence they spread themselves to such a degree over the
Lowlands that both these and the Highlands, though the latter were
almost entirely independent of the Scottish sovereigns, were called by
one name, Scotland. After many battles the older Pictish inhabitants
were, about the year 900, entirely amalgamated with the Scots in the
Lowlands. Meanwhile a storm had gathered which threatened no less danger
to the Scots in the Lowlands, than to their kinsmen, the Picts, in the
Highlands. The dominion of the Celts, which had long before ceased in
other and more accessible lands, was no longer to find a sure place of
refuge even in Scotland, though its coasts were protected by the stormy
Northern Sea, and its interior filled with rocks and warlike men.
----------
SECTION II.
The Anglo-Saxons.—The Danes and Norwegians.—Effects of their
Expeditions.
The same want of unity and the same internal disputes which had brought
ruin on the Celts in other places, prepared the way for foreign
conquerors in Scotland. An indomitable fate decreed that the newer and
higher civilization of Christianity should here, as in the rest of
Europe, be founded and promoted by a Teutonic people. But though the
Anglo-Saxons had conquered almost all England, they were not able, by
their own power, to subdue the Celts in Scotland. The Anglo-Saxon kings
undertook, indeed, several expeditions against that country, in which
they were at times pretty successful; but they were not able to hold
steady possession even of the Lowlands. Subsequently, however, the
Anglo-Saxons wandered by degrees, and in a more peaceful manner, from
the northernmost parts of England over the Scottish border, and
established themselves both in the towns and in the rural districts. The
number of these emigrants appears to have increased very considerably
after the conquests of the Danes and Norwegians in the midland and
northern districts of England in the ninth and tenth centuries, when a
great part of the Anglo-Saxons were driven from their old dwellings, and
obliged to fly towards the north. Saxon institutions may even have been
introduced into the Lowlands in the tenth and eleventh centuries, after
an expedition of the Anglo-Saxon king Edgar. But the rocky highlands of
the interior constantly defied all conquest; and the northern and
western coasts, together with the surrounding islands, could be subdued
only by considerable fleets, which the Anglo-Saxons did not possess.
But what in this respect the Anglo-Saxons were obliged to leave undone,
was for the most part accomplished by the warlike and shrewd men of the
Scandinavian North, who were then masters of the sea. Even from the
oldest times, connections, both of a warlike and peaceful nature, had
existed between Scotland and the opposite shores of Scandinavia. The old
Sagas, for instance, bear witness that the Danish king Frode’s daughter,
Ulfhilde, was married to “the founder of the Scottish kingdom;” and that
the Danish prince Amleth (Hamlet) married the Scotch queen, Hermuntrude.
From Denmark, moreover, and particularly from Jutland, many colonists
afterwards emigrated to the Scotch Lowlands, whose coasts were, besides,
plundered by the Danish Vikings.
The Danish colonists, even in the north of England, were much mixed with
Norwegians, and this was still more the case in the Scottish Lowlands.
The more north the districts lay, the farther were they removed from
Denmark, and the nearer did they approach Norway; whilst the features of
the country much more resembled the Norwegian fiords, valleys, and
rocks. Whilst, therefore, the Scandinavian colonists in the Lowlands
were of Norwegian-Danish descent, the Highlands and islands farthest
towards the north and west, were conquered, and in part peopled, by
Norwegians only. This happened about the same time as the Danish
conquests and settlements in England. The Norwegians founded kingdoms on
the northern and western coasts of Scotland, which existed for centuries
after the destruction of the Danish power in England. They introduced
their own manners, customs, and laws, and gave Norwegian names to the
places colonized by them. They appear not unfrequently to have married
native Celts; at least it is often stated that Norwegian chiefs married
daughters of the Celtic, or Pictish, and Scotch aristocracy, whose pure
nationality and power were thus gradually broken down. The unfortunate
Celts were now in a painful position. The Celtic Scots in the Lowlands
were pressed upon by the Anglo-Saxons and Northmen, whilst the Pictish
Highlanders were assailed both from the Lowlands and from the Norwegian
kingdoms in the west and north. The most essential result of the
Norwegian conquests and settlements in the Scotch Highlands was, that
the Northmen, in conjunction with the Norwegian-Danish colonists in the
Lowlands, and with the Anglo-Saxons who dwelt there, overthrew the
Celtic dominion, and, like the Danes in England, prepared the way for
the eventual triumph of the Norman spirit and Norman institutions. In
the Lowlands this took place in the twelfth century, but much later in
the Highlands and surrounding islands.
As a close union was thus effected between the long-separated Highlands
and Lowlands, and a higher and more widely-diffused civilization
introduced among the people in both, it may justly be asserted that the
Norwegian conquests in the Highlands, and the Norwegian-Danish
settlements in the Lowlands, were particularly fortunate for Scotland.
It must always, indeed, be a subject of regret that so brave, and in
many respects so noble, a people as the Caledonians and their
descendants, should be exterminated. Who can observe without a feeling
of sadness how the last feeble remnants of Scotland’s ancient masters,
after having been expelled from the glorious Lowlands, cannot even now
find rest among the barren rocks, and in the few arable valleys of the
Highlands, but are obliged, year after year, in increasing numbers, to
seek another home farther west, in the new world beyond the Atlantic?
But, viewing the matter as it regards enlightenment and civilization, no
charge can be reasonably brought against the Norwegians or Northmen, for
having co-operated in Scotland to expel a people whose brethern and
kinsmen had in every country which they occupied shown themselves
incapable of adopting the new and milder manners of Christianity; and
who, once before subdued by the Romans, had been compelled to yield to
the fresher and more powerful Teutonic tribes of the Franks and
Anglo-Saxon.
No small portion of the present population of Scotland, both in the
Lowlands and on the remotest coasts and isles of the Highlands, is
undoubtedly descended from the Northmen, and particularly from the
Norwegians. Both the Norwegians and Danes, wherever they established
themselves, introduced their Scandinavian customs, and preserved, in all
circumstances, the fundamental traits of their national character. It
becomes, therefore, probable that the Norwegian settlers in Scotland
must, in certain districts at least, have exercised a vast influence on
the development of the more modern life of the Scotch people, and on
their national character. This is indeed actually and visibly the case.
Yet, although the Norwegian kingdoms on the coasts of Scotland subsisted
long after the downfall of the Danish power in England, still the
effects of the Norwegian conquests in Scotland were far from being so
great, or so universally felt there, as the results of the Danish
conquests were in England. The Norwegian language was completely
supplanted in the Hebrides by old Celtic or Gaelic; and on the Shetland
Isles, the Orkneys, and the north coast of Scotland, by English. The
Norwegian laws and institutions either entirely disappeared in these
parts, or were formed anew after quite different models. Not even in the
purely Norwegian Orkneys and Shetland Isles, though they remained united
with Norway and Denmark until far in the fifteenth century, could the
inhabitants maintain the ancient freedom which they had inherited from
their forefathers. The free tenure of land, or right of “Udal,” was, for
the most part, annihilated by the most shameful oppression. Established
on many small, poor, and widely-separated islands, the Norwegians in
Scotland could neither obtain such influence for their laws and
institutions, nor concert so united and powerful a resistance against
oppression, as their more fortunate Danish kinsmen in the open, rich,
and densely-peopled plains of northern England.
In spite of the acknowledged fact that the Norwegians were the most
numerous of all the Scandinavian colonists in Scotland, we constantly
hear Norwegian achievements and Norwegian memorials referred to “the
Danes.” Under this common appellation are also generally included, as in
England, Norwegians and Swedes. The causes of this must probably be
sought in the long dominion of Denmark over Norway, in the brisker and
more uninterrupted communication which Scotland maintained with Denmark,
in comparison with any other part of the North, and lastly, in the
reciprocal marriages between the ancient Scotch and Danish royal
families, which in former times contributed, in no small degree, to bind
the Scotch and Danish people together. But the preponderance of the
Danish name must also be attributed to the pre-eminent power of the
Danes in ancient times, and in the early middle ages; and, of course,
more particularly to that supreme dominion which they had so gloriously
won for themselves in the neighbouring country—England.
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SECTION III.
The Lowlands.—Population.—Language.—Norwegian-Danish
Names of Places.
The boundaries between Scotland and England were anciently very
unsettled. After the time of the Romans, the Anglo-Saxon and Danish
kings speedily extended their dominion over the Cheviot Hills, and
frequently to the Firths of Clyde and Forth; whilst considerable tracts
of the north of England, particularly in the north-western districts,
were sometimes united with the Scotch Lowlands, or with kingdoms which
existed there. Until England and Scotland were at length united under
one crown, the north of England was almost uninterruptedly the theatre
of the bitterest border warfare. The blood of many thousands of bold
warriors has been spilt on that land which now teems with the blessings
of wealth and peace.
Part of this old border land, or the most southern part of the present
Scotland, from the Cheviot Hills to the narrow neck of land between the
Firths of Clyde and Forth,—a tract of about sixty English miles—has not
a much more mountainous character than the north of England. The hills
undulate in the same gentle forms; and it is only here and there that a
single rugged mountain shows its heath-covered or bare and peaked top.
Large and well-cultivated plains alternate with charming valleys, which
are frequently narrow, and so fertile that in some places creeping
plants, bushes, and trees, almost entirely conceal the rivulets that
wind through them.
The Highlands extend themselves from the Firth of Clyde to the
north-west and north; whilst the Lowlands take a direction from the
Firth of Forth along the eastern border of the Highlands, and by the
coasts of the North Sea. To the Firth of Tay, and northwards to the
Grampian Hills, the Lowlands are not very broad or extensive, whilst the
Highland mountains nearly approach the seashore. It is not till we have
crossed the Grampian Hills that those large level plains open upon us
which comprehend the north-easternmost part of Scotland, particularly
the present Aberdeenshire. From these less-wooded plains we turn towards
the north-west into the fertile and well-wooded Moray; whence a
transition again takes place to the Highlands, which begin in the
adjoining shire of Inverness. At this extreme point the Lowlands have,
as it were, exhausted all their splendour and abundance. Down towards
the coast the land is filled with gently-sloping hills, and intersected
by rivers, whose rapid currents remind one of the neighbourhood of the
mountains. At a distance from the coast the land rises, the tops of the
mountains become barer and sharper, the valleys have a greater depth,
and the roaring of the streams over fragments of rock is heard more
distinctly. The mountains, as they rise from the Lowlands to the
Highlands, afford in a still higher degree than the more southern border
mountains, the most enchanting prospects over the coasts and sea. It is
with difficulty that the spectator tears himself from the view of the
charms of the Lowlands, to bury himself in the dark mountains that rise
so solemn and menacing before him.
Throughout the Lowlands, the people, both in personal appearance and
character, very much resemble the inhabitants of the north of England.
This is particularly the case with the inhabitants of the southern
borders, between the Cheviot Hills and the Firths of Clyde and Forth.
The same light-coloured hair and the same frame of body, which, in the
north of England, remind us of the people’s descent from the
Scandinavians, indicate here also considerable immigrations of that
people into the southern part of Scotland, and thence farther up along
the east coast. According to a very common saying here, even the
language of the Lowlands is so much like that of Scandinavia, that
Lowland seamen wrecked on the coasts of Jutland and Norway have been
able to converse without difficulty in their mother tongue with the
common people there. This is undoubtedly a great exaggeration; but this
much is certain, that the popular language in the Lowlands contains a
still greater number of Scandinavian words and phrases than even the
dialect of the north of England. We must not unhesitatingly believe that
the Saxon language did not extend itself from the north of England to
the Scotch Lowlands till after it had been mixed with Danish; although
the remote situation of the latter, so high towards the north, was
certainly far more adapted to preserve the old Danish forms of words
than that of north England, which was more exposed to the operation of
newer fashions. But the Danish or Scandinavian elements in the popular
language of the Lowlands are too considerable to admit of such a
supposition, not to speak of the Scandinavian appearance of the
inhabitants. These necessarily indicate Scandinavian immigrations; and,
to judge from the present popular language, we might be easily tempted
to believe that a far greater number of Northmen had settled in the
Scottish Lowlands than in the middle and northern districts of England.
We might, consequently, also expect to meet with a proportionately
greater number of Scandinavian names of places in the Lowlands than in
England.
But this is very far from being the case. Extremely few places with
Scandinavian names are to be found in the Scotch Lowlands; and even
those few are confined, almost without exception, to the old border land
between the Cheviot Hills and the Firths of Clyde and Forth, and to the
counties nearest the English border. Dumfriesshire, lying directly north
of Cumberland and the Solway Firth, forms the central point of such
places. Northumberland and Durham, the two north-easternmost counties of
England, contain but a scanty number of them; and consequently must have
possessed, in early times at least, no very numerous Scandinavian
population. Cumberland, on the contrary, was early remarkable for such a
population; whence it will appear natural enough that the first
Scandinavian colonists in the Scotch border lands preferred to settle in
the neighbourhood of that county. On the south-easternmost coast of
Scotland, they would not only have been separated from their countrymen
in the north of England by two intervening counties, but also divided by
a broad sea from their kinsmen in Denmark and Norway. Such a situation
would have been much more exposed and dangerous for them than the
opposite coast, where they had in their neighbourhood the counties of
Cumberland and Westmoreland, inhabited by the Northmen, as well as the
Scandinavian colonies in Ireland and the Isle of Man.
The Scandinavian population in Dumfriesshire evidently appears to have
emigrated from Cumberland over the Liddle and Esk into the plains which
spread themselves westward of those rivers; at least the names of places
there have the very same character as in Cumberland. Not only are the
mountains called “fell” (Fjeld) and “rigg” (Ryg), as is also the case in
the other border lands, but, what is more peculiar to Dumfriesshire, the
terminations of “thwaite,” “beck,” and “garth,” not to mention “by,” or
“bie,” are transplanted hither from Cumberland: as, Thornythwaite,
Twathwaites, Robiethwaite, Murraythwaite, Helbeck, Greenbeck, Botchbeck,
Torbeck, Stonybeck, Waterbeck, Hartsgarth, Tundergarth, Applegarth,
Locherby, Alby, Middlebie, Dunnaby, Wysebie, Perceby, Denbie, Newby,
Milby, Warmanbie, Sorbie, Canoby, and others.
These Scandinavian names of places are chiefly met with between the
rivers Esk and Nith. Various authors have also endeavoured to show that
the fishermen on the Nith have to the present day characteristic and
original Scandinavian terms for their tackle and modes of fishing:—for
instance, “pocknet,” Icelandic _pokanet_; “leister,” or “lister,”
Icelandic _ljóstr_, Danish _Lyster_; “haaving,” Norwegian _haave_,
_i.e._, to draw small nets in the water, &c., &c. Somewhat east of the
river, and north of the town of Dumfries, lies the parish of “Tinwald,”
a name undoubtedly identical with Thingvall, or Tingvold; which, as the
appropriate Scandinavian term for places where the _Thing_ was held, is
found in other districts of the British Isles colonized by the Northmen.
And it was, indeed, natural that the Scandinavian colonists in the
south-east of Scotland should fix their chief _Thing_ place in the
district most peopled by them.
From Dumfriesshire the Scandinavian names of places branch off as it
were in an arch towards the west and east. Some few appear at intervals
towards the west, as in Kircudbright (Begbie, Cogarth), in Wigton
(Sorby, Killiness), in Ayr (opposite little Cumbray, Crosby, Sterby,
Bushby, and Magby), and also in Lanark (Bushby, close to the south-west
of Glasgow). Towards the east, some few are met with in Roxburgh, as,
for instance, on the borders of Cumberland, “Corby,” and
“Stonegarthside,” and on the frontier of Northumberland several in
_haugh_ (Höi, a hill) and _holm_. But on the whole only a few in _by_
are still to be found on the borders between Berwick and Haddington
(such as Humbie, Blegbie, and Pockbie). Towards Glasgow and Edinburgh
the mountains are no longer called “fell” and “rigg.” The Scandinavian
names of places cease entirely in these districts; and only the
Scandinavian word “fjörðr,” or Fjord, is heard here, as well as farther
towards the north in the names of fiords (or firths) namely: Firth of
Forth, Firth of Clyde, Firth of Tay, Moray Firth, and Dornoch Firth.
In the Lowlands, the number of Scandinavian names of places is quite
insignificant when compared with the original Celtic, or even with the
Anglo-Saxon names. Whence we may conclude that though a considerable
immigration of Northmen into the Lowlands undoubtedly took place, it
must have occurred under circumstances which prevented them from being
sufficiently powerful to change the original names of places. We must,
in particular, assume that the immigration took place much later than
the Danish conquests in England; and on the whole we shall not be far
from the truth in asserting, that as the Danish conquests in England
must have driven many Anglo-Saxons into Scotland, so also the subsequent
Norman conquest must have compelled many Danes and Norwegians, settled
in the north of England, to cross the Scottish border.
According to this view, most of the Scandinavian settlements in the
middle and northern parts of the Lowlands are to be referred at the
earliest to the close of the eleventh century; and at so late a period
an entire change of the ancient names of places then existing there,
could not, of course, be effected.
----------
SECTION IV.
Traditions concerning “the Danes.”—The Southern and Northern
Lowlands.—Danish Memorials.—Burghead.
We cannot venture to conclude, from the few Scandinavian names of places
found in the Lowlands, that the immigrant Scandinavian population was
but inconsiderable; nor can we presume to infer either the extent or the
period of the immigration from the numberless traditions respecting the
Danes preserved throughout that district. For, although the Lowlands
were far from being conquered by the Danes and Norwegians so early as
England was, still the number of alleged Danish memorials, even of a
remote age, is proportionately as great in the former as in the latter
country. Tradition has gradually ascribed almost all the memorials
existing in the Lowlands which are of any importance to “the Danes;”
nay, even the learned have, down to the present day, been too much
inclined to recognise traces of the _bloody Danes_ in the much more
ancient Pictish, Roman, and Scottish monuments.
The traditions about the Danes have much the same character in the
Lowlands as in England. They depict in vivid and touching traits the
misery of the people and of the country under the repeated attacks of
the wild sons of the sea, whose arrival, departure, and whole conduct,
were as variable as the wind. When large bands of Vikings had landed,
and the Scots had assembled an army to oppose them, it would sometimes
happen that in the morning, when all was ready for the attack, the
foreign ravagers were sought for in vain. In the darkness of the night
they had taken the opportunity secretly to re-embark, and rumour soon
announced to the army that the Vikings had again landed in quite a
different part of the country, where they were spreading death and
desolation. The Lowlander tells with horror of the many innocent women
and children, not to speak of the numbers of brave men, who were
slaughtered; of the churches, convents, and towns, that were destroyed
by fire; and of the numerous herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, which,
together with valuables of all sorts were carried off to the ships of
the Vikings.
Although the Vikings are renowned in England for drunkenness and other
kinds of dissipation, yet in Scotland tradition still more highly
magnifies the inclination of the Danes for intoxicating liquors, and
particularly for ale. It is also a general belief among the common
people throughout Scotland and Ireland that the Danes brewed their
strong ale from heather; a tradition which probably arose from the
circumstance that in ancient times the Northmen spiced their ale with
herbs; as, for instance, in Denmark with Dutch myrtle, or sweet willow
(_Dan._, Porse), which grows in marshy heaths.
For the rest, there can be no doubt that the Scotch stories about the
drunkenness of the Danes were a good deal multiplied in far later times,
at the period, namely, when the Princess Anne, a sister of Christian the
Fourth, was married to the Scotch king James the Sixth, or James the
First of England. Queen Anne was accompanied to Scotland by several
Danish noblemen, who introduced at court, and among its hangers-on, the
same carousing and revelling which at that time prevailed in far too
high a degree at the court of Denmark. Burns, in his poem of “_The
Whistle_,” celebrates an ebony whistle still preserved in the family of
Ferguson of Craigdarrock, which is said to have originally belonged to
one of Queen Anne’s Danish courtiers.
This Dane, who, even among his own countrymen, had the reputation of a
great drinker, challenged the Scotch to drink with him for a wager, and
promised the whistle to him who could drink him under the table. At the
same time he produced evidence to show that in all his many drinking
bouts at various northern courts in Russia and Germany, he had never
been vanquished. However, after drinking three consecutive days and
nights with Sir Robert Lawrie of Maxwelton, the Dane fell under the
table, and Sir Robert gained the whistle. Sir Robert’s son afterwards
lost it again at a similar drinking bout with Walter Riddel of
Glenriddel, from whose descendants it passed in the same way into the
family which now possesses it.
But as a contrast to the many naturally exaggerated tales about the
excesses committed by the Danes both in earlier and later times, it is
refreshing to meet with romantic traditions about Danish warriors, whose
bravery and comeliness could win the hearts of Scottish maidens, even
whilst the curses of the Scots were heaped on “the Danish Vikings.” A
Danish warrior had been carried off by the Scots during an expedition
into Morayshire, and imprisoned in a strong tower, where a speedy death
awaited him. But the daughter of the lord of the castle, who had fallen
in love with him, and found a requital of her affection, opened his
prison door one night, and fled with him. When morning came the lord of
the castle set off in pursuit of the fugitives, and overtook them on the
banks of the river Findhorn, which runs through Morayshire. The lovers,
who were both on one horse, attempted to swim the river; but the jaded
animal could not make head against the stream, and the fugitive couple
found a watery grave in the depths of the Findhorn. Near Dalsie, in
Nairnshire, is a small sequestered valley on the banks of the Findhorn,
inclosed by smooth sloping banks, overgrown with weeping birches. In the
midst of this charming spot is seen a grave composed of stones heaped
up, at one end of which stands a tall monumental slab, ornamented with
carvings of a cross and other antique figures. This slab, the people
say, is a monument to the unfortunate lady.
There is nothing intrinsically improbable in this tradition, since
history testifies that the daughters of Scottish kings married
Norwegian-Danish kings; whilst they, or at all events their countrymen,
were making war in Scotland. In the beginning of the tenth century, the
Scotch king, Constantine the Third, in conjunction with the more
northern Anglo-Saxons, beat the Danes, who had passed over from Dublin
under Reginald and Godfrey O’Ivar (Godfred Ivarsön), in a great battle
near the Clyde. Although Constantine, during nearly the whole of his
reign, had to fight against Danish and Norwegian Vikings, yet he gave
his daughter in marriage to Anlaf, or Olaf, king of the Danes in Dublin
and Northumberland; nay, he even fought with Olaf and his
Danish-Norwegian army against the Anglo-Saxons at the battle of
Brunanborg. Sigurd, Jarl of the Orkneys, was also married to a daughter
of the Scotch king, Malcolm the Second (1003-1033), although he had made
devastating incursions and conquests in Malcolm’s lands.
The attacks of the Norwegians and Danes on the Scottish Lowlands were so
continuous that out of seven monarchs who reigned over the Scots from
863 to 961, or about a century, three are related to have fallen whilst
fighting against the Danes. These monarchs are, however, said to have
purchased decisive victories with their blood. If we compare the
unsuccessful expeditions of the Northmen into the Scottish Lowlands with
the great conquests made by the Danes in England, we shall not wonder
that the inhabitants of the former country relate with a sort of pride
the many victories of their forefathers over “the Danes;” nor shall we
be surprised that the popular traditions, which point out the ancient
battle fields, scarcely admit even the possibility of the Danes having
been victorious.
In the southern and middle Lowlands (to the south of the Grampian Hills)
the Firths of Forth and Tay afforded excellent landing places for the
ancient Vikings. Many battles, therefore, were fought in their
neighbourhood. In the vicinity of a rampart called “_the Danes’ dyke_,”
in the parish of Crail, close to Fifeness, and between the firths just
mentioned, the Scotch king Constantine, Kenneth’s son, is said to have
fallen in a battle against the Danes in 881. Forteviot, or Abernethy,
the ancient capital of the Picts, which the Vikings often tried to
plunder, lay in the innermost part of the Firth of Tay. The defence of
this place, by King Donald the Fourth, in 961, cost him his life. Near
Redgorton, in Perthshire, is a farm called “Denmark;” close to which are
to be seen remains of intrenchments, besides tumuli, and monumental
stones, said to originate from a defeat suffered by the Danes at this
spot.
The most famous battle in these parts is, however, related to have taken
place on the northern shore of the mouth of the Firth of Tay. In the
reign of Malcolm the Second, after the Danes had already made themselves
masters of England, the attacks of the Vikings began to assume a more
dangerous character. A number of them landed in the Bay of Lunan, in
Forfarshire, whence they plundered and laid waste the country for many
miles around. But to the east of Dundee, near Barry, they encountered a
Scotch army, which defeated them, and compelled them to make a retreat,
during which they were again repeatedly beaten. Even to the present day
tradition points out a line of Danish monuments extending from Barry to
Aberlemno, in the neighbourhood of which place the last battles were
fought, and where human bones of a remarkable size are said to have been
often found in the tumuli. At Camuston, not far from Barry, stands a
stone cross called “Camus Cross,” on which are carved various kneeling
figures in an attitude of prayer. According to the statements of the
common people the cross was erected in memory of the Danish general
Camus, who fell at this spot. At Kirkbuddo were formerly seen the
remains of a Danish camp called “_Norway dikes_.” In the parish of
Inverkeilor, and near the farm called “Denmark,” traces of Danish
ramparts are also to be found; and at Aberlemno, Murphy, and many other
places, are seen sculptured monuments, said to have been erected in
commemoration of the before-mentioned fortunate victories over the
Danes.
It is of course by no means incredible that a great battle may have been
fought between the Scots and the Scandinavian Vikings in this district,
and at about the time mentioned. But it is perfectly clear that most of
the Danish monuments before noticed have no connection whatever with
this frequently-mentioned battle. The name _Camus_ is not at all a
Scandinavian one; and it is, besides, not only certain that the village
of Camuston was, in more ancient times, called “Cambestowne,” but also
that there are several similar names of places in the Lowlands, which
are most correctly derived from the old Celtic language. The sculptured
monuments in question have not, in fact, the least appearance of having
been erected after any battle. In a splendid work lately published (P.
Chalmers, “The Ancient Sculptured Monuments of the County of Angus,”
Edinburgh, 1848, folio), are to be found correct delineations of a
number of stones of the same kind, which are spread over Perthshire,
Forfarshire, Kincardineshire, and Aberdeenshire; and still more are to
be met with along the coasts of the northern Lowlands and north-eastern
Highlands. One, near St. Vigean, in Forfarshire, has an ancient Celtic
inscription; but, with this exception, no inscriptions are found upon
them. They are usually ornamented on one side with a cross and various
fantastic scrolls and ornaments, and on the other with biblical
representations, such as Adam and Eve at the tree of knowledge, Daniel
in the lion’s den, Samson with the jawbone of an ass, &c. Sometimes all
sorts of strange figures are found on them, such as crescents, sceptres,
mirrors, combs, and other articles; as well as serpents, lions,
elephants, horses, dogs, stags, elks, sphinxes, &c. On some stones we
find representations of the chase, with huntsmen, hornblowers, stags,
and hounds. The carving is for the most part executed with much skill,
and the whole style of the work seems referrible to the tenth or
eleventh century. It is beyond all doubt that these stones cannot be
ascribed to the Danish or Norwegian settlers, though several authors
have asserted the contrary. They are evidently Christian-Scotch
monuments, and have been erected with a very different aim from that
ascribed to them: some, probably, as boundary stones of landed
possessions and hunting-grounds; others as monumental stones to deceased
persons.
One of the Aberlemno stones—a rare exception to the rest—which stands
close by the church, represents on one side a battle, in which both foot
and horse are engaged, and in which a bird attacks a man wearing a
helmet, who tries in vain to cover himself with his shield. (See the
annexed woodcut.) Above is seen a mirror, and one of those inexplicable
figures which appear so frequently on stones of this kind. But in this
there is the peculiarity, that the figure intersected by the cross-bar
with the sceptres (?) at each end, is square, whilst in other instances
it is generally in the form of a crescent. On the back of the stone is
carved a cross covered with the finest scrolls and ornaments, and
surrounded by fantastic figures of animals interlaced together. The
height of the stone is about six feet. This monument might possibly have
been erected after a victory; but it still remains uncertain, whether
after a victory over the Danes. At all events, the stone is Scotch, and
not Scandinavian.
[Illustration: [++] Aberlemno Stone]
[Illustration: [++] Aberlemno Stone: Reverse]
The case is much the same with most of the so-called “Danish” forts,
camps, stone circles, and bauta stones; which are in general of Pictish
or Celtic origin. Had they really been erected by the Danes and
Norwegians, those nations must evidently have held confirmed dominion in
these parts for a length of time; but it is well known that, in the
early period in which these monuments were raised, they can be regarded
as masters, in the south and central Lowlands, only at very short and
far-distant intervals.
North of the Grampian Hills, and particularly in the district of Moray
(the “Mærhæfi” of the Sagas), the Norwegians and the Danes, it is true,
firmly established themselves for a somewhat longer period of time. In
the beginning of the eleventh century, for instance, they defeated the
Scots in a great battle near Kinloss, took the towns of Elgin and Nairn,
whose garrisons they put to the sword, and afterwards settled themselves
on the sea coast. But the kingdoms which they founded were speedily
destroyed without leaving any remarkable traces behind them; so that,
even in this district, we cannot place implicit reliance upon the many
different stories about the Danish monuments. According to a common and
not improbable tradition, the district of Moray, and the present
Aberdeenshire, were the theatres on which the last battles between the
Danish Vikings and the Scots were fought. Thus it is said that, in the
reign of Malcolm the Second, the Danes, after the battle of Kinloss,
suffered a great defeat at Mortlach in Banffshire, where Malcolm, as a
thank-offering to God, caused a convent to be built. This, again, was
partly the cause of Mortlach’s becoming the seat of a bishop. Popular
tradition states that the Scottish leader vowed during the battle to add
to the church in Mortlach as much as the length of his spear if he
succeeded in driving away the Danes. An ancient sculptured stone near
the church is mentioned as pointing out the Danish leader’s grave; and
the skulls of three Danish chiefs are still shown, built into the north
wall of the church, as a perpetual memorial. A similar tradition is
preserved about the church of Gamrie, also in Banffshire. The Earl of
Buchan vowed, in the heat of the battle, to build a church to St. John,
to replace that which the Danes had destroyed, if he gained the victory
over them. Three of the sacrilegious Danish chiefs, by whose command the
church had been desecrated, were found upon the field of battle, and in
a description of the church lately published we read as follows:—“I have
seen their skulls grinning horrid and hollow in the wall where they had
been fixed, inside the church, directly east of the pulpit, and where
they have remained in their prison house 800 years!”
It is further stated that, on account of the repeated defeats which the
Danes and Norwegians had suffered in the Scotch Lowlands, King Svend
Tvskjæg sent, in the year 1012, his son Canute, who afterwards became
king of England, with a large fleet and army to the northern part of the
Lowlands. Canute landed on the coast of Buchan (Aberdeenshire), near the
Castle of Slaines, in the parish of Cruden (or Crudane). Here a very
fierce battle was fought, which can scarcely have been favourable to the
Danes, since a treaty was afterwards concluded between them and the
Scotch, according to which the Danes were to evacuate the fortress
called “Burghead,” in Moray, then occupied by them, as well as the rest
of their possessions in the kingdom of Scotland. According to the same
treaty the field of battle was to be consecrated by a bishop as a
burial-place for the Danes who had fallen on it, and a chapel was to be
built there in which masses should be continually sung for their souls.
In this neighbourhood also there was certainly, at one time, a chapel
dedicated to the Norwegian saint, Olave; but the ruins of this chapel,
as well as the old churchyard, have since been destroyed by quicksands.
The wind, however, by blowing away the sand, still brings, at times, the
fragile bones of the Danes to the light of day.
Straight out of the town of Forres, in Nairnshire, stands a stone nearly
twenty feet high, on one side of which is seen a large and handsome
cross, and under it some indistinct human figures. On the other side is
carved a number of horsemen and people on foot, evidently representing
an execution on a great scale; several bodies are seen, and by the side
of them the dissevered heads. The sculpture is executed with the
greatest care, and displays some very tasteful ornaments, which,
however, are now partly effaced through the action of time on the soft
stone. The pillar is commonly called “Svenós stone,” and tradition
relates that it was erected to commemorate the treaty of peace concluded
between Svend Tveskjæg and King Malcolm, and the expulsion of the Danes
from the coasts of Moray. But the sculptures at present existing on the
stone do not in the slightest degree represent anything of the kind. The
stone belongs to the same class of monuments as the sculptured Scotch
stones before described, which are so numerous in the Lowlands, and in
the north-eastern Highlands, particularly Inverness-shire, Ross-shire,
and Cromartyshire.
One of the few places in the Lowlands, which may with reason be assumed
to have preserved considerable traces of the Danish expeditions, lies in
the neighbourhood of the towns of Forres and Elgin. It is a promontory
which projects in a north-western direction almost a mile into the sea.
Towards its head its steep craggy shores are from eighty to a hundred
feet high. This extreme point, which incloses a small harbour, and which
presents a level surface on its top, where the fishing village of
“Burghead” is situated, was formerly separated from the main land by
three immense parallel ramparts, fifteen to twenty feet high, with cross
ramparts lying between, as well as deep and broad ditches, of which
there are still considerable remains. That the Romans had a fortress
here (said to have been named “Ultima Ptoroton”) was clearly proved
several years ago, when a Roman well, which is still used, was
discovered cut in the rock. But for Vikings, like the Norwegians and
Danes, this place afforded a still better refuge than for the Romans.
Towards the land side, which is in some degree barren and uninhabited,
they could easily defend themselves; and from the sea, the Scots could
attack them only by entering the harbour, where the well-equipped
vessels of the Northmen of course prevented their landing. In all
probability, therefore, the Norwegians and Danes still further fortified
this important point, and gave it, perhaps, its present name. Tradition,
at least, relates that the Danes, after taking Nairn, isolated the town
or fortress, and called it “Borgen” (the castle); in which account it is
very probable that the names of Nairn and the neighbouring Burghead have
been confounded. The latter place gradually gained such importance that
it was the last stronghold the Danes possessed in the Lowlands.
It is therefore clear that the Danes, or rather the Norwegians and
Danes, have scarcely a right to claim many of the numberless monuments
in the Lowlands which both the learned and unlearned ascribe to them. In
fact, the whole eastern coast of Scotland, from the Cheviot Hills to
Moray Firth, is entirely destitute of characteristic and undoubted
Scandinavian monuments. It must, however, be remembered, that the actual
Scandinavian immigrations into the Lowlands certainly took place after
the Norman conquest of England; or, at all events, at so late a period
that the Northmen could not remould the Scotch names of places into
Scandinavian forms. Nor is it strange that the Scandinavian colonists in
the Lowlands, who at the close of the eleventh century had long been
Christians, and influenced by the civilization prevailing in England,
should neither have erected such monuments as stone circles, bauta
stones, cairns, and barrows, which presuppose a state of heathenism
among a people, nor have impressed their characteristics generally on
that district by means of peculiar memorials. For at that time they
played a subordinate part there, and afterwards gradually became very
much mixed with Celts, Anglo-Saxons, and subsequently even with Normans.
The very circumstance, however, that so large a tract of land as the
Scottish Lowlands lay out of the path of the Scandinavian conquerors
during the ninth, tenth, and first half of the eleventh centuries, was
the cause not only that the Danes were able to direct all their power
with more effect against England, but also that the Norwegians could
more easily subdue the Orkneys and the Shetland Isles, the Hebrides, and
various tracts in the northern and western Highlands. In these districts
much more perceptible traces of the Norwegian settlers, and of the
results which they produced, are still preserved, than in the Lowlands
of the in general transient devastations of the Danes and Norwegians.
----------
SECTION V.
The Orkneys and Shetland Isles—Natural
Features.—Population.—Oppression.
We might expect that the most northern isles of Scotland, which lie
exposed in a stormy sea, should possess the same wild and mountainous
character as the Faroe Isles and Iceland. Such a belief gains strength
when, for the first time, in passing from Scotland, we obtain a view of
the southern Orkneys, especially the considerable mountain heights of
the Isle of Hay. Indeed Hay obtained its name (originally “Haey,” or the
high island) from the old Northmen, on account of the mountains which
distinguish it from the rest of the Orkneys; for on sailing farther
northwards, past Hay and the adjacent South Ronaldshay (formerly
“Rögnvaldsey”), we soon discover that the Orkneys are in general flat
and sandy, although with cliff-bound coasts. Their heath-covered hills
scarce deserve the name of mountains, though here and there called by
the inhabitants “fjolds,” or Fjelde (mountain rocks). The islands are
destitute of wood, and exhibit frequent ling moors and desert tracts of
heath. But there is also much, and by no means unfertile, cornland to be
found; and an improved system of agriculture has made such advances,
that the stranger is sometimes surprised, in these distant isles, by the
sight of luxuriant fields of wheat.
The waves of the sea, and the powerful currents, have intersected the
Orkneys with innumerable winding bays, or sounds. Besides Mainland, the
chief island (first called by the Norwegians “Hrossey,” and afterwards
“Meginland,” or the continent), the archipelago includes a great number
of islands of different sizes, which spread themselves in a north-east
direction from the north coast of Scotland. The farthest of the Orkneys
is Fairhill, or Fair Isle (formerly “Friðarey”). It lies almost midway
between the Orkneys and the Shetland Islands, in the midst of the rapid
current now called Sumburg Roost, but which the Norwegians in former
times called Dynröst (from “röst,” a maelstrom, or whirlpool); whence,
again, the most southern promontory of the Shetland Islands has obtained
the name of Dunrossness (Dynrasternes). The Shetland archipelago (the
old Northern “Hjaltland,” “Hjatland,” or “Hetland”), like that of the
Orkneys, forms a long-extended line, but differs from it in consisting
principally of one large island, Mainland (“Meginland”), surrounded by a
great number of proportionately small and insignificant ones.
The most southern point of Dunrossness, on Mainland, forms the
promontory of Sumburg Head (“Sunnbœjar-höfði”), which, however, is of no
very great height; indeed the highest mountain in Shetland is only about
fifteen hundred feet above the sea. Although the Shetland Islands, with
regard to mountains, are not to be compared with the Faroe Isles, still
they exhibit a sort of transition from the flatter Orkneys to the
mountainous character of the Faroe group. Before the coasts of Shetland
stand many high and ragged rocks, called “stacks” (old Norsk, “stackr”).
The coasts themselves are steeper, and the mountains larger than in the
Orkneys. On the other hand, however, the valleys are both longer and
broader than the mountain valleys of the Faroe Islands. Heath and
moorland abound, whilst the corn-fields are small, and the corn harvest
in general very uncertain and difficult to gather. Fishing is the most
important source of profit for the inhabitants.
The Orkneys and the Shetland Isles were, as is well known, completely
colonized by Norwegians in the ninth and tenth centuries. They were,
however, known and inhabited much earlier. It is possible that the
Shetland Islands were the “ultima Thule” spoken of by Roman authors in
the first centuries after Christ; but it is certain that the Romans at
that time knew the Orkneys by the name of “Orcades:” whence it appears
that the primitive root _Ork_, in the later Norwegian name of the
islands, is very ancient, and probably of Celtic origin. Before the
arrival of the Norwegians, both the Orkneys and the Shetland Islands
seem to have been inhabited by the same Pictish or Celtic race that was
settled in the rest of Scotland. Of these older inhabitants memorials
still exist in different kinds of antiquities of stone and bronze that
are dug out of the earth, as well as in numerous ruins of castles, or
Pictish towers, originally built of flag-stones laid together, without
any cement of loam or mortar. There are also cairns and stone circles;
the most prominent amongst which are the “Stones of Stennis,” on each
side of Brogar Bridge, in Orkney. They are, like Stonehenge and Abury
circle in England, surrounded with ditches and ramparts of earth; and,
after Stonehenge, must be regarded as amongst the largest stone circles
in the British Islands. The immense masses of erect stones are
remarkable evidences both of the strength and of the religious
enthusiasm of the old Celtic inhabitants; and it is no wonder that they
made in ancient times such an impression on the Norwegians, on their
arrival at these islands, as to induce them to call the promontory on
which the largest circle stands “Steinsnes” (Stones-naze) and the
adjoining firth, “Steinsnesfjördr” (Stones-naze Firth, now Loch of
Stennis).
No sooner had the Scandinavian Vikings settled themselves, in the ninth
century, securely in these islands, than they became a central point for
the Northmen’s expeditions not only to the British Islands, but also to
Iceland and Greenland. Thus when Floke Vilgerdesön, or “Ravnefloke,”
went on a voyage of discovery from Norway to Iceland, he landed on
Hjaltland, or Shetland, in a bay which obtained from him the name of
“Flokavágr.” This bay must probably be sought on the east coast of
Mainland, about Cat Firth (Kattarfjörðr); for in its neighbourhood lay
the Loch of Girlsta (originally “Geirhildarstaðir”), which is said to
have obtained its name from the circumstance of Floke’s daughter,
Geirhilde, having been drowned in it during her father’s short visit to
the country. By degrees the islands became the rendezvous of a great
number of discontented Norwegian emigrants, who, to avoid the new order
of things, had withdrawn themselves from their old paternal home, and
from this distant place of refuge continually harassed the coasts of
Norway.
This induced King Harald Haarfager to undertake an expedition against
the Orkneys and the Shetland Isles, as well as against the Hebrides, on
the west coast of Scotland; all of which he succeeded in subjugating. He
gave the Orkneys and the Shetland Isles, as an earldom under the crown
of Norway, to Ragnvald Möre-Jarl’s family. This family produced some
great men, who extended their dominion over large tracts in the adjacent
kingdom of Scotland. The islands continued, however, to be the resort of
many malcontent and fugitive Norwegians. The renowned Ganger-Rolf, the
founder of the royal Norman house, is said to have dwelt a long time on
them before he undertook his expedition against Normandy. When King Erik
Blodöxe, Harald Haarfager’s son, was driven with his queen, the
atrocious Gunhilde, from Norway, he fled to Orkney, whence he carried
devastation far and wide. Subsequently he obtained a kingdom in
Northumberland; but, after his fall, his sons again sought the Orkneys;
where they remained till they succeeded in obtaining the kingly power in
Norway. Snorre Sturlesön states, that after the fall of this dominion,
Gunhilde again fled to Orkney, where her daughter, Ragnhilde, had
married a member of the Earl’s family. Ragnhilde trod entirely in her
mother’s footsteps by occasioning dissension, and even murder, in the
family of the Earl. Somewhat later the Orkneys were visited for a time
by Kalf Arnesön, so well known in the more ancient history of Norway,
who, at the battle of Stiklestad in 1030, was one of the chief leaders
of the peasant army against King Olaf, the saint. He came to the Orkneys
just in time to take part in a severely-contested naval battle, fought
in the year 1046, near Rödebjerg (Rauðabjörg) in Pentland Firth, between
the Jarls Thorfin and Ragnvald Brusesön. Kalf supported Thorfin with six
long ships, and thus decided the victory in his favour.
The older history of the islands exhibits an almost uninterrupted series
of bloody combats between members of the Norwegian Jarl’s family. This,
however, did not prevent them from making violent inroads on the coasts
of Scotland and Ireland. Long after the Vikings’ mode of life had ceased
in the Scandinavian North, it continued to be preserved in these
islands. This was not only owing to their remote situation, opposite
hostile coasts, and to their characteristic independence, but also to
the population having inherited the old Viking spirit, and carefully
preserved the ancient Norwegian institutions. As long as Norwegian jarls
ruled, Norwegian laws, customs, and habits, as well as the Norwegian
language, were absolutely paramount in the islands. The connections
which the jarls and other powerful leaders maintained with Scotch and
Irish chiefs, and which often resulted in intermarriages between their
families, do not seem to have had much effect on the Scandinavian
national character of these island colonists. It was not till the
beginning of the fourteenth century, when the male line of the old
Norwegian jarls had become extinct, and when the Scotch Lord Saint
Clair, who had married a daughter of Magnus, the last jarl, had obtained
possession of the earldom, that the ancient liberties, customs, and
manners of the inhabitants, began to be seriously threatened; nor did it
suffice to protect the islands against the progress of Scottish
influence, that they continued to be under the supreme authority of
Norway. When, at length, the Danish-Norwegian king, Christian the First,
on the occasion of the marriage between his daughter Margaret, and the
Scotch king, James the Third, in the year 1469, pledged to Scotland the
Orkneys and the Shetland Isles as part of Margaret’s dowry, the last tie
was severed that bound those countries to their Scandinavian friends.
The Scottish kings and their successors, who also ascended the English
throne, acknowledged indeed the right of the Danish-Norwegian kings to
redeem the islands; but they continually found subterfuges to prevent
its being exercised. The lawful claims of redemption, repeatedly urged
by Denmark in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were perfectly
fruitless. The islands were too important, and far too conveniently
situated with regard to Scotland, for Great Britain to give them up,
without being compelled by the last necessity. The undoubted right of
the Danish-Norwegian kings was forced to give way to the superior power
and political influence of the British sovereigns.
The conduct observed towards the Norwegian population of these islands
after their union with Scotland was quite as unjust as their separation
from Norway and Denmark, and assuredly far more revolting to all proper
feeling. A large part of the inhabitants had till then been in the free
possession of their lands as freeholders, or “udallers” (Odelsmænd), and
had likewise possessed their old Norwegian laws and privileges, which
should of course have been respected when the islands were pledged to
Scotland. But the Scotch nobles, who, partly as vassals, partly as royal
lessees, obtained the government of the islands, took care to destroy
all traces of the ancient liberties and Scandinavian characteristics of
the people. The resistance of the islanders was fruitless. In the year
1530 they took up arms under the command of their governor, Sir James
Sinclair, in order to oppose the appointment of a crown vassal over the
islands. The Earl of Caithness himself, who had been dispatched against
them, fell, with five hundred of his men, in a sanguinary action near
the “Stones of Stennis.” But though the islanders thus asserted their
rights for a short period, the Scotch regents soon afterwards succeeded
in establishing crown-vassals in the islands.
Among these vassals none has left behind him a more despised or hated
name than Earl Patrick Stuart, who from 1595 to 1608, or about thirteen
years, oppressed the islands in the most shameful manner. He violently
deprived the holders of allodial farms of their right of possession, and
converted almost all the freeholders into leaseholders. He arbitrarily
changed the weights and measures, so that the taxes and imposts became
intolerable. Law and justice were not to be procured, for the Earl’s
creatures everywhere occupied the judgment-seats. To appeal to Scotland
was no easy matter, as Lord Patrick’s soldiers guarded all the ferries.
In the Orkneys the Earl compelled the people to build him a strong
fortress at Kirkwall, and in Shetland another at Scalloway; from which
places armed men ranged over the country, to punish and overawe the
malcontents. The ruins of these castles form a still-existing memorial
of “the wicked Earl Patrick,” who, for his tyranny, was at length
recalled to Scotland, accused of high treason, and beheaded.
The Scottish kings, it is true, now promised the islanders that they
should have relief in their need, and that no vassal of the crown should
be placed over them. But this promise was not kept; and so far from the
islanders again recovering their lost freedom, the feudal system of
England and Scotland continued to take firmer root in the islands.
Oppression stalked on with regular and steady step until it arrived at
such a pitch that not only did the Norwegian laws and liberties
disappear, but the islands themselves, with some few exceptions, became
the private property of a few individuals. The successors of the mighty
Vikings, descended from kings and jarls of Norway and the North, who in
winter dwelt as chiefs, or at least as freemen, in roomy mansions,
whilst in the summer they gained glory and booty in their long ships,
are now in general obliged to content themselves with inhabiting as
leaseholders, or rather as annual tenants, a poor cottage on a small
piece of land, where, by hard labour, they are able to gain, at best, a
very frugal subsistence. Their dwellings, particularly in Shetland, are
of the most wretched description. The walls are formed of small unhewn
stones, with turf and sea-weed thrust into the interstices, and, instead
of a chimney, the smoke escapes by a hole in the roof. Within the house
there are generally sleeping-places in the thick stone wall; but men and
cattle live together in friendly harmony in the same apartment. The fire
burns freely on the floor, and envelopes all in a dense smoke. If the
people seek their living on the sea by fishing, it is usually in boats
belonging to the proprietor of the estate, who consequently receives a
large share of their profits. The condition of the common people in the
Orkneys, and in the Shetland Isles, is certainly not at all enviable,
even in comparison with that of their Scandinavian kinsmen on the poor
and more remote Faroe Islands and Iceland; although commerce is still
limited and oppressed there by a monopoly which was soon abolished in
the Orkneys and Shetland Isles after their separation from the united
Norwegian-Danish kingdoms. But in spite of all their calamities, the
inhabitants of the Faroe Isles and Iceland have for the most part
preserved to our times that freedom of landed property which they
inherited from their forefathers.
----------
SECTION VI.
Shetland.—The People.—Songs.—Sword-Dance.—Language.—Names
of Places.—Tingwall.—Burg of Mousa.—Tumuli.—Bauta Stones.[9]
Footnote 9:
Partly from S. Hibbert, P. A. Munch, and Chr. Plöyen.
If the present originally Norwegian population in the Orkneys and
Shetland Islands possessed, on the whole, any strongly-marked
Scandinavian characteristics, they would naturally occur most in the
islands farthest towards the north. But the oppressions and political
changes that have occurred there have done their work so thoroughly,
that even the Shetlanders no longer bear in their character and natural
disposition any strongly-marked feature of their Norwegian origin. The
only ones remaining are, perhaps, their love of the sea, and their skill
in contending with its dangers. Even their bodily frame has, through
many years of want and debasement, lost much of its strength and
nobleness. In the parish of Coningsburgh, in Mainland, precisely where
the largest and strongest-built people are to be found, the Scandinavian
population are said to have kept themselves most free from mixture. The
inclination for disputes and fighting amongst the people of Coningsburgh
is well known in Shetland. This trait is, at all events, more
Scandinavian than moroseness and want of hospitality to strangers, which
are almost unknown in the North, but which in the last century were
alleged to be vices of these same men of Coningsburgh. It was said that
they would not willingly give a traveller a night’s lodging, and that
directly at day-break they awoke him, saying:—“_Myrkin i livra; lurein i
liunga; timin i guestin i geungna_;” that is, “It is dark in the
smoke-hole, but it is light on the heath, and for the guest it is now
time to depart.” That this sentence, which was written down in the year
1774, consists of old Norwegian words, though in a corrupted form, is
quite evident.
The Shetlanders still retained, in the last century, many of the customs
of their Scandinavian forefathers. Thus surnames were given both to sons
and daughters, according to the genuine Scandinavian custom, from the
father’s Christian name. The eldest son, for instance, of Magnus
Anderson was called Anders Magnuson, and all the other sons had likewise
the surname of Magnuson; whilst the daughters, in like manner, were all
called Magnus-daughter, of course with different Christian names. Even
the Norwegian language is said to have been spoken at that time by some
few old persons in the most remote islands. The traditions and songs
handed down by their forefathers still lived among the people, whose
poets and poetical feeling have been celebrated from the earliest times.
It was customary to revive the memory of former days by festal
assemblies, in which the youth of both sexes danced to songs (“Visecks”)
and ballads, as they did in ancient times throughout the North, and as
is still the custom in the Faroe Isles. At Yule time (Christmas), which
was the chief festival, and the beginning of which was always announced
at daybreak by playing an ancient Norwegian melody, called “the
day-dawn” (_Dan._, Daggry), all kinds of merriment took place. A
favourite amusement was the so-called sword-dance, the origin of which
may be traced with sufficient certainty to the times of the heathens.
The Vikings were frequently very dexterous in playing with naked swords,
throwing several at once into the air without allowing them to fall to
the ground. This practice was easily converted into a dance, performed
by several men with drawn swords; and consisting of many windings and
figures calculated to develope a dexterous agility, which, in those
warlike times, must naturally have excited a lively interest among the
spectators. Later in the middle ages the sword-dance in the Shetland
Isles lost by degrees the wildness of its character, the number of
dancers being limited to seven, representing the Seven Champions of
Christendom, viz., St. James of Spain, St. Denis of France, St. Anthony
of Italy, St. David of Wales, St. Patrick of Ireland, St. Andrew of
Scotland, all under the command of St. George of England, who both
opened and closed the dance by reciting some English verses appropriate
to the occasion.
All this, however, is now much changed. In the farthest island towards
the west, that of Papa stour (“Papey stœrri,” the great Pap Island, in
contradistinction to the neighbouring Papa little, “Papey litla”), a
last shadow of the old warlike sword-dance is occasionally to be seen.
Instead, however, of being clothed in armour or shirts of mail, the
dancing knights have shirts of sackcloth; and, in place of huge swords,
they brandish straightened iron hoops, stripped from some herring-cask.
The old Norwegian songs are no longer heard. Of the ancient Norwegian
popular language the only remains are partly a few words, which,
however, appear conspicuously in the English dialect now used; and
partly a peculiarly sharp pronunciation, with a considerable rising and
sinking of the voice, not unlike the vulgar pronunciation in the Faroe
Isles. The old Norwegian words are particularly employed for certain
objects and implements which have been in use from time immemorial.
Thus, for instance, the hole through which the smoke escapes (_Dan._,
Lyre) in the roof of houses covered with flat turf (flaas) is sometimes
still called by the name of “livra” (in the Færoic language “ljowari”).
The high seat for the mistress of the house is called, in remote
districts, “hoy-saede” (_Dan._, Höisæde); her “bysmer,” which serves her
for weighing, exactly agrees, both in name and nature, with the “Bismer”
common in the North. The hand-mill, which is fast disappearing, is
called as in the Danish part of north England, “qvern.” The turf-spade,
called in the Faroe Isles “torvskjæri” (_Dan._, Törveskjærer), is here
named “tuysker.” The land-tax also, according to Scandinavian fashion,
is paid in “merk” and “ure” (Mark and Öre). The outlying fields are
called “hogan,” “hagan” (_Old Norsk_, “hagi,” an inclosed field). The
deep-sea fishery (_Dan._, Hav) is called “the haaf;” the fishing itself,
“haaf-fishing” (_Dan._, Havfiskerie); and the necessary lines, “tows”
(_Dan._, Touge). To the present day the Shetlanders use, in these
fisheries, boats imported from Norway, which are peculiarly suited, by
their construction, for the high seas and rapid currents on the coasts
of Shetland. The dress worn by the fishermen when out at sea bears a
striking resemblance to that of the Faroe men. The head is covered with
a cap knit in the form of a night-cap, and ornamented with the most
motley colours. They wear a coat of tanned sheep-skin, reaching down to
the knees, where it generally meets a pair of huge and capacious skin
boots, very carefully sewed. On land the Shetlanders use only a simple
kind of shoe called “rivlins,” consisting of a square piece of untanned
cow-hide, covering little more than the sole of the foot, and fastened
with a fishing-line or a strip of skin. The men of Faroe have similar
shoes, called “skegvar,” which, however, are far better made.
But what particularly reminds the Scandinavian traveller in Shetland of
finding himself in a country formerly altogether Norwegian, is the names
of places, all of which bear the impress of their Norwegian origin. This
remark applies to the names of the islands themselves, as well as to the
names of towns, farms, promontories, and bays existing in them. They, of
course, resemble, in a great degree, the old Scandinavian names of
places farther south, in Scotland and England. Thus, for instance, a
fiord is generally called “firth” (fjorðr); a creek “wick” (_Dan._,
Vig); a holm, or small island, “holm;” a promontory, or naze, “ness;” a
valley, “daill,” or “dale.” But it is peculiar to these districts, that
the forms of names of places which occur most frequently in the old
Danish part of the north of England, namely, those ending in _by_,
_thwaite_, and _thorpe_, are extremely rare in Shetland, and in the rest
of the old Norwegian possessions in Scotland. Of those in _by_, only a
few instances are to be found; those in _thwaite_ are still more rare;
and those in _thorpe_ are not to be met with at all. On the other hand,
these districts possess several Scandinavian names of places which are
also most frequently found in the old Norwegian colonies in the north
and west of Scotland, but which are perfectly unknown in the old Danish
part of the north of England. For instance, a small bay (_Dan._, Vaag)
is called “voe” (vágr); whence, on Mainland, we find “West-voe,” “Aiths
voe” (the bay by the tongue of land), “Lax-voe” (Lax, or Salmon-bay),
“Selia-voe” (sildavágr, the “Silde Vaag,” or herring-bay), “Hamna-voe”
(hafnarvágr, the Havne Vaag, or harbour bay), together with others. A
still smaller bay, navigable only by boats, is called “gjo,” or “goe”
(_Old Norsk_, gjá, an opening or cleft). For the rest, many farms have
names with such endings as _seter_ (Old Norsk, _setr_), _ster_ and _sta_
(Old Norsk, _staðr_, a place); and also _busta_, _buster_, and _bister_
(contracted from “bolstaðr,” a dwelling-place); whence, for instance,
Kirkbuster (formerly Kirkjubólstaðr); all of which names agree just as
well with those found in the Faroe Isles, Iceland, and the
mother-country, Norway, as the names of places in the north of England
ending in _by_, _thwaite_, and _thorpe_, agree with those in the
corresponding mother-country, Denmark. Although the difference between
the present traces of Danish colonization in England, and of Norwegian
in Scotland, is not considerable, still it may be recognised in this
manner. In consequence of the remote situation of the Shetland Isles,
the names of places, in spite of all revolutions, remain so much the
same, that the old political and religious institutions of the islands
are visible, as it were, through them. In the south part of Mainland
lies the farm of Howff, where in ancient times there was certainly a
“Hof,” or house of God; and far northwards, near Hillswick (formerly
Hildiswik), is the promontory of Torness (Þórsness), which probably once
had a Hof for the god Thor. Nor far from thence is the Lake Helgawater
(Helgavatn), or the holy water. Heathenism, however, lasted but a short
time in the islands. The Irish Christian priests (_Old N._, “Paper”)—the
memory of whom still lives in the names of the islands Papa (Papey), as
Papa stour (great) and Papa little—seem to have worked indefatigably;
insomuch that the Norwegian king Olaf Tryggvesön was able, at the close
of the tenth century, to introduce Christianity throughout the islands.
In place of the old god-houses there speedily arose a number of chapels
or small churches, consecrated to different saints: viz., to the
Norwegian saints, St. Sunifva (the daughter of an Irish king who
suffered shipwreck in Norway), St. Olaf, as well as, at a somewhat later
time, to St. Magnus, the patron saint of the Orkneys, after whom a great
bay on the north-west coast of Mainland is to the present day called St.
Magnus’ Bay. St. Magnus seems also to have been the patron, or rather
the chief saint, of Shetland; at least, the principal church in Shetland
is consecrated to him. This church did not stand in Lerwick, the present
chief town in Shetland, which has risen far later in the south-eastern
part of Mainland, on the site of an old sea-side town near Bressasound
(formerly “Breiðeyjarsund”). It lay about four miles to the north-west
of Lerwick, in the parish of Tingwall; where, as the name (Þingavöllr)
denotes, the chief _Thing_ of the islands was held for centuries, and
where, in heathen times, the chief place of sacrifice undoubtedly
existed. The parish of Tingwall comprises one of the prettiest and
best-cultivated valleys in Shetland. The old _Thing_ place is still to
be seen near the church, in a small holm, or island, in a lake,
connected with the land by a row of large stepping stones. Secure
against a sudden attack, here sat, when the island was free, the “foude”
(_Dan._, Foged), or magistrate, with his law-officers, whilst the
multitude of the common people stood round about on the shores of the
lake, and listened to what passed. Popular tradition says that the
church was at that time a free place, or sanctuary, so that a person
condemned to death was entitled to a pardon, if he could succeed in
running from the holm over the stones, and reaching the church without
being killed by the people. If this was really the case the commonalty
must consequently have had power to pardon a convicted person by
suffering him to escape into the church.
During the holding of the chief _Thing_, which in the olden times was
generally accompanied with great sacrificial offerings, as well as with
fairs and all sorts of merry-making, a multitude of persons always
assembled, and a great many tents and booths were erected, both at the
_Thing_ place itself and in the immediate vicinity. Hence it undoubtedly
arose that about three miles to the west of Tingwall, near a bay of the
sea, there was a collection of _Skaaler_, or wooden booths; whence the
present Scalloway (Skálavágr) which, next to Lerwick, is the most
important trading place in the islands.
In Mainland alone there were at least seven lesser _Things_, under the
jurisdiction of the chief _Thing_ in Tingwall. The names of five of
these are still preserved in Sandsthing (Sandsþing), Aithsthing
(Eiðsþing), Delting (Dalaþing), Lunziesting (Lundeiðisþing), and Nesting
(Nesþing); but the two other names, which are known from records,
Rauðarþing—probably the most northern parish, Northmavine—and Þveitaþing
(the most southern parish?), have disappeared. Special _Things_ were, of
course, also held on the larger islands, such as Yell (“Jali”) and Unst
(“Aumstr,” “Örmst”); but it is certainly very incorrect to infer, as
many persons do, from some stone circles near Baliasta, close by Unst,
that the chief _Thing_ of the islands was held there in the most ancient
times of heathenism.
These stone circles belong simply to low graves encircled by stones,
like those so frequently found in Norway, and whose date is of the
latest period of heathenism, or what is called the iron age. Skeletons
have been found in several similar graves in Shetland; and at different
times urns containing burnt bones and ashes have also been discovered,
together with other distinct traces of their having been burial-places.
For the rest, barrows or tumuli, bauta stones, runic inscriptions, and
similar monuments and antiquities of the heathen times, are by no means
frequently to be met with; the reason of which must naturally be sought
in the short duration of heathenism in these islands. The remains of
only a single insignificant runic stone, and that of the Christian æra,
have been discovered near Crosskirk, in the north of Mainland. The
numerous round towers, or castles, of loose flag-stones laid together,
which are often built on islands in lakes, and are called by many
“Danish burghs,” are, as before stated, of Pictish or Celtic origin.
They have no resemblance whatever to the old fortresses in the
Scandinavian North; whilst, on the other hand, buildings entirely
corresponding with them are to be found in the Celtic Highlands of
Scotland, and on the coasts of Ireland. The most that can be said is
that the Norwegians availed themselves of these buildings after their
conquests and settlements in these districts. Thus the remains of a
tower are to be seen on a holm in Burra Firth (Borgarfjörðr, or
Borgfjord, _i.e._ Castle fiord), in the west of Mainland, which may have
been inhabited in the beginning of the twelfth century by the chief
Thorbjörn, whom the Earls Magnus and Hakon attacked and killed in
“Borgarfjörðr.” The ground plan of the ruin (after Hibbert) shows how
the chambers were disposed in the thick stone wall.
[Illustration: [++] Tower: Burra Firth]
Another ancient Celtic tower, which tradition decidedly states to have
been occupied by Norwegians, and which, on that account, has a
particular interest for a Scandinavian, lies on the little island of
Mousa (the ancient “Mösey”), close to the sound that separates the
island from the south-eastern coast of Mainland. The tower is,
fortunately, the best preserved one of the kind in the British Islands.
It rises to the height of between forty and fifty feet, like an immense
and perfectly round stone pillar, but bulging out towards the middle.
Its appearance from without is quite plain, and no other opening can be
perceived in the wall than the entrance-door, which even originally was
so low that it was necessary to creep through it. To attack the tower,
even when the door stood open, was not easy, and the bulging of the wall
in the middle rendered the scaling of it almost impossible. The entire
tower is about fifty feet in diameter, and consists of two concentric
stone walls, the innermost of which encloses an open space of about
twenty feet wide. The two concentric walls are each five feet thick, and
stand at a distance of five feet from each other. The small space
between them formed the habitable part of the tower. From the open yard
we ascend a stone staircase, and, before we reach the top, seven
divisions or stories are passed, separated by large flag-stones, which
form a ceiling for one story and a floor for the next. In the different
compartments, which quite encircle the tower, are small square openings,
or air holes, one above the other, and looking out into the inner yard.
The annexed drawings and sections (taken from Hibbert’s description of
Shetland), which represent the tower in its evidently original state,
will serve to explain still more clearly the nature of this simple, yet
remarkable, building.
[Illustration: [++] Tower: Mousa]
[Illustration: [++] Tower: Mousa - Interior]
This tower appears to have stood deserted as early as the tenth century.
Whilst Harald Haarfager reigned in Norway, a distinguished Norwegian
Viking and merchant, Björn Brynjulfsön, carried off his beloved Thora
Roaldsdatter (Roalds-daughter) from the fiords. He brought her first to
his father’s house; but, as his father would not permit him to celebrate
his marriage there, he fled with her in the spring, on board his ship,
and sailed westwards. After suffering much from storms and heavy seas,
the couple landed at last on Mösey, and took up their temporary abode in
the castle there, whither they brought the whole of the ship’s cargo. In
“Möseyjarborg,” Björn celebrated his marriage with Thora, and dwelt
there through the winter. But next spring he learned that King Harald,
at the entreaty of Thora’s friends, had exiled him from Norway; and that
commands had even been sent by Harald to the jarls and chiefs in the
Orkneys, the Hebrides, and in Ireland, to put him to death. He therefore
again put to sea, and landed safely with his Thora in Iceland.
A few centuries later, the chief Erlend Junge fled from the Orkneys with
Margaret, mother of the Jarl Harald Maddadsön, who was as much
celebrated for her beauty as for her wantonness, and shut himself up
with her in “Möseyjarborg.” The Jarl Harald, who had opposed their
marriage, set out in pursuit of them, and blockaded the castle for a
long time, in order, if possible, to cut off their supply of provisions,
and thus compel them to surrender; for, by force, says the Saga, the
castle could scarcely be taken. But Harald at last became weary of the
siege, and concluded an agreement with Erlend that he should have
Margaret to wife on condition of swearing fealty to him as jarl.
This old and venerable tower has, therefore, not only been the scene of
sanguinary battles and deeds of cruelty, but its strong walls have also
afforded a secure asylum to sincere and all-sacrificing love.
----------
SECTION VII
The Orkneys.—“Þingavöllr.”—Monuments of the Olden Time.—Kirkwall.—St.
Magnus Church.
The Orkneys, on account of their greater fertility, and of their lying
nearer to Scotland, were in ancient times, as indeed they are at
present, of much more importance than the distant Shetland Isles. As the
chief seat of the Norwegian jarls, they formed the central point of the
Norwegian power in the north of Scotland. According to the Sagas, most
of the many Danes and Norwegians who settled on the islands to the north
of Scotland, resorted to the Orkneys; by which means, the jarls who
governed them were enabled easily to assemble large fleets, and to man
them with picked Scandinavian warriors. It was chiefly, therefore,
Norwegians from the Orkneys, who, under the command of the jarls of
Orkney, made such extensive conquests in the territories of the Scottish
kings.
Jarl Sigurd the Stout (_Dan._, Digre), who, as before mentioned, was
married to a daughter of the Scotch king, Malcolm the Second, and Jarl
Thorfin, his son by King Malcolm’s daughter, pre-eminently distinguished
themselves by bold Viking expeditions into the neighbouring countries,
and particularly by their conquests on the Scotch coast. They extended
these as far south as Moray; nay it is even said that at times they went
as low as to the Firth of Forth. Thorfin was the last of the jarls of
Orkney in whom the old Scandinavian Vikings’ spirit lived and stirred.
His power was greater than that of any of his predecessors or
successors; for he ruled, say the Sagas, over no fewer than eleven
earldoms (Jarledömmer) in Scotland, over all the Hebrides, and a large
kingdom in Ireland. But after the many warlike expeditions, raids, and
incendiarisms, in which he had played a part, he at length became
penitent, and undertook a journey through Denmark and Saxony to Rome,
where the pope gave him an indulgence for his sins. After his return, he
governed his kingdom peacefully till his death, which took place about
the year 1064. Notwithstanding that a new and Christian æra had
irresistibly established itself under this fierce Viking, the Orkneys
continued for more than a century after his death to foster men who were
Christians only in name, but in reality, both in their way of thinking
and conduct, were heathen Vikings. Svend Asleifsön, who, in the middle
of the twelfth century, lived on the little island of Gairsay
(Gareksey), close to the north-east side of Mainland, occupies a
prominent place among these Vikings. He was surrounded by a band of
eighty men, with whom in the winter he remained at home in his mansion,
living well on the booty that had been won. In the spring, after
seed-time, he set out with them on expeditions to the Scotch, English,
and Irish coasts. In the autumn he returned home for a short time, in
order to gather the corn into his barns; and then again set out and
harried the before-mentioned countries until the beginning of winter. On
one of these autumnal Viking expeditions he even took Dublin; but whilst
he fancied himself secure, the inhabitants suddenly fell upon and killed
him, together with a great number of his men, who defended themselves
with the utmost bravery.
In consequence of these important Viking expeditions, as well as of the
greater life and bustle which prevailed in the Orkneys, not only are
more historical accounts preserved of them than of the Shetland Isles,
but they likewise exhibit more conspicuously how the warlike spirit of
the Scandinavian population, when it began to be curbed by Christianity
and the abandonment of piratical expeditions, preyed upon itself, and
exhausted its strength in sanguinary internal conflicts. Memorials of
this are found on almost all the islands. In going from Shetland, the
first island made after passing Fairhill, and when approaching the
proper group of the Orkneys, namely, North Ronaldshay (“Rinansey”), was
the scene of a terrible revenge taken by Jarl Einar on King Harald
Haarfager’s son, Halfdan Haaleg (Long-legs), who had murdered Einar’s
father, Ragnvald Mörejarl, in Norway. Jarl Einar is said to have avenged
his father in the same manner as, according to the Saga, the sons of
Regner Lodbrog punished their father’s murderer, King Ella of
Northumberland; namely, by cutting a blood eagle on Halfdan’s back. At
Lopnes (“Laupandaness”), in the neighbouring island of Sanday
(“Sandey”), Jarl Einar Sigurdsön was killed in the following century
(the eleventh) by Thorkel Fostre, so called because he had brought up,
or fostered, Einar’s brother, subsequently the famed Thorfin Jarl. Not
long afterwards, Thorfin’s nephew, Jarl Ragnvald Brusesön, was killed by
the same Thorkel on Little Papa Island (“Papey”), to the north-west of
Sanday. Thorkel and Thorfin had previously surrounded and set fire to
the house, wherein the jarl was with his men. The jarl’s corpse was then
conveyed to and buried on the neighbouring isle of Papa Westray (“Papey
hin meiri,” the Great Pap Island), adjacent to Westray (“Vestrey”) and
the most northern of all the Orkneys. Thorkel Fletter, surnamed the
restless, was burnt in his house in Eday (“Eiðey”), in the twelfth
century; and in the year 1137 the Jarl Paal was surprised by Svend
Asleifsön on Rowsay (“Rolfsey”), and carried away prisoner to Athol, in
Scotland. About twenty years previously (1110) the celebrated jarl,
Magnus Erlendsön, was attacked and murdered by his kinsman, Jarl Hakon
Paalsön, on the adjacent island of Egilshay, (“Egilsey”). In honour of
Magnus, who was afterwards canonized, and became the patron saint of the
Orkneys, a church was built on Egilshay, which still exists, though in a
somewhat altered form.
Between the last-named islands and Mainland are the small isles Enhallow
(“Eyin helga,” the holy isle) and Wire (“Vigr”). On the latter Kolbein
Ruga had, in the twelfth century, a castle, the site of whose ramparts
can still be clearly distinguished. But Mainland itself is naturally the
island with which the most numerous and remarkable memorials of the
Norwegian dominion are associated. For centuries numberless Vikings’
fleets constantly rode at anchor in its bays and in the adjacent
straits; and almost every spot on the island is famous in the Orkneyinga
Saga as having been the residence of some distinguished man, or the
scene of some important historical event. The numerous Norwegian names
of places ending in _wall_ (vágr), _wick_, _firth_, _ness_, _buster_,
_toft_, _holm_, and so forth, which are everywhere met with in the
island, do not, however, merit particular consideration, since they
resemble those in the rest of the Orkneys and Shetland Isles; yet they
serve to establish that the Norwegians must have superseded here, no
less than in the other islands, the older Celtic population. We soon
discover that the vicinity of the Orkneys to Scotland, and their brisk
intercourse with that kingdom, as well as with England, have
contributed, both in Mainland and in the surrounding islands, to do away
with many of those names of places which are still found in Shetland as
witnesses of the old Norwegian judicial institutions. Thus we should
look in vain in Mainland for that “Þingavöllr,” or Tingvalla, which
anciently was the chief _Thing_ place of the island, as is expressly
mentioned in old records. We should be just as unsuccessful in finding
traces of the lesser _Things_, which, in Shetland, as we have seen, can
almost all be still pointed out in the names of places; and this
notwithstanding we know for a certainty that the Orkneys had a court of
justice in common with Shetland, till the year 1196 at least; from which
time Shetland was governed by its own laws. The same powerful Scottish
influence has likewise effaced in the Orkneys most of the few Norwegian
words, customs, and manners which still sustain a feeble existence in
the remote islands of Shetland. The Norwegian language, some vestiges of
which might be traced, in the last century, in the parish of Haray
(Herað), has left behind it only a peculiar singing pronunciation, and
some few characteristics in the English language now in use there; thus,
for instance, in addressing a person, the nominative and accusative
_thou_ and _thee_ are used, instead of _you_. The present language of
the Orkneys is almost a purer English than that of the Scotch Lowlands;
which is a natural consequence of English having begun at a later period
to be the ruling language in the islands. The present population of
Mainland, together with the other inhabitants of the Orkneys, has
undeniably preserved a certain Scandinavian appearance; and English
civilization has, among other things, both sharpened the people’s innate
inclination for a maritime life, and increased their coolness towards,
not to say ill-will and contempt for, the Gaelic Highlanders. On the
whole, however, Scandinavian characteristics are by no means conspicuous
among the people. English civilization, and Scotch-English institutions,
have been introduced to such a degree into Mainland, and thence into the
other islands, that a traveller would not know he was in the chief
country of the former mighty Norwegian jarls, unless he were able to
decipher the frequently transformed names of places; or, above all,
unless he had such a general knowledge of the island’s history and
antiquities that he could apprehend, and in some degree interpret, the
hints given by silent monuments of the brilliant but long-departed age
of heroes.
The memory of the warlike life of heathenism is conspicuously preserved
in Mainland by the many large barrows, or tumuli, which meet the eye on
all sides. It is, indeed, certain that several of these—viz., what are
called the “Picts’ houses,” which form in their interior stone chambers,
covered by small flag-stones laid over one another—must be ascribed to
the older inhabitants of the island; yet enough remain which we may with
good reason attribute to the Norwegians and Danes. They are not, like
those tumuli, or “cairns,” which are found most frequently in the north
of Scotland, a mass of small stones heaped together without any
filling-in of earth, but are formed, like our Scandinavian barrows, of
earth thrown up to a very considerable height. As in Scandinavia, they
are met with mostly on hills, and near the firths or seacoasts, whence
there is an uninterrupted view of the sea. To the ancient Northman it
was evidently an almost insufferable thought to be buried in a confined
or remote corner, where nobody could see his grave or be reminded of his
deeds. The greater chief a man was the more did he desire that his
“barrow” should lie high and uninclosed, so that it might be visible to
all who travelled by land and by sea. United with this desire to live in
the memory of posterity, the Viking certainly also indulged the secret
belief, that his spirit, or ghost, would at times arise from the barrow
to look out upon that beloved sea, and to refresh itself, after the
gloomy closeness of the grave, with the cool breezes which play upon its
bosom.
Some of the largest and most prominent barrows in the Orkneys are found
about the middle of Mainland. To the west of the deep fiord in the
middle of the east coast, (formerly Örreðfjord “Aurriaðfjördr,” _i. e._
Trout firth, but now called Firth), and cutting its way northwards far
into the land, is the before-mentioned Loch of Stennis, with its famous
old Celtic stone circles. But the largest of these, which lies on the
ridge of a naze, or promontory (from Old N. “Steinsness”), is
encompassed by twelve considerable, and partly perhaps Norwegian or
Scandinavian, barrows; amongst which two in particular, to the
north-east and north-west of the circle, are distinguished by their size
and circumference. As the Saga informs us that it was on Steinsnæs that
the chief, Einard Klining, at the instigation of Erik Blodöxe’s
daughter, Ragnhilde, killed her husband Jarl Haavard, it is not
impossible that one of the last-named large barrows may be the jarl’s
grave. At all events it is natural enough that the Norwegians should
have had a predilection for being buried on that lofty promontory, which
was regarded even by the earlier inhabitants of the island as a holy
place, and had been adorned by them with a truly imposing circle of
immense blocks of stone. Future excavations will doubtless more clearly
show which of the barrows are really Norwegian; but this much is
certain—that the naze, with the circle of stones and the surrounding
barrows, as well as the view of the three immense monumental stones,
placed erect in a semicircle on the opposite side of Loch Stennis,
afford a prospect not only interesting to the antiquarian, but which
must strike every beholder.