II. Early Christianity of the Islands.
It is probable that both the island groups of Orkney and Shetland were visited at a very early period by wandering clerics of the Irish Church, whose missionary efforts contributed so much to the diffusion of Christianity in Scotland. But we have no record of an earlier visitation than that of the companions of St. Columba, although there are indications that between that time and the colonisation of the islands by the heathen Northmen, these Irish clerics were no strangers in any of the island groups.
The Irish monk Dicuil, who wrote his treatise “De Mensura Orbis Terrarum” in or about the year 825, states that “thirty years before that time some clerics had told him that they had lived in an island which they supposed to be Thule, where at the summer solstice the sun only hid himself behind a little hill for a short time during the night, which was quite light; and that a day’s sail towards the north would bring them from thence into the frozen sea.” This island is obviously Iceland. He then states that there are many other islands in the northern British sea, which lie at the distance of two days and two nights from the northern islands of Britain, in a straight course, and with a fair wind and a full sail. “One of these,” he says, “a certain honest monk told me he had visited one summer after sailing a day, a night, and another day, in a two-benched boat.” These appear to be the Shetland Islands. Dicuil further states that “there are also some other small islands, almost all divided from each other by narrow sounds, inhabited for about a century by hermits proceeding from our Scotia;[[4]] but as they had been deserted since the beginning of the world, so are they now abandoned by these anchorites on account of the Northern robbers; but they are full of countless sheep, and swarm with sea-fowl of various kinds. We have not seen these islands mentioned in the works of any author.” Here the reference to the “small isles separated by narrow sounds” is distinctive of the Faroes, of which the long narrow sounds are the peculiar physical feature; while the statement that they are full of countless sheep, taken in connection with the fact that the Northmen named them “Sheep-isles” (Fær-eyiar), establishes the identity of the group which Dicuil describes. The Faroes were colonised by “the Northern robbers,” led by Grim Kamban, in 825, the very year in which Dicuil was writing.
The first Norwegian settlement was made in Iceland in 875, by Leif and Ingulf, who carried with them a number of Irish captives; and the Landnamabók states that “before Iceland was colonised from Norway, men were living there whom the Northmen called Papas; they were Christians, and it is thought they came over the sea from the west, for after them were found Irish books, and bells, and crosiers, and other things, so that one could see that they were Westmen: these things were found in Papey, eastwards, and in Papyli.” Again, in the Islendingabók of Ari Frodi the same reason is assigned for the departure of the monks as is given by Dicuil. Ari Frodi also says, speaking of Iceland:—“Christian men were here then called by the Northmen Papa, but afterwards they went their way, for they would not remain in company with heathens; and they left behind them Irish books, and bells, and pastoral staves, so that it was clear that they were Irishmen.”
Thus by the concurrent testimony of Adamnan, the biographer of St. Columba, himself an abbot of the monastery of Hy; of the Irish monk Dicuil, writing during the lifetime of the men who had fled from the Northern robbers; and lastly, of the Icelandic historians themselves—it is established that the whole of the northern islands were visited by Christian teachers, and probably, in part at least, converted to the Christian faith, before they were overrun by the Norwegian invaders, and the new faith swallowed up in the rising tide of heathenism thrown upon their shores from the land of Odin and the Aser.
In the absence of all record we cannot expect to ascertain to what extent these early missionary settlements had succeeded in leavening the Celtic population of the islands of Orkney and Shetland with the Christian faith. But it seems probable that during the three centuries that intervened between the coming of Cormac in his coracle and the arrival of Harald Harfagri with his fleet of war galleys, the new faith had been firmly established and widely extended both in the northern mainland of Scotland and in the remoter isles.
The indications which point to a Christian occupation of the isle, of no inconsiderable extent and continuance, previous to their occupation by the Norsemen, are:—The dedications of the early ecclesiastical foundations; the occurrence of monumental stones sculptured in the style peculiar to the earliest Christian monuments of the mainland of Scotland, and bearing inscriptions in the Ogham character; the finding (as at Saverough and Burrian) of ecclesiastical bells of the square-sided form, peculiar to the early ages of the Church; and the occurrence in the Norse topography of the islands of place-names indicative of the previous settlement of Celtic Christian priests.
SQUARE-SIDED BELL FOUND AT SAVEROUGH, ORKNEY.
The earliest dedications were probably those to St. Ninian and St. Columba, St. Brigid, and St. Tredwell. It may be significant that in the south parish of South Ronaldsay, where in all probability the companions of St. Columba would make their first landing in Orkney, there were no fewer than three chapels dedicated to him.[[5]]
The sculptured monuments furnish us with three collateral lines of inference, tending to the same conclusion. These inferences are derived from the inscriptions, the ornamentation, and the symbols of the monuments.
Two of these monuments bear inscriptions in the Ogham character, a style of cryptographic writing characteristic of the early inscribed stone monuments of Ireland, but occurring also in Cornwall, in Wales, and in Scotland. One of these two was found near the ancient church of Culbinsbrugh, in the island of Bressay in Shetland. It is a slab of chlorite slate, 4 feet in length, about 16 inches wide at the top, tapering to a little less than a foot at the bottom, and about 1¾ inch thick. It is sculptured on both sides in low relief, and the inscription is incised on the edges of the stone. On one of its sculptured faces it bears the Christian emblem of the cross, and among the figures sculptured on it are those of two ecclesiastics with pastoral staves (see [Plates]). The other inscribed stone was found by Dr. William Traill in the Pictish Tower or “Broch” of Burrian, in North Ronaldsay in Orkney. The inscription scratched on it has not yet been deciphered. It also bears the Christian emblem of the cross. The association of the cross with these Ogham inscriptions[[6]] points to a period anterior to the Norse occupation of the islands.
THE BRESSAY STONE.
Showing one side and Ogham inscription on edge.
THE BRESSAY STONE.
Showing the other side and Ogham inscription on edge.
In examining the characteristics of the art of these monumental stones, we are guided to similar conclusions. The Bressay stone bears none of the symbols peculiar to the Scottish monuments, and in its artistic features it comes nearer to some of the Irish than to the general style of the Scottish sculptures. It is sculptured in low relief, while all the Orkney examples are merely incised. But some of the forms of their ornamentation are also characteristic of the art of the illuminated Irish manuscripts of the 7th and 8th centuries, and others are equally characteristic of the art of the bronzes of what has been styled the late Celtic period.
The Scottish sculptured monuments scattered over the territory ranging from the Forth to the Orkneys are characterised by a peculiar set of symbols of unknown significance, which are often associated with the Christian emblem of the cross.[[7]] The symbol which is of most frequent occurrence, and which may therefore be said to be the most characteristic of the period of the monuments, is a crescent conjoined with what has been called a double sceptre, as represented in the first figure of the accompanying Plate.
SYMBOLS ON THE SCULPTURED STONES OF SCOTLAND.
This characteristic symbol occurs on a sculptured slab which was found built into St. Peter’s Church in South Ronaldsay, and which had evidently formed part of a monument older than the church. It occurs also on the slab found at Firth, on the mainland of Orkney. Most singularly, it occurs on the phalangial bone of an ox which was found in the Broch of Burrian along with the slab previously described as bearing an Ogham inscription and a peculiar form of cross. It occurs associated with the same form of cross on the elaborately-sculptured stone at Ulbster in Caithness. We have this crescent symbol also associated with the cross on the inscribed stone of St. Vigeans in Forfarshire. This stone bears the only inscription which is known to have been left to us in the Pictish language:—[[8]]
| DROSTEN | IPE | VORET | ELT | FORCUS |
| “Drost, | son of | Voret, | of the race of | Fergus,” |
and is believed to refer to that Drost, king of the Picts, who fell at the battle of Blathmig, according to the Annals of Tighearnac, in A.D. 729.
The indications afforded by the Norse topography of the Islands, if taken in connection with the passages previously quoted from the Landnamabók and the Islendingabók of Ari Frodi regarding the origin of the names Papa and Papyli in Iceland, require only to be mentioned. The most obvious of these are the frequency with which the name Papa[[9]] occurs both in the topography of Orkney and Shetland, and the occurrence of such names as St. Ninian’s Isle in Shetland, Rinansey (Ringan’s-ey, St. Ninian’s Isle) in Orkney, Daminsey, now Damsey (St. Adamnan’s Isle), and Enhallow (Eyin-Helga, Holy Isle), given, we must suppose, intelligently by the Norsemen.
Thus, at the very starting-point of their recorded history, we find indications of Christianity, with suggestions even of its civilisation and its art shedding their benign influence over the isles.