XIII. Remains of the Northmen.
Turning from the pages of the Saga to the scenes of the events which it records, we find, both in the topography and traditions of the localities, and in the customs and characteristics of the people, abundant evidence of the substantial truth of the narrative.
The range of territory possessed and occupied by the Norsemen may still be distinguished on the map of Scotland by the prevalence of Norse place-names. In Shetland and Orkney the topography is altogether Norse. In Caithness and Sutherland there is a core of Celtic topography in the central mountain districts, while the Norse names spread out through the valleys, forming a broad fringe along the seaboard, and occupying the whole angle of lowland Caithness. But south of Ekkialsbakki they rapidly thin out, and finally disappear, with a few outlying instances, in Moray. The permanent dominions of the Northmen in the mainland of Scotland were limited to the earldom proper, the southern boundary of which was the Kyle of Sutherland. The Saga says they conquered the country as far south as Ekkialsbakki; and though they sometimes extended their power over parts of Ross and Moray, and even made a raid on one occasion as far south as Fife, they made no permanent lodgment south of the Moray Firth, and their presence in Ross has but slightly affected the topography between the Kyle of Sutherland and the Beauly Firth.
In the Hebrides the Norse names, though much disguised by contact with the Celtic, still form a considerable if not a preponderating element in the topography, and their old Norse name, “Sudreyar,” still survives in the title of the Bishop of Sodor and Man. Along the western seaboard of the Scottish mainland, from Cape Wrath to the Mull of Kintyre, the Northmen have left their traces more sparsely, but very distinctly, upon the topography. In Bute, Arran, and the Cumbraes, and on the shores of the Solway Firth, the topography also shows the influence of the Northern element, exerted during the existence of the Norse “Kingdom of Man and the Isles.”
There are many remnants of the older usages[[209]] in the peculiar local customs; and in the characteristics of the people of the Northern Isles there are also, of necessity, many striking resemblances to those of the Scandinavian race. The elucidation of these, however, would lead into a field far too wide to be entered on here. The language of the early colonists, which must have survived as long as the Islands were governed “according to the Norse law-book and the ancient usages,” seems to have died out rapidly after they were transferred to Scottish rule. Yet Jo. Ben found it existing in Rendal in Orkney in 1529; and it is stated[[210]] that in 1593 a clergyman, named Magnus Norsk, who was ordained to a Shetland parish, went to Norway to learn the Norse language, in order to qualify himself for his ministry, because the Shetlanders at that time understood no other tongue. Even so late as 1774, Low found people in Foula who could repeat the Lord’s Prayer in Norse, and he gives thirty-five stanzas of an old Norse ballad which he took down from oral recitation. In the Faroe Isles a large number of these ballads and metrical tales have been collected.[[211]] There can be no doubt that they were equally common in the neighbouring island groups, but no literary antiquary possessed of the requisite knowledge seems to have visited Shetland and Orkney in time to rescue them from oblivion.
The curious literary fragment, taken down phonetically by Low, who was completely ignorant of the language, is plainly akin to the old Scandinavian Kæmpeviser. The story is based on the Sörlathattr, one of the scenes of which is laid in the island of Hoy. The main incidents of the older poem are as follow:—Hedin, a prince of Serkland, had sworn mutual brotherhood with Hogni, King of Denmark. Nothing occurred to disturb their friendship until Hogni went on a war expedition. Hedin, wandering in the woods, fell in with a sorceress, from whom he received a magic philtre to enable him to win the love of Hilda, Hogni’s daughter. The result was that he ran off with her in a splendid ship belonging to Hogni, and made for Serkland. When Hogni came home he set off in pursuit, and came up with them at the island of Hoy. There they both landed with their men, and a furious battle commenced. Odin (who enjoyed a good fight) cast a spell upon the combatants, so that they were obliged to fight on without ceasing, until a Christian should come who should have the hardihood to mingle in the fray, of which Hilda was doomed to be all the time an agonised spectator. At last Olaf Tryggvi’s son came to the Orkneys, and Ivar Liomi, one of his men who landed in Hoy, went into the fight and broke the spell, killed Hedin and Hogni, and bore off the prize.[[212]]
The story of the Shetland ballad is that Hiluge, a young nobleman at the court of Norway, made love to the king’s daughter Hildina, and was rejected by her, though her father supported his pretensions to her hand. When the king and Hiluge were away at the wars, an Earl of Orkney came to Norway, and found such favour with Hildina that she consented to fly with him to the Orkneys. When the king and Hiluge returned and discovered what had happened in their absence, they set sail, with a great host, in pursuit of the fugitives. Hildina persuaded the earl to go unarmed to meet her father, and ask for his pardon and peace. The king was pleased to forgive him, and to grant his consent to their union. But now Hiluge, by artfully working on the king’s mind, stirs up his latent wrath against the earl, and induces him to revoke his consent. The result is, that he decides that Hiluge and the earl shall meet in single combat, and fight it out to the death of one or other. Hiluge was victorious; and, not content with the death of his enemy, he cut off his head and cast it into Hildina’s lap with taunting words. Hildina answered his taunts boldly, and conceived a bloody revenge. But she must now follow him to Norway, where he renewed his courtship. Ere long she seemed to relent, and gave him her promise, but besought her father to grant her this boon, that she herself should fill out the first wine-cup at the bridal. Her request was granted. The guests came, the feast was set, and Hildina filled up the wine-cups for them. The wine was drugged, and they were all cast into a deep sleep, from which nothing could awake them. Hildina now caused her father to be carried forth, and set fire to the house. Hiluge, awaking in the midst of the burning, cried out for mercy. Hildina replied that she would give him the same mercy as he had given to her earl, and left him to perish in the flames.
The dialect of the ballad resembles that which prevailed in Norway in the middle of the 15th century, but presents several peculiarities of local origin. The allusions in it to St. Magnus show that it cannot be older than the 12th century in its present form, although the story of Hedin and Hogni, on which it appears to have been founded, belongs to the heathen time.
Looking at the number of Runic monuments in the island of Man,[[213]] and the beauty of their workmanship, it certainly seems surprising that none of these characteristic works of northern art should have survived in the Orkneys.[[214]] Previous to the discovery of the inscriptions in Maeshow, the only Rune-inscribed monument known within the bounds of the ancient earldom was the stone in the churchyard of Crosskirk, Northmavine, Shetland, described by Low, which reads (according to his imperfect copy) “Bid pray for the soul of ——,” and consequently belongs to the Christian time. That there were similar monuments in other places, however, is shown by the recent discovery of a Runic fragment at Aithsvoe, Cunningsburgh, Shetland.[[215]] It is a mere fragment of the terminal part of a monumental inscription, incised on the edge of the stone, consisting of the letters KVIMIK, which Professor Stephens reads as the concluding part of the customary formula, “—— hewed me,” i.e. carved this stone.
But perhaps the most interesting and suggestive remains of the Northmen are those that have been from time to time recovered from the soil which they made their own—the relics which were actually possessed by the men and women of the Saga time; the weapons they used, and the ornaments they wore. In the grave-mounds of the heathen period, the warrior Viking still lies as he was laid, with his shield at his shoulder, and his sword ready to his hand.
The sword here figured, which is of a distinctively Scandinavian type, was dug up in making the railway near Gorton, in Morayshire, and is now in the museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. It is 35 inches in length, of excellent workmanship, damascened along the centre of the blade, and the pommel and recurved guard are beautifully inlaid with silver. A number of fragments of shield-bosses and broken swords, from Orkney graves, are also in the museum. The swords are chiefly of the older form, with straight guard and massive square or triangular pommel. In one of the interments at Westray the scabbard-tip here figured was found, and in others the bones of the dog and horse were found along with the human skeleton, indicating the continuance in Orkney of the sepulchral rites which prevailed in the heathen time in Norway.
For at least a century and a half after the establishment of the Norse earldom in Orkney and Shetland, the heathen Norsemen practised the burial customs which they had brought with them from Norway. Sigurd, Eystein’s son, the first Earl of Orkney, was buried in a cairn on Ekkialsbakki, (and his grave-mound was known as Sigurd’s How (Siwardhoch) in the 12th century,[[216]]) and Torf Einar caused his men to rear a cairn over the remains of Halfdan Hálegg, the son of Harald Harfagri, whom he offered to Odin in Rinansey.
A vivid picture of the ceremonies attending the burial of a Norse chief of the 10th century is preserved in the narrative of an eye-witness, in the work of an Arab geographer;[[217]] and all its details are amply confirmed by the contents of the grave-mounds of the period. Ahmed Ibn Fozlan, being in the country on the upper part of the Volga (then occupied by the Norsemen), as ambassador from the Caliph Al Moktader (A.D. 907-932), resolved to see for himself whether what he had heard of their burial customs was true. A great chief among the Norsemen had just died, and Ibn Fozlan describes, with curious minuteness of detail, the strange things he witnessed on the occasion. He gives a most characteristic picture of the drinking habits of the Northmen. “This nation,” he says, “is much given to wine and drink, by day and night, and it is not uncommon for one or another of them to die with beakers in their hands. When a chieftain dies, his family ask his maids (concubines) and men-servants, ‘Which of you will die with him?’ One of them will say, ‘I,’ and by this promise he is bound, and cannot revoke it. If he should desire to do so, he is not permitted.” It is mostly the maids who are willing to be thus sacrificed, says Ibn Fozlan, and on this occasion it was one of them who offered to die with her lord. She was accordingly given in charge to the other servants, who were to indulge her in every wish till the day of her sacrifice; and he adds, that “every day she drank, sang, was lively and merry.” Meantime the dead man had been laid in a temporary grave, and strong drink, fruits, and musical instruments placed beside him, as if to relieve the tedium of his confinement until the completion of the preparations for the funeral rites. A splendid suit of clothing was prepared for him, his ship was hauled up on the strand, and placed on four posts erected for the purpose. A bed was prepared in the midst of the deck, with a tent-like canopy over it, and covered with gold-embroidered cloth. In the preparation of this bed there comes on the scene an old hag, “whom they called the dead man’s angel.” It was she who took charge of the making of the dead man’s clothing and all needful arrangements, and she it was also who was to put the girl to death. “I saw her,” says Ibn Fozlan; “she was sallow and stern.” While the “dead man’s angel” was arranging the bed, the multitude were away at the temporary grave, disinterring the corpse. They clothed him in the rich garments provided for the occasion, and then bore him to the ship, where he was laid in state under the canopy. “So they laid him on the mattress, and stayed him up with pillows, then brought the strong drink, the fruits, and odoriferous herbs, and set them by his side, placing bread, meat, and onions also before him. Then came a man forward with a dog, hewed it into two portions, and cast them into the ship. So brought they all the dead man’s weapons and laid them by his side. Then they led forth two horses, made them run till they were covered with sweat, then hewed them in pieces with the sword, and cast the flesh into the ship. So also they brought forth two oxen, hewed them in pieces, and cast them into the ship. Next they came with a cock and hen, slew them, and cast them also into the ship.” In the meantime the woman who was to die kept going backwards and forwards in and out of the tent. At last they led her away to an object which they had made in the form of the framework of a door—two posts, with a cross piece on the top, or, as is suggested, a substitute for a trilithon. “She set her feet on the palms of men’s hands, stepped up on the frame, and said some words in their tongue, after which they made her stand down. Then they lifted her up a second and third time, and she went through the same ceremony. Now they handed her a hen, the head of which she cut off and cast away, but the body they cast into the ship. I asked my interpreter what it was that the woman had said. He answered, she said the first time, ‘Lo! I see my father and my mother;’ the second time, ‘Lo! here I see seated all my deceased relations;’ the third time, ‘Lo! here I see my master seated in paradise—paradise, beautiful and green, my master surrounded by his men and his menials; he calls for me; bring me to him.’ Thereupon they conveyed her to the ship. She took the bracelets from her arms, and gave them to the crone whom they called ‘the dead man’s angel;’ and the rings from her ankles, and gave them to the two young girls who had attended her, and who were ‘the dead man’s angel’s daughters.’ Then came men with shields and staves, and brought her a beaker of strong drink. She sang a song, and drank it out. Folk said to me that she thereby took leave of her friends. They reached her a second beaker. She took it, and sang a long time. The old hag bade her hasten to empty it, and go into the tent where her dead master was. I watched her; she was out of herself. In attempting to go into the tent she stuck by the head in the space between the tent and the ship. The old hag caught hold of her by the head and dragged her in with her, while the men commenced to beat their shields with the staves, that her shrieks might not be heard, and so frighten other girls, and make them unwilling to die with their lords.” The sequel is too horrible to be given as it stands in the old Arab’s plain-spoken narrative. A cord was finally wound round her neck, at the ends of which two men pulled, while the “dead man’s angel” stabbed her to the heart with a broad-bladed knife. Then the relatives of the dead man set fire to the pile. A storm that was just beginning to rage fanned the flames, and drove them aloft to a great height. A Norseman who was standing by said to Ibn Fozlan “You Arabs are fools. You take the man whom you most have loved and honoured, and put him down into the earth, where vermin and worms devour him. We, on the contrary, burn him up in a twinkling, and he goes straight to paradise.” After the pile was consumed to ashes they raised a great-mound over the spot, and set up on it a pillar made of a tree-trunk, on which they carved the names of the dead man and of their king.
The burial usages, however, were not always the same. Great men were buried with the pomp and ceremony befitting their rank, while meaner men were simply reduced to ashes and inhumed in a clay urn, or in a stone pot, not unfrequently in the stone cooking-kettle that had served them when in life.[[218]] This burial in stone urns, or in cooking vessels of steatite, is of common occurrence in the grave-mounds of the Viking period in Norway, and is also not unfrequently found in Orkney and Shetland.
Associated with such burials in Norway there are occasionally found the peculiar brooches which are characteristic of the later Pagan time.[[219]] Although they occur perhaps more frequently with unburnt burials, they link on with the custom of cremation. Thus they afford a valuable index to the chronology of these remains in Scotland, because the Pagan period of the Scandinavian occupation may be said to be limited to the time between the expedition of Harald Harfagri and the battle of Clontarf (872-1014). These brooches are found in Scandinavian graves of this period, in Scotland, England, Ireland, Normandy, Russia, and Iceland—in short, wherever the heathen Vikings effected a settlement. In Scotland they have been found in various places—in Sutherland, in Caithness, in Orkney, in the Hebrides, and even in remote St. Kilda. The specimen here figured, which is now in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland is one of a pair found in a stone cist on a mound which covered the remains of a “Pictish Tower” at Castletown in Caithness.[[220]] They are usually found in pairs, one near each shoulder of the skeleton. This corresponds with the statement of an ancient Arab writer, that the Norse women used to wear such brooches in pairs on their breasts.[[221]]
The most remarkable discovery of these characteristic Scandinavian interments that has hitherto occurred in Scotland was made in the island of Westray, Orkney, in 1849, by Mr. William Rendall.[[222]] A number of graves were found in the sandy links near Pierowall (the Hofn of the Saga), in some of which were swords and shield-bosses, indicating that the skeletons were those of men. But in one a pair of tortoise or shell-shaped brooches and a trefoil ornament were the only objects found with the skeleton. In another, a pair of these brooches were found on the breast, and a pair of combs, of the form here figured, lay on either side of the neck, apparently as they had fallen out of the hair. In a third, a pair of brooches, a pair of combs, and a bronze pin, were found. It appears from these examples that the brooches undoubtedly belonged to women, and that the warriors were usually buried with sword and shield and “panoply of war;” and, as we read in Ibn Fozlan’s account, the dog and the horse of the deceased appear also to have been sacrificed at the grave, and interred with him, in Orkney as well as on the banks of the Volga.
But we meet with few memorials of the daily life of the Norsemen beyond those which have been buried with them in the early period of their occupation of the Islands. Christianity abolished the custom of burying such relics with the dead, and for the remains of the Christian period we must look to the yet unexcavated sites of the skális and homesteads of which we read in the Saga. It would be equally interesting to the archæologist, and instructive to the historian, to be able to compare the relics from such sites as those of Kolbein Hruga’s castle in Weir, the castle of which Blán was the keeper in Damsey, or the skáli of Swein Asleifson at Langskail in Gairsay, with the extensive collections obtained in recent years from the “Pictish Towers” of Orkney, which have given us such suggestive glimpses of the domestic life of the period preceding the Norse occupation.
It gives a curious feeling of reality to the ancient legends when we can thus handle the blades and bucklers of which we read such stirring stories, and remember that it was because the Norse sword was then the longest, and the Norse arm the strongest, that we now read the earliest chapters of the history of northern Scotland in the guise of an Iceland Saga.