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]]