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.
III. Arrival of the Northmen, and Establishment of the Earldom of Orkney and Caithness.
The earliest notice we have of the visits of the Northmen to the shores of Britain occurs in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the date A.D. 787:—
“In this year King Beorhtric took Eadburh, King Offa’s daughter, to wife. And in his days first came three ships of Northmen from Hæretha-land; and then the reeve rode thereto, and would drive them to the king’s vill, for he knew not what they were, and they there slew him. These were the first ships of Danish men that sought the land of the English race.”
As they came from Hæretha-land, now Hördaland, on the west coast of Norway, they were Norwegians, not Danes.
The Irish Annals and the Welsh Chronicles agree in representing the first inroads of the Norsemen on the Irish coasts as having commenced in the year 795. In 798 they plundered Inispatrick of Man and the Hebrides; in 802, and again in 806, they ravaged Iona, slaying in the latter year sixty-eight of the monastic family there. In 807 they established themselves on the mainland of Ireland; and a few years afterwards we find a Norseman making Armagh the capital of his kingdom.