Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries: Their Age and Uses

by James Fergusson

88. View of Chamber in Maes-Howe. From a drawing by Mr. Farrer.

The architecture of the tumulus, though offering some indications of great value, hardly possesses any features sufficiently marked to fix its date with certainty. Externally it is a truncated cone ([woodcut No. 87]), about 92 feet in diameter, by 36 feet in height, and is surrounded at a distance of about 90 feet by a ditch 40 feet wide, and 6 feet deep, out of which the earth seems to have been taken which was required to form the mound. Internally it contains a chamber slightly cruciform in plan, measuring 15 feet 4 inches, by 14 feet 10 inches, and, when complete, probably 17 feet in height. On each of three sides of the chamber is a sepulchral loculus, entered by a small opening 3 feet from the ground. The largest of these, that on the right as you enter, is 7 feet by 4 feet 6 inches, and the central one 5 feet 6 inches by 4 feet 6 inches. Each of these was closed by a single stone carefully squared, so as to fit the opening. The passage leading into the central chamber was 3 feet wide by 4 feet 6 inches in height, and originally closed, apparently by a doorway at 2 feet 6 inches from the chamber. Beyond this it is lined by two slabs 18 feet long, reaching nearly to a recess, which seems arranged as if to receive the real door which closed the sepulchre, probably a large stone. Beyond this the passage still extends some 20 feet to the present entrance, but is of very inferior class of masonry, and how much of it is modern is not clear.

The first thing that strikes any one on examining this mound is that it certainly is the lineal descendant of the great cairns on the banks of the Boyne, but separated from them by a very long interval of time. It is not easy to determine what interval must have elapsed before the side chambers of those tombs merged into the "loculi" of this, or how long it must have been before their rude unhewn masses were refined into the perfectly well-fitted masonry of this one. Some allowance must, however, be made for the difference of material. The old red sandstone of the Orkneys splitting easily into self-faced slabs, offers wonderful facilities for its use, but still the way in which the angle-buttresses of the chamber were fitted, and the cells finished, and the great slabs line the entrance, all show a progress in masonic science that must have required centuries, assuming, of course, that they were built by the same people. But was this so? So far as we at present know, these islands, when conquered by Harold Harfagar in 875, were inhabited by two races called Pape and Peti. The former were generally assumed to have been colonies of Irish missionaries and their followers, who settled here after the conversion of the Picts by St. Columba in the middle of the sixth century. The Peti, it is also generally assumed, were the Pechts, or Picts.[281] It will not be easy to ascertain now whether they were so or not, as, according to Bishop Tulloch, they were so entirely exterminated by the Northmen, that of their "posteritie there remained nocht." But if the Pape, or Papas were Irish missionaries, they were Christians, and whatever else Maes-Howe may be, it certainly is not a place of Christian burial. Nor is it Pictish. If it were, we certainly should find something like it in Pictland proper; but nothing that can be at all compared with it is found in Fife or Forfar, or in any of those countries which were occupied by the Picts in the days of their greatness; and it is most improbable that a people who could not, or at least did not, erect any such sepulchre in the fertile and populous lands which they occupied on the mainland, would erect such a one as this on a comparatively barren and sparsely inhabited island. On the other hand, there seems every reason for believing that the 2000 little barrows above alluded to are the graves of the Picts, or original inhabitants of the island before they were exterminated by the Northmen. These barrows, however, have absolutely no affinity with Maes-Howe. None of them have chambers, none have circles of stone round them; all are curvilinear, and none, indeed, show anything to induce the belief that in any length of time they would be developed into such a sepulchre as that which we have been describing. It is in fact the story of Stonehenge and its barrows over again. A race of Giants superseding a nation of Pigmies with which they certainly had no blood affinities, and erecting among their puny sepulchres monuments dedicated, it may be, to similar purposes, but as little like them in reality as the great cathedrals of the middle ages are to the timber churches of the early Saxons.

Only one hypothesis seems to remain, which is that it is a tomb of the northern men who conquered these islands in the ninth century. This may seem a very prosaic descent from the primæval antiquity some are inclined to ascribe to these monuments, but it certainly is not improbable; in the first place, because we have what seems undoubted testimony that Thorfin, one of the Jarls (940 to 970 A.D.) "was buried on Ronaldshay under a tumulus, which was then known by the name of Haugagerdium, and is perhaps the same as that we now call the How of Hoogsay," or Hoxay.[282] I have not been able to ascertain whether this is literally true or not, but have reason to believe that it was not in the How of Hoxay that Thorfin was buried, but in a mound close by.[283] The fact of his being buried in a Howe is, however, all that is at present demanded. Another important barrow is mentioned by Professor Munch,[284] known as Halfdan's Barrow, in Sandy, and raised by Torf Einar (925 to 936). So that we know of at least two important barrows belonging to the Norwegian Jarls in the tenth century, though only one has been identified with absolute certainty. As before mentioned, it is quite certain that King Gorm (died 950) and Thyra of Denmark were buried in tumuli in outward appearance very similar to Maes-Howe. That of Queen Thyra has alone been opened. It is a chamber tomb, similar to Maes-Howe, except in this, that the chamber in Denmark is formed with logs of wood, in the Orkneys with slabs of stone, but the difference is easily accounted for. At Jellinge stone is rare, and the country was covered with forests. At Stennis self-faced slabs of stone were to be had for the lifting, and trees were unknown. The consequence was, that workmen employed the best material available to carry out their purpose. Be that as it may, the fact that kings of Denmark and Jarls of Orkney were buried in Howes in the tenth century, takes away all à priori improbability from the hypothesis that Maes-Howe may be a sepulchre of one of those Northmen.

If this is so, our choice of an occupant lies within very narrow limits. We cannot well go back beyond the time of Harold Harfagar (876 to 920), who first really took possession of these islands, as a dependency of Norway, and created Sigurd the elder first Jarl of Orkney in 920. Nor can we descend below the age of the second Sigurd, who became Earl in 996, as we know he was converted by Olaus to Christianity, and was killed at Clontarf in 1014.[285] Within these seventy-six years that elapsed between 920 and 996 there is only one name that seems to meet all the exigencies of the case, and in a manner that can hardly be accidental. Havard "the happy," one of the sons of Thorfin, who was buried at Hoxay, was slain at Stennis in 970. Havard had married Raguhilda, the daughter of Eric Blodoxe, prince of Norway, and widow of his brother Arfin, but she, tired of her second husband, stirred up one of his nephews against him, and a battle was fought at Stennis, on a spot, says Barry, "which afterwards bore the name of Havardztugar, from the event or the slaughter."[286] The same story is repeated by Professor Wilson as follows, "Olaf Tryguesson, says Havard, was then at Steinsnes in Rossey. There was meeting and battle about Havard, and it was not long before the Jarl fell. The place is now called Havardsteiger. So it was called, and so M. Petrie writes me, it is still called by the peasantry to the present day."[287] Professor Munch, of Christiania, who visited the place in 1849, arrived at the conclusion "that most of the grave mounds grouped around the Brogar circle are, probably, memorials of this battle, and perhaps one of the larger that of Havard Earl."[288] In this I have no doubt he is right, but that larger one I take to be Maes-Howe, which is in sight of the circle, though not so close to it as those he was speaking of.

One circumstance which at first sight renders this view of the case more than probable is, that Maes-Howe is, so far as we at present know, unique. Thorfin's grave, when found, may be a chambered tumulus, so may Halfdan's Barrow, when opened, but no others are known in Orkney. If it had been the tomb of a king or chief of any native dynasty, similar sepulchres must have been as numerous as they were on the banks of the Boyne or Blackwater. There must have been a succession of them, some of greater, some of less magnificence. Nothing of the sort, however, occurs, and till more are found, the Stennis group cannot be ascribed to a dynasty that lasted longer than the seventy-six years just quoted. That brief dynasty must also have been the most splendid and the most powerful of all that reigned in these islands, as no tomb there approaches Maes-Howe in magnificence. If such a description suits any other race than that of the Norwegian Jarls, I do not know where to look for an account of it.

Assuming for the present that this is so, we naturally turn to the Runic inscriptions on the walls of the tomb to see how far they confirm or refute this view. Unfortunately there is nothing in them very distinct either one way or the other. The only recognizable names are those of Lothbrok and Ingiborg. The former, if the Lothbrok of Northumbrian notoriety, is too early; the Ingiborg, if the wife of Sigurd the Second, is too late, though, as the first Christian countess of Orkney, her name may have got mixed up in some way with the tomb of the last Pagan Jarl. But should we expect to find any sober record of the date and purposes of the Howe in any of the scribblings on the walls? The English barbarians who write their names and rhymes on the walls of the tombs around Delhi and Agra do not say this is the tomb of Humayoon, or Akbar, or of Etimad Doulah, or Seyed Ahmed. They write some doggerel about Timour the Tartar, or the Great Mogul, or some wretched jokes about their own people. The same feeling seems to have guided the Christian Northmen in their treatment of the tomb of their Pagan predecessor, and though, consequently, we find nothing that can fairly be quoted as confirming the view that it is the tomb of Havard, there is nothing that can be assumed as contradicting it.

One inscription may, however, be considered as throwing some light on the subject. In XIX.XX. it is related, though in words so differently translated by the various experts to whom it was submitted, that it is difficult to quote them, that "much fee was found in the Orkhow, and that this treasure was buried to the north west," adding, "happy is he who may discover this great wealth."[289] A few years ago a great treasure was found to the north-west of Maes-Howe, in Skail Bay, just in such a position as a pirate on his way to the Holy Land would hide it, in the hope, on his return, to dig it up and take it home; but shipwreck or fever may have prevented his doing this. With this treasure were found, as mentioned above, coins of Athelstane of the date of 925, and of the Caliphs of Bagdad, extending to 945, just such dates as we should expect in a tomb of 970, recent, but not the most recent coins. Connecting these with the silver torques found in the conoid barrows around the Ring of Brogar, we seem to have exactly such a group of monuments as the histories above quoted would lead us to expect, and which with their contents belong almost certainly to the age above assigned to them.