[554] New Statistical Account, vol. xi. p. 146.
[557] Minute of Soc. Antiq. Scot., June 2, 1828.
CHAPTER IV.
SCOTO-SCANDINAVIAN RELICS.
From the slight historical sketch introduced in a preceding chapter, we perceive that the plundering expeditions of the Norse Vikings, and the establishment of Norwegian dominion by Harold in the Northern and Western Isles, were rapidly superseded by the establishment of an independent Scoto-Norwegian kingdom, which diminished the direct intercourse with Scandinavia Proper, and led to some interfusion of the Celtic and Scandinavian races. To this period, therefore, we must look for the introduction of pure Scandinavian antiquities into Scotland, and also for the production of those native relics which bear manifest traces of the influence of Scandinavian art. In the Western Isles especially, where the expatriated Vikings of Norway fixed their head-quarters, and in Man, and the Orkney and Shetland Isles, where the first independent Scoto-Norwegian kingdoms were established, we may naturally look for many traces of Scandinavian arts.
To this period belongs the very characteristic and beautiful ornament, usually designated the shell-shaped brooch, and which is equally familiar to Scandinavian and British antiquaries. In Scotland especially, many beautiful examples have been found: several of them are preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, and from these the following is selected as surpassing in beauty of design and intricacy of ornament, any other example of which I am aware. It consists, as usual, of a convex plate of metal, with an ornamental border, surmounted by another convex plate of greater depth, highly ornamented with embossed and perforated designs, the effect of which appears to have been further heightened by the lower plate being gilded so as to shew through the open work. In this example the gilding still remains tolerably perfect. On the under side are the projecting plates still retaining a fragment of the corroded iron pin, where it has turned on a hinge, and at the opposite end the bronze catch into which it clasped. The under side of the brooch appears to have been lined with coarse linen, the texture of which is still clearly defined on the coating of verd antique with which it is now covered. But its peculiar features consist of an elevated central ornament resembling a crown, and four intricately chased projections terminating in horses' heads. It was found in September 1786, along with another brooch of the same kind, lying beside a skeleton, under a flat stone, very near the surface, above the ruins of a Pictish house or burgh, in Caithness. It measures nearly four and a half inches in length, by three inches in breadth, and two and two-fifth inches in height to the top of the crown. Like many others of the same type, it appears to have been jewelled. In several examples of these brooches which I have compared, the lower convex plates so nearly resemble each other, as to suggest the probability of their having been cast in the same mould, while the upper plates entirely differ.
