Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time

and the

mous hero who represented the Picts of Alban, as the whole mainland north of the Forth was then called, and whose seven sons' names were said to stand for its seven main divisions,1 C

l, the northern and perhaps also the southern bank of which probably formed the ranges of hills known in the time of the earliest Norse jarls as Ekkjals-bakki. Everywhere else Cat was bounded by the open sea, of which the Norse soon b

nd flatness, save in its western and south-western borderland of hills; secondly, to the west of Ness, Strathnavern, a land of dales and hills, and, especially in its western parts, of peaks; and, thirdly, to the south of Strathnavern, Sudrland, or the Southland

in trout, a vast area of rolling moors, intersected by spacious straths, each with its salmon river, a land of solitary silences, where red deer and elk abounded, and in which the wild boar and wolf

s the Irishman put it, "mere fleabites on the ocean." Much of the west of the land of Cat was scarcely inhabited at all in Pictish or Viking days, because as is clearly the case in the Kerrow-Garrow or Rough Quarter of Eddrachilles, it would not carry one sheep or feed one human being per hundred acres in many parts. The rest of it also remains practically

had been erected at various dates from the first century onwards, long before the advent of the Norse Vikings is on record, as defences against wolves and raiders both by land and sea, and especially by sea. Notwithstanding agricultural operations, foundati

n seen conspicuously dotting the more fertile lands along the shores and straths of the counties of Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, Inverness, Argyll, the islands of

centuries. But their erection was not due to the fear of attack by the armies of Rome. For their remains are found where the Romans never came, and where the Romans came almost none are found. Their construction is more probably to be ascribed to v

nd then approached by causeways;6 and the rest of the people lived in huts whose circular foundations still remain, and are found in large numbers at much higher elevations than the sites of any brochs. The brochs near the sea-coast were often so

ing a series of galleries inside the concentric walls, in which large numbers of human beings could be temporarily sheltered and supplies in great quantities could be stored for a siege. These galleries were approached from within the broch by a staircase which rose from the court and passed round between the two concentric walls above the ground floor, till it reached their highest point, and probably ended immediately above the only entrance, the outside of which was thus peculiarly exposed to missiles from the end of the staircase at the top of the broch. The only aperture in the outer wall was the entrance from the outside, ab

ut themselves up, and possibly some of their poorer neighbours took refuge in the brochs, deserting their huts and crowding int

world.8 It was a roofless block-house, aptly described by Dr. Joseph Anderson as a "safe." It could not be battered down or set on fire, and if an enemy got inside it, he would find himself in a sort of trap surrounded by the

d to use in battle, preferring to fight stripped. They belonged to septs and clans, and each sept would have its Maor, and each clan or province its Maormor9 or

retched on wattles, resembling enlarged coracles. Yet with such rude ships as they had, they reached Orkney, Shetland, the Faroes and Ice

mered brass found in a Sutherland broch, and some Samian ware. Further, Christian though he had been long before Viking times, the Pict of Cat derived his Christianity at first and chiefly from the Pictish missions, and later from the Columba

ords north of Stavanger and from The Vik or great bay of the Christiania Fjord, whence they may have derived their name of Vikings, across the North Sea to the opposite coasts of Shetland, Orkney and Cat, where they found oxen and sheep to slaughter on the nesses or headlan

hield, the helmet and chain-mail, would make them more than a match for their adversaries.12 Above all, the greater ferocity of these Northmen, ruthlessly directed to its object by brains of the highest order, would render the Pictish farmer, w

500 feet level save the upper parts of the valleys; or they slew or enslaved the Pict who remained. Lastly, on settling, they would seize his women-kind and wed them; for the women of their own race were not allowed on Viking ships, and were probably less amenable and less charming to boot. But the Pictish women thus seized had their revenge. The darker race prevailed, and, the supply of fathers of pure Norse blood being renewed only at intervals, the children of such unions soon came to be mainly of Celtic strain, and their mothers doubtless taught them to speak the Gaelic, which had then for at least a century superseded the Pictish tongue. The result was a mixed race of Gall-gaels or Gae

Shetland Folk-850 to 1350,"14 has worked out the quarterings of the Norse jarls, of whom only the first three were pure Norsemen, and he has thus shown conclusively how very Celtic they had become long

y points remain to be noted

mainly a superior and receiver of dues for his king;15 and this possibly shows why very early Scottish earldoms, as for instance that of Sutherland, in the absence of male heirs, often descended to females, unless the grant or custom excluded them. It was quite different with later feudal baronies or tenancies, where military service, which only males could

nions to pass by marriage to the Norse jarls; but both Moddan and Earl Ottar, whose heir was Earl Erlend Haraldson, who left no heir, owned land extensively in Ness and elsewhere, while Moddan "in Dale" had daughters also owning land

y Firth, and the Picts occupied and were never dispossessed of the upper parts of the valleys or the hills all through the Norse occupation. In other words, as conquerors coming from the sea, the Norsemen seized and held the better Pictish lan

Under such grants the grantee, usually some very powerful noble, took over during minority the title of his ward and all his revenues absolutel

rom small beginnings, by a series of strange turns of fortune and superior state-craft, i

e than once. At the same time, after 563, they had a most valuable asset in Columba, their soldier missionary prince, and his milites Christi, or soldiers of Christ, who gradually carried their Christianity and Irish c

e Northumbrians on the south, and the Picts of Atholl, Forfar, Fife and Kincardine, which comprised most of the fertile land south of the Grampians. Th

mpleted that the new factor, with which we are mainly concerned, was

r for footnote 6 of this chapt