Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time | Page 8

stated, two plates of hammered 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 Columban Church,
both without reference to Papal Rome; and his missionaries not only
settled on islands off his coasts, but later on worshipped in his small
churches on the mainland; and many a Pictish saint of holy life was
held in reverence there.
About the eighth century and probably earlier, immigrants from the
southern shores of the Baltic pressed the Norse westwards in Norway,
and later on over-population in the sterile lands which lie along
Norway's western shores, drove its inhabitants forth from its western
fjords 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
headlands, and stores of grain, and some silver and even gold in the
shrines and on the persons of those whom they attacked, and in still
later days they sought new lands over the sea and permanent
settlements, where they would have no scat to pay to any overlord or
feudal superior.
When the Vikings landed, superior discipline, instilled into them by
their training on board ship, superior arms, the long two-handed sword
and the spear and battle-axe and their deadly bows and arrows, and
superior defensive armour, the long shield, 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,
who had wife and children, and home and cattle and crops to save, an
easy prey to the Viking warrior bands, and the security of his broch
would of itself tend to a passive and inactive, rather than an offensive,
and therefore successful defence.
After long continued raids, the Vikings no doubt saw that much of the
land along the shore was fair and fertile compared with their own, and
finally they came not merely to plunder and depart, but to settle and
stay. When they did so, they came in large numbers and with organised
forces[13] and carefully prepared plans of campaign, and with great
reserves of weapons on board their ships; and having the ocean as their
highway, they could select their points of attack. They then, as we
know from the localities which bear their place-names, cleared out the
Pict from most of his brochs and from the best land in Cat, shown on
the map by dark green colour, that is, from all cultivated land below the
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 Gaelic strangers, far more Celtic than Norse, who soon
spoke chiefly Gaelic, save in north-east Ness. Their Gaelic, too, like the
English of Shetland at the present time, would not only be full of old
Norse words, especially for things relating to the sea, but be spoken
with a slight foreign accent. How numerous those foreign words still
are in Sutherland Gaelic, the late Mr. George Henderson has ably and
elaborately proved in his scholarly book on "Norse Influence on Celtic
Scotland." We find traces of Norse words and the Norse accent and
inflexions also on the Moray seaboard, on which the Norse gained a
hold. The same would be true of the people on the western lands and
islands of the Hebrides.
As time went on, the Gaelic strain predominated more and more,
especially on the mainland of Scotland, over the Gall, or foreign, strain,
which was not maintained. Mr. A.W. Johnston, in his "_Orkney and
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
before their male line failed. The same process