Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Scandinavian Britain - III. The Norse Settlements - 6. The Earldom of Orkney
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some scholars read the name Naddodd, which is
Norse ; the ornament, with ring-plaits and a peculiar
form of interrupted double-strand interlacing, cannot
be earlier than the tenth century ; and the "son of the
Druid " named on it, if that is a true reading, has a
parallel at Rushen, Isle of Man, as the priest, horsemen
and beasts reappear at Maughold (No. 67,
Kermode’s Manx Crosses). Again, the head between
monsters on the Papil stone (Shetland) is seen also
at Braddan (No. 69, Manx Crosses). The twelfth-century
Maeshowe runes and "Thurbiarn" runes at
Cunningsburgh have points of resemblance to Manx
runes. There is an evident link between Man and
the northern islands which is not without importance
in dating the Orkney and Shetland Christian
monuments.
There is also a link with the Pictish kingdom in the
symbol on the carved bone from the Broch of Burrian
(Orkney), found with an ogam-inscribed cross-shaft.
The fact of finding these relics in a broch of pre-Norse
days is not conclusive as to their date, for the Norse
sometimes occupied brochs ; that of Mousa was inhabited
by a runaway couple from Norway about the
year 900, and in 1155 Erlend and Maddadh’s widow
held it against her son, jarl Harald of Orkney. But
it shows that in Christianising the northern isles other
influences were at work than those of the Columban
Hebrides, as one might conclude from the protracted
occupation of a great part of north-eastern Scotland
by the Norse. We find a few relics of their presence
in the hogbacks at Inchcolm (Fife) and Brechin, and
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