Joseph Anderson

“ Since he took with him his sword and spear, his axe and shield, and took also with him his smithy-tools to keep them in repair, it seems a fair inference that his form of faith must have taught him to look for a continuance of warfare in the life beyond the grave. We know that such a faith existed, and that the Northern and Western Isles of Scotland were overrun by men who held it at a time when such implements and weapons of iron were in common use. ”

“ Like the Nuraghe, the Truddhu is a massive conical tower of uncemented stones with a central circular chamber rudely vaulted by the overlapping of the successive courses of its masonry. A low door gives access to the chamber. Sometimes a second chamber is constructed over the first, and approached by a narrow flight of steps winding along the side of the tower. These steps are present even when there is no second chamber, and forming a spiral round the outside of the tower, they give access to the paved platform on the top of the structure. ”

“ To find such weapons of bronze or stone as are commonly 17styled prehistoric deposited with the dead excites no feeling of surprise, because we know, in a general way, that this was the common custom of prehistoric Paganism. But when we find in a grave, along with the ordinary weapons of war, a collection of implements like this—a group of actual tools of iron—scarcely differing in shape, and not differing in material from those now in use in our workshops, we instantly realise the presence of a phenomenon at once unusual and suggestive. ”

“ But the Christian belief in a resurrection to newness of life recognised no such duty to the dead, and steadily opposed the practice as amounting to a denial of the faith. On this account it is plain that when we find the dead in Christian graves provided with grave-goods we have a form of burial which cannot be accounted for by anything in the essential elements of Christianity itself, and therefore it must be regarded as a survival of the older custom, which logically ought to have died with the death of the Pagan system,—of which it was a distinctive usage. ”

“ It is certainly a peculiar feature of an art so singularly decorative that it was applied so largely to the ornamentation of objects that were appropriated to the commonest uses. Enamelled horse-trappings of the most finished and beautiful workmanship have frequently been found in England, sometimes associated with the remains of chariots. [61] Not only is the use of enamel in the decoration of such objects unknown beyond the area of the British Isles, but the special system of design which accompanies its use is also confined within that area. ”

“ If they exist, they exist either as phenomena of unrecognised character or as phenomena which are still unobserved. I therefore proceed to the examination of a group of phenomena disclosing the existence within the Celtic area of a system of Paganism which was not of Celtic origin; and I turn to these phenomena as the only materials available for the demonstration of the character of Pagan burial—premising that they belong to a time when, owing to the intrusion of a foreign element, the Christian form and the Pagan form were closely contiguous and contemporary in Scotland. ”

“ No other form of brooch is so huge and massive, with such a length of pin. The Celtic brooch-maker was so much more 93of an artist than the mere silversmith that he flattened the ring of the brooch and broadened its terminal expansions in order to provide space for the elaborate surface decoration in which he delighted. The maker of these bulbous brooches, on the other hand, is so much more of the silversmith than of the artist that the bulk of his work is merely finished with the hammer—the ring and the pin are beaten into form, and the expansions made globular instead of flat. ”

“ For this reason the geographical distribution of these brooches marks the range of the Scandinavian conquests of the ninth and tenth centuries. In Iceland, in Russian Livonia, in Normandy, in England, in Ireland, and on our own shores in Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, and Sutherland, and in the Hebrides, including even the remote St. Kilda, their presence attests the historical fact of the Viking settlements from Norway. But the area in which they are specially abundant, of course, is in Scandinavia itself. ”

“ In or below this clay which covered the paved floor were found the following relics of human occupation—an iron ring, and an object in iron which looked like the shoe of a wooden spade, some staves of a small wooden cog, a wooden 287comb, some fragments of pottery of coarse workmanship, a portion of a quern or handmill for grinding grain, fragments of deer’s horns, and bones of the sheep and common domestic fowls. At one corner of the inner end of the chamber the ashes of a fire remained, and immediately above them there was a well-built smoke-hole. ”

“ That the discovery of this lump of glass in a Pagan grave should be the means of bringing to light the existence of similar implements in Scotland which had continued in use till within living memory, is a curious illustration of the rapidity with which the knowledge of special implements and special processes becomes extinct when the implement has been superseded by a new form and its use rendered obsolete by an improved process. ”

“ It is the style of roof which is common to all dry-built structures that are roofed, whether they be of Pagan or of Christian time, because it is the style that is best suited to the material and the manner of construction. The builders of this edifice had no stones long enough to span chambers of six feet wide, and if they had had them long enough they would have been too weak to bear the superincumbent weight of a wall forty feet in height. Therefore they made their chamber-roofs semi-vaulted, while the doors and passages, which were narrow, were simply spanned with strong flat lintels. ”

“ Stones are often found set round the burial, which, when the body was unburnt, was simply laid on the natural surface, and the mound heaped over it. In Norway the custom of burning the body exceeds in frequency the custom of burying unburnt by about four to one. Where the body has been burnt it is usually found that the grave-goods have also passed through the fire, but this is not always the case. The burnt remains are either found spread over the area of the base of the mound or gathered together in a heap in the centre. Very frequently they are found placed in an urn. ”

“ It is zoomorphism in which the details are sacrificed to the general effect, as if in the mind of the artist the idea of the ornament was dominant, and the idea of the form of its parts subordinate. No two styles of ornament could be more widely dissimilar. The artist of the Celtic school produced his effects by simple variation of the arrangements of his stereotyped forms. In all the intricate interlacements of his zoomorphic patterns, the typical forms employed to produce the most bewilderingly beautiful combinations are substantially the same, and their parts are the same. ”

“ Perhaps there is no characteristic of the typical structure more remarkable than the extreme constancy of its essential features. The uniformity of plan and construction is so unvarying among all the known examples that there exists no means of tracing the development of the form through a series of primitive or immature stages. In this respect there is a striking analogy between the Brochs and the Round Towers of Ireland. ”

“ It is equally apparent, from an examination of the whole phenomena of the burials, that there is an obvious absence of all indications of Christianity. They are not destitute of characteristics possessing a special significance, but they are destitute of characteristics possessing such significance as could be attributed to the faith and hope of the Christian creed, or explained by reference to any recognised customs of Christian burial. They suggest, for instance, a condition of life considerably removed from absolute poverty ”

“ In the whole group of objects described in this Lecture we have a series of examples of the art which characterised the Iron Age Paganism of Scotland—the period that lies beyond the Christian time and reaches back until it merges into the Bronze Age culture. The outcome of the whole examination thus appears to be that the early Christian art of Scotland, although it had close relations with that of Ireland, was nevertheless based upon a pre-existing system of Pagan art peculiar to the area of the British Isles. ”

“ The brooch, which is constantly found in these interments in Norway, is a most peculiar ornament. It is always of brass, massive, oval, and bowl-shaped in form, and is distinguished from all other brooches that are known, not only of this, but of every other area and every other time, by the fact that it is an article of personal adornment which (though as capable of being used singly as any other form of fibula might be) , is almost never found singly, but constantly occurs in pairs—the one being usually an almost exact duplicate of the other. ”

“ But there is nothing in the character of the work, or in the nature of the art, to suggest that the workman belonged to an infant state of society. The technical skill displayed in modelling and casting such a difficult piece of work is undoubtedly of a very high order, and he would be considered a good workman to-day who could turn out an equally well finished casting of the kind. ”

“ They are sometimes hewn in groups upon the solid rock of a hillside, sometimes on earth-fast boulders, occasionally on the stones of stone circles, and often on stones in sepulchral cairns or in connection with cists. They are not confined to Scotland, or even to Britain. They are found in Scandinavia, in France, in Germany, and Switzerland. They appear on the Continent in associations which refer them to the Bronze Age at least, but they also occur in associations which show that the custom survived to the late Iron Age, and even in a modified form to Christian times. ”

“ The unscientific method of opening a burial mound by driving a trench across it cannot be too strongly condemned. No such investigation can be regarded as scientific which leaves any part of the mound or of the site beneath it unexamined; and no one should touch a burial-mound who is not prepared both to investigate and record its phenomena in a scientific manner.
45. Mr. Petrie notices a similar instance in Orkney, the bottom being formed of a lozenge-shaped piece of stone, fitted into its place by a groove cut round its circumference. ”

“ The women practised the arts of spinning and weaving, and probably also made the pottery and ground the grain, while the men made the weapons and tools of metal, and the ornaments and implements of bone and stone, did the hunting and fishing, and the warfare when needful, and erected the great structures which made the industrious quietude of domestic life possible to them. ”

“ Bronze tweezers are not uncommon accompaniments of female interments of the Bronze Age in Denmark, and it has been suggested that they were used as sewing implements when the material to be sewed was skin and the thread a thong. This supposition is strengthened by the fact that small awls of bronze are occasionally found with them, and it is obvious that the end of a thong hardened in the fire, and pushed partially through the holes bored by an awl, could be readily seized by such a pair of tweezers and so dragged tight. ”

“ Sometimes the description of a burial mentions the digging of a grave instead of the raising of a mound. When Thorolf died, Egil took his body and prepared it according to the custom of the time, then they dug a grave and placed Thorolf in it with all his weapons and raiment, and Egil placed a gold bracelet on each of his arms, then they placed stones over him, and earth over all. ”

“ The design of the whole structure and the arrangements of all its separate parts exhibit a careful and laborious adaptation of means and material to the two main objects of shelter and defence. The clever constructive idea of turning the house outside in as it were, placing its rooms within its walls, and turning all their windows towards the interior of the edifice, implies boldness of conception and fertility of resource. ”

“ The inference deducible from the character of the relics is the same as that which has been deduced from the type of the structure, and when the whole of the facts are thus marshalled and their significance is calmly considered, it becomes plain that there is even less ground for ascribing a low condition of culture, of civilisation, or of social organisation to the people who constructed and occupied these massive towers, than there is for ascribing such a condition to the builders of the beehive huts and dry-built churches of Christian times. ”

“ The fact that these rivets pass through the wood obliquely is more suggestive of a boat than of a shield. The thickness of wood between the rivet-heads is more than twice that of any shield of the time whose thickness is known. No shield-boss or handle was found with any of these interments, and no shield of oaken planks fastened with such rivets is known. In point of fact, no shield could be used whose thickness was two inches of solid oak, and the quantity of wood and iron found with the interments seems much in excess of what would be required for shields. ”

“ A style of art characterised by such originality of design and excellence of execution must count for something in the history of a nation’s progress, must have its place to fill in the history of art itself, when once we have begun to realise the fact that art was not the exclusive privilege of classic antiquity. ”

“ In the course of the construction of a new road a group of graves was discovered. Each grave was formed of six slabs set on edge, two forming each side of the grave, and one at each end. They were from two to three feet under the surface, and covered with large stones. In one of the cists, apparently with the remains of a female, there were found the bronze mirror almost perfect, some rings of bronze or brass, fragments of fibulæ, and other personal ornaments, and several beads of variegated glass. The mirror is circular, 6 inches in diameter, with a looped handle 21⁄2 inches in length. ”

“ But their known range comprehends an area which is but little short of the whole area of Scotland. They are most abundant in the north-eastern districts, but they occur as far north as Caithness and Orkney, as far south as Dumfries, and as far west as Argyle. Whether they belong wholly to the Pagan time or partly to the Christian period, it is clear that the prevailing features of their decoration, though distinctly Celtic in character, are not those of the fully developed style of Celtic ornament which prevailed throughout the early Christian time. ”

“ No hewn stone is used in the construction of a Broch; the doors and windows of the Ecclesiastical Round Towers are often of hewn stone, and sometimes ornamented with sculptures. The Brochs have their chambers, stairs, and galleries in the thickness of the wall enclosing the central area; the lime-built Round Towers possess none of these features. The Brochs have their doorways always on the ground and their windows opening to the interior area; the Ecclesiastical Round Towers have their windows opening in the exterior wall, and their doors placed at a considerable height above the ground. ”