The Orkneys in early Celtic times : two lectures / by James M. MacBeath.

  • MacBeath, James M.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Orkneys in early Celtic times : two lectures / by James M. MacBeath. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of the Italian sky. All this would present infinite variety, and impart touching beauty to the otherwise sombre landscape, during the sunny season of the year ; but when winter came the prospect would be dreary and desolate in the extreme, all along those sunless, bleak, and lonely shores during the short, dark days and dreary months, mid the many continuous storms, and rain, and hail, and piercing cold of these northern latitudes. When our Celtic ancestors came first to the islands, and for centuries after, there is reason to believe that the lower lying grounds were thickly covered with wood, in which mountain ash, birch, pine, and hazel largely predominated ; and other species have been found embedded in peat mosses with the bark still fresh and entire. These would form a covert for the wild boar, red deer, reindeer, and other animals then native to the group, as well as fuel and shelter to the early settlers, who were little if at all removed from the condition of homeless, roaming savages, living chiefly by their success in the chase and fishing; making rude and primitive garments and tools of the spoils of these, and having the roughest and rudest weapons made from native wood, bone, and stone, with appa- rently very little, if any kind of knowledge of the working in metals, on which the simplest of all known arts depends. The wood growth—product of vegetative processes in pre- historic times—must at first have been general over the islands, as wherever peat mosses exist to any depth, trunks of trees, of considerable size and very abundant, are still unearthed; and hazel nuts have been preserved in these mosses, and are yet found at a depth of 10 to 12 feet from the present surface, while the seeds of the birch and the ash are also met with. By the beginning of the tenth century, wood for economic purposes must have become scarce, for then it was that the reigning Jarl became known as “ Torf Eiuar,” from having taught the islanders how to prepare moss for fuel as a substitute for wood. This was in the century succeeding the successful Norse invasion of the group. The apparent scorching observed on many of the trunks of the larger trees dug up is, doubtless, the result either of fires
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