Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/500

Rh 478 SCOTLAND [HISTORY. 867-914. and Harold the Fairhaired, who in 872 became sole king of Norway, soon after led an expedition against the vikings, who had already seized Orkney and Shetland, and estab- lished an earldom under Rognwald, earl of Mceri, whose son Hrolf the Ganger conquered Normandy in the begin- ning of the next century. The position of Scotland, therefore, when Kenneth united the Picts and Scots was this : central Scotland from sea to sea Argyll and the Isles, Perthshire, Angus and Mearns, and Fife was under the dominion of the king who had Scone for his capital ; the south-west district the valley of the Clyde, Ayr, Dumfries, and Galloway was under a British king at Dumbarton ; the south-east district or Lothian was part of " Saxon or Sassenach Land," the general Celtic name for the country of the Anglo-Saxons, but now owing to the divided state of Northumberland held by different lords ; the north of Scotland was under independent Celtic chiefs, as Moray and Mar, or already occupied by Norse- men, as Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, and the Hebrides. The whole Celtic population was Christian ; but the Norse Religion invaders were still heathen. Their religion was similar of Norse to that of their Anglo-Saxon kin, of a type higher than vikings. ^ e p a g an j sm o f the Celts. It resembled the Celtic indeed in the absence or infrequency of' idols, but a complex mythology peopled heaven with gods Woden and Thor, Freya and Balder, and others of inferior rank devised legends of the origin of earth and man, Valhalla the hero's paradise, and a shadowy hell for all who were not heroes. Some of its legends are coloured from Christian sources, and underneath the mythology may be detected a ruder and more ancient superstitious belief in omens and divination, a nature-worship more like that of the Celts. But it is the later form which represents the Norse character as it was when it came into contact with the nations of Britain, its daring defiance of man and the gods, its struggle with, yet in the end its calm acceptance of, the decrees of fate. The Norsemen both at home and in their colonies in Scotland embraced Christianity under Olaf Tryggvason in the end of the 10th century ; but along with Christianity they retained the old heathen senti- ments and customs, which, like .their language, mingled with and modified the Celtic character on the western but far more on the northern coasts and islands, where the population was largely Norse. A strain neither Celtic nor Teutonic nor Norman occasionally meets us in Scottish history : it is derived from the blood or memory of the Norse vikings. Kenneth 3. Later Celtic Period : Growth of the Kingdom of Scone Mac- from Kenneth Macalpine to Malcolm Canmore. During this period, though the Celtic annals are still obscure, we can trace the united Celtic kingdom growing on all sides under Kenneth's successors, southward by the conquest of Lothian on the east and by the union of the Strath- clyde kingdom on the west, and for a time by holding English Cumbria under the English kings, and northward by the gradual incorporation of Angus, Mea,rns, Moray, and possibly the southern district of Aberdeen. Kenneth Macalpine's reign of sixteen years (844-860) was a time of incessant war. He invaded Saxony (Lothian) six times, burnt Dunbar, and seized Melrose (already a rich abbey, though on a different site from the Cistercian foundation of David I.), while the Britons (of Strathclyde) burnt Dun- blane and the Danes wasted the land of the Picts as far as Cluny and Dunkeld. After they left Kenneth rebuilt the church of Dunkeld and replaced in it Columba's relics. He died at Forteviot and was buried at lona. Donaldl. He was succeeded by his brother Donald I. (861-863), who, with his people the Gaels, established the laws of Aed, son of Eachdach, at Forteviot. Aed was a Dalriad king of the 8th century ; but the contents of his laws are unknown. alpine. Perhaps tanistry, l>y liich the successor to the king was elected during his life from the eldest and worthiest of his kin, usually a collateral in preference to a descendant, was one feature, for it certainly prevailed amongst the Irish and Scottish Gaels. The next king, who succeeded in accordance with that custom, was Constantino I. (863- Cons 877), son of Kenneth. His reign was occupied with tine conflicts with the Norsemen. Olaf the White, the Norse king of Dublin, laid waste the country of the Picts and Britons year after year, and in 870 reduced Alclyde, the British capital ; but, as he disappears from history, he probably fell in a subsequent raid. He is said to have married a daughter of Kenneth, and some claim in her right may account for his Scottish wars. In the south the Danish leader Halfdan devastated Northumberland and Galloway; while in the north Thorsten the Red a son of Olaf by Audur, the wealthy daughter of Ketil Flatnose (called Finn, " the Fair," by the Celts), a Norse viking of the Hebrides, who afterwards went to Iceland and figures in the sagas conquered the coast of Caithness and Suther- land as far as Ekkials Bakki (the Oikel). But he was killed in the following year. Constantino met with the same fate at a battle at Inverdovat in Fife in 877, at the hands of another band of northern marauders. His death led to a disputed succession. His heir, according to the custom of tanistry, was his brother Aodh, who was killed by his own people after a year. Eocha, the son of Run, a king of the Britons, claimed in right of his mother, a daughter of Kenneth, according to the Pictish law, and governed at first along with Ciric or Grig, his tutor ; then Grig. Grig ruled alone, until they were both expelled from the kingdom and Donald II., son of Constantino, came to the throne (889). The Pictish Chronicle reports that during the government of Grig the Scottish Church was freed from subjection to the laws of the Picts (meaning probably from liability to secular service). Grig is also said to have subdued all Bernicia and "almost Anglia," a state- ment which if confined to the north of the Northumbrian kingdom is not improbable, for it had then fallen into anarchy through the attacks of the Danes. The church of Ecclesgreig near Montrose possibly commemorates Grig and indicates the northward extension of the monarchy of Scone. In the reign of Donald II. (889-900), son of Dona Constantino I., Scotland was again attacked by the H. Norsemen. Sigurd, the Norse earl of Orkney, seized Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, and part of Moray, where he built the fort of Burghead, between the Findhorn and the Spey. Farther south the Danes took Dunnottar, where Donald was slain. After his time the name of the kingdom of Scone was no longer Pictavia, but Albania or Alba, a more ancient title of northern Scotland, perhaps resumed to mark the growth of the Scottish-Pictish monarchy in the central and eastern Highlands. Donald II. was followed by Constantino II. (900-940), Const son of Aodh and grandson of Kenneth, and his long reign is tine ! a proof of his power. He was the greatest Scottish king, as Angus MacFergus had been the greatest of the pure Pictish race. In the first part of it his kingdom was still beset by the Norsemen. In his third year they wasted Dunkeld and all Alba. Next year they were repulsed in Strathearn. In his 8th year Rognwald, the Danish king of Dublin, with earls Ottir and Oswle Crakaban, ravaged Dunblane. Six years later the same leaders were de- feated on the Tyne (1 in East Lothian) by Constantino, who had been summoned to assist Eldred, lord of Barn- borough. Ottir was slain, but Rognwald escaped and reappears some years later as king of Northumberland. This is a battle whose site and incidents are told in a con- flicting manner by different chronicles ; but it appears certain that Constantino saved his dominions from further