Page:Shetland Folk-Lore - Spence - 1899.pdf/107

 followed him and gave the island its name each lost a daughter in Shetland.

Two other stones have also been found in Shetland inscribed with the same Celtic characters. One of these, a large flat slab from Lunnasting, has the inscription on its face; and another, lettered at the edge, was found at St. Ninian's Churchyard, near Bigtown. These are also probably Celtic Christian memorials, but no satisfactory interpretation of the inscriptions has been made, so far as I am aware.

It is very remarkable that while so much has come down to us from the mysterious people who first inhabited the islands, and of whose race and language we know so little, so few traces have survived of the Vikings, who stamped their impression in the place-names of every hill and dale, every rock and skerry, and whose language still forms the main element in the dialect of the islands. While the ruins of the massive towers built by the early people and the weapons