The Farfarers: Before the Norse

by Farley Mowat

  Armoricans mostly raided in northeastern Alba, while Irish Celts did the same in the west. Old Irish annals give us a glimpse of one such raid led by the semi-legendary Labraid Loinseach:

  He smote eight towers in Tiree . . . and eight strongholds of the men of Skye. . . . He ventured upon many of the islands of Orkney.

  Notably, this celebration of Gaelic valour does not claim that the mighty Loinseach captured any of the brochs he “smote.” Excavation of a broch at Gurness in Orkney starkly reveals the price attackers such as he were forced pay. Ian Grimble tells us, in Highland Man, how excavation of the garbage dump of the Gurness broch revealed

  a grisly reminder of the past, a pair of severed hands flung into the midden before anyone had even removed the five rings from their fingers. These belonged to the superb Celtic tradition of continental metalwork of an earlier age, and one may picture their wearer, perhaps tall, blond haired and bedecked with gold toque and armbands, done to death on one of his raiding expeditions by the broch builders.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PICTLANDIA

  AS THE FIRST CENTURY A.D. UNFOLDED, ALBANS continued to wage guerrilla war from the highlands. Free Alba north of the Great Glen remained unsubdued. In the west, the Irish were becoming ever more aggressive and more covetous of the rich lowlands of Galloway and Argyll. British Celts had taken advantage of the conflict to press north—towards Solway Firth on the west coast and, on the east, to the approaches to the Tweed valley.

  Worse was to come.

  In A.D. 43 the Claudian invasion of Britain began. Within thirty years Roman legions were slashing their way into the territory of the Celtic Brigantes who controlled the country on both sides of the Pennines. By 71 the Solway–Tyne line had become a de facto frontier between the new Roman province of Britain and the “barbarians of the north.”

  Our knowledge of what was happening in the north around this time comes mainly from the writings of Publius Cornelius Tacitus, a protégé of the powerful Roman Gnaeus Julius Agricola. Tacitus tells us:

  Agricola was consul and I but a youngster when he betrothed me to his daughter, a maiden of noble promise even then. When his consulate ended he married me to her then immediately departed to become governor of Britain.

  Tacitus repaid Agricola by faithfully, if not impartially, recording his patron’s achievements.

  In the late summer of 78, Agricola crossed the Channel to find his new province in turmoil. The new governor marched north, bloodily rapping the knuckles of various rebellious Celtic tribes en route. By the autumn of 79 he had re-established Roman control up to the Solway–Tyne line.

  The record is not clear what happened next. Many historians have made their own reconstructions. What follows is a synthesis of these, viewed in the light of my own investigations.

  If he was to hold the salient he had established, Agricola had to neutralize the hilly, densely wooded, and almost impenetrable Strathclyde border country. Early in the summer of 80, he set out to do this by means of a double encirclement, one arm of which would sweep north and east to, and beyond, Solway Firth, while the other swept north along the eastern coastal plain, then west to meet its fellow.

  The earlier Celtic thrust along the eastern corridor had failed because Celtic supply and communication lines had been at the mercy of Alban raiders driving down from the mountainous left flank. Agricola had an answer to that. He deployed a fleet of naval and transport vessels to render his marching troops largely independent of land communications. As the vanguard troops of the Roman army in the east fought their way north from a base near the mouth of the Tyne, they built a string of heavily garrisoned forts, supported and supplied from seaward.

  The east-coast thrust ended for the season at an unidentified place called Taus, which may have been the lagoon lying behind Holy Island, or Lindisfarne, as it is now called. In the west the Romans reached Solway Firth in the vicinity of Carlisle.

  The campaign of the following year was mainly waged against a people the Romans at first called Caledonians. Tacitus seems to have thought they were yet another British (Celtic) tribe, but later Romans called them Picts.1

  If Agricola failed to realize who these people were, they were in no doubt as to who he was. Not much more than a century earlier, his ancestors had driven theirs out of Gaul. One can imagine the hatred and the fury with which the Armoricans would have viewed the approach of these not-so-ancient enemies.

  Tacitus gives no details of the early stages of the ensuing conflict. He tells us only that in the summer of 81 Agricola occupied the narrow isthmus between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde.

  The estuaries of Clota [the Clyde] and Bodotria [the Forth] carry the tides of two opposite seas so far back into the country that they are separated by only a narrow strip of land. This strip Agricola began to defend with a line of forts and, as the country to the south was now in our hands, the enemy was pushed [north] into what might be considered almost another island.

  The claim that “the south was now in our hands” was premature. Much of the western border country south of the Clyde remained in Pictish hands.

  Agricola returned to the attack in the spring of 82—but instead of striking northward across the isthmus, his troops had to cross back over the Clyde somewhere near its mouth and fight their way south and west to complete the encirclement of southern Scotland. This took most of the summer, during which Agricola seems to have been briefly tempted by a new prospect to the westward.

  He stationed troops in that part of the country looking toward Ireland, anticipating a fresh conquest.... I have heard him say that with a single legion and a few auxiliaries he could take and occupy Ireland, and that this would have a salutary effect on all Britain since Roman arms would then be everywhere, and all freedom banished.2

  Much as Agricola may have lusted after conquest in Ireland, the need to crush the barbarians in northern Scotland remained paramount. “He dreaded a general mobilization of these frontier tribes,” Tacitus tells us. And with good reason. During the winter of 82–83, “the tribes of Caledonia flew to arms and advanced to attack our forts [in the isthmus, where the Roman army was wintering] a challenge which filled us with alarm.”

  Agricola responded by seizing the initiative. Early in the spring of 83 he launched another combined operation with the twin objectives of isolating the Fife peninsula (thereby safeguarding his right flank), then crossing the Tay River to put his troops in position to break out into the broad, northeastern coastal plain.

  The Picts seem to have been caught off balance and at first things went well for the Romans. “The enemy, as we learned from prisoners, was confounded. . . .”

  However, the Picts were not so confounded that they could not counter-attack. During the late hours of a summer night, a Pictish battle group swept down upon the walled and ditched camp of the 9th Legion somewhere in the green valley of Strath Earn.

  Surprising and cutting down the sentries, who were asleep or panicstricken, the enemy broke into the camp. The battle was raging fiercely before Agricola could marshal his best soldiers to attack the assailants in the rear.... There followed a furious conflict within the narrow passages at the gates until the enemy was routed.... But they, thinking themselves cheated not so much by our valour as by our general’s skill, lost nothing of their arrogance and, removing their wives and children to a place of safety, assembled to ratify with sacred rites the confederacy of all their states against us.

  Tacitus, who never portrayed his father-in-law except in the best of lights, is ambiguous about the results of this imbroglio. According to him, it buoyed Roman morale and depressed that of the barbarians. In truth, it was a serious setback for Agricola, bringing his advance to an end for that season and forcing him into defensive positions for another winter.

  In the summer of the following year he again struck out to the northeast, determined to bring the long campaign to a conclusion.

  Having sent a fleet ahead of him to cause widespread alar
m by its ravages, he advanced as far as the Grampian Mountains.... The enemy, in no way cowed by the results of the last engagement, had made up their minds either to be avenged, or enslaved, and had assembled their entire fighting strength—more than 30,000 armed men.

  Chief amongst the leaders was a man the Romans called Calgacus, who, according to Tacitus, treated his troops to the following resounding indictment of Rome and, indeed, of all empires in all time . . . including our own.

  The terrible Romans from whose oppression escape is vainly sought through obedience and submission [are] robbers of the world. Having by universal plundering exhausted the land, they even rob the sea. If their enemy be rich, they are rapacious. If poor, they lust for dominion over him. Neither east nor west has been able to satisfy them. They justify robbery, slaughter, and plunder with the lying name of Empire. They make a desolation, then call it peace.

  The place where the Pictish forces made their stand was probably in the rolling country between the Howe of Mearns and Stonehaven, beyond which the coastal corridor opens onto the broad and vulnerable plains of Buchan.

  The battle of Mons Graupius, as Tacitus calls it, was certainly fought in open country since neither Picts nor Romans were hill fighters. Perhaps it was watched from the heights of the Mounth by Alban highlanders hoping to see the Armoricans cut to pieces.

  The Armoricans fought well, but their levies could not withstand Agricola’s tightly disciplined and superbly trained swordsmen and cavalry and, after a long and terrible struggle, they broke.

  Then indeed the open plain presented an awful and hideous spectacle. Our men pursued and captured prisoners, but slaughtered them when other prisoners came their way.... The enemy fled in whole battalions, though some rushed to the front and gave themselves up to death. Everywhere weapons, corpses, and mangled limbs lay scattered, and the earth reeked with blood.... Night and weariness of bloodshed put an end to the pursuit.

  The Picts are supposed to have lost ten thousand men, a figure which is doubtless exaggerated. Yet, although the victory earned Agricola a triumph, it was by no means conclusive. The Roman army got no farther north that year, nor ever would thereafter.

  The Picts, as history would come to call all the Armoricans of Scotland, had been bloodied but not crushed. They now proceeded to make things so difficult for Agricola that he had to withdraw to the land of the Boresti tribe (perhaps the region around Perth), where his army again had to winter in a fortified camp in hostile territory.

  The hard truth was that the great general had bitten off considerably more than he could chew. The Picts gave themselves over to waging total war with such ferocity that, within a decade, they forced the Romans to abandon all the ground the legions had captured north of the Cheviots. Before the end of the century they were attacking Roman frontier posts along the Solway–Tyne line, where Hadrian’s Wall would be built in a less-than-successful attempt to shut them out of England.

  In the event, the Picts fought on until, centuries later, the last legion sailed away from Britain. The greatest military power of the times had failed to crush them.

  Northern Alba had not been neutral during this new war in the north. Not long after Claudius invaded Britain, a delegation sailed south from Orkney, which then seems to have been a centre of free Alba. It came to offer submission to, and alliance with, Rome.

  Such an alliance promised well for both parties. Alba stood to gain formidable support against both Celts and Picts, and Rome to gain an ally well positioned to assist in the subjugation of northern Britain. Seafaring Albans would be able to rely on the Roman navy for protection, Rome being anxious to ensure there was no interruption in the flow of northern valuta, which was much in demand amongst the Empire’s elite.

  Nothing more is recorded about this alliance, but we can guess that Alba contributed information, guides, pilots, and perhaps bases for Roman ships. If nothing else, Alban highlanders behind the Armorican lines would have been invaluable as an intelligence source. Tacitus makes no mention of Alban military assistance, but then he seldom gives credit to Rome’s allies.

  What he does tell us is that, after Mons Graupius, Agricola sent part of his naval force to complete the circumnavigation of Britain.

  Round these coasts of remotest ocean the fleet sailed, for the first time establishing that Britain is an island, and at the same time discovering and conquering what are called the Orkades [which included Shetland].

  The fleet is also reported to have glimpsed Thule (Tilli) on the distant horizon.

  Tacitus’s use of the phrase “discovering and conquering” reflects his commitment to glorifying Agricola’s achievements; but finds of Roman coins of the period in Shetland and Orkney point to a peaceable Roman visit to a client state.

  T.C. Lethbridge was of this opinion. As he wrote in Herdsmen and Hermits:

  It is hard to believe that, provided as it was with an efficient naval force, the Roman high command could not have organized the destruction of the brochs and most of their inhabitants.3 It clearly did not attempt to do so. If it had, it is scarcely credible that the destruction of the towers would have escaped mention in Tacitus’s account of Agricola’s exploits. The answer surely is that the broch people were hostile to the murus-Gallicus tribes [builders of the timber-laced forts] and were either bought off by the Romans or actively assisted them.

  Although Rome failed to subdue the Picts, she succeeded wonderfully well in diverting their attentions away from free Alba. Henceforth the Picts directed their military energies southward against Rome and Rome’s British-Celtic allies. The long vendetta between Albans and the exiles from Armorica began to atrophy. Although enmity between the two continued for many years, in the future it was expressed mostly in minor raids and acts of piracy.

  By the end of the first century A.D., the famous brochs were no longer vital to Alban survival. Nevertheless, those in the northwest continued to serve a useful purpose. Pictish raids diminished, but the Irish increased the intensity of theirs. Overall, these forays may have amounted to little more than nuisances, but severe and bloody ones they must have been to those communities which had to endure them. Having a broch at hand in which to take refuge when Irish rovers hove in sight would have long remained a source of comfort to many Alban coastal and island dwellers.

  CHAPTER NINE

  FETLAR

  On a brisk September day early in the second century of the Christian era, a vessel bearing the venerable Farfarer name thrust her bluff bows around Sheep Head and entered home waters.

  The broad reach of Tresta Bay on the south coast of Shetland’s Fetlar island now lay open to her. As she turned into it, her weather-stained sail was spotted by two boys out on the headland searching for strayed sheep. Shrieking with excitement, they raced for a cluster of low, sod-covered houses crouched at the foot of Tresta’s inner cove.

  The ship had been gone for a year and a half. Gone to Tilli, that mystical island far out in the Western Ocean. During her absence women, children, and the clan’s old folk had worked an increasingly parsimonious land. Through centuries of chill, wet weather, peat had been thickening on the island’s hills, remorselessly smothering fields and pastures. Wiry sheep and the munificence of the surrounding seas contrived to make human life possible, but it was the far-faring men, and the valuta they brought home, who made it not just possible, but good.

  The forty-odd people of Farfarer’s clan lived in five houses set in a curve across the mouth of a small valley whose stream debouched into the home cove over a stretch of sandy beach.

  The houses were low because their earth and flagstone floors were sunk two feet deep into sand and silt. Their turf walls, ballasted with stone and rubble, were thick enough to contain cells that served as bed and storage chambers. This cellular construction also had the advantage of reducing the roof span so it could be bridged by very short rafters—a matter of moment in a land bereft of trees.

  The roofs were cambered, thatched with bracken, and covered with tur
ves laid shingle fashion. They could deflect even the almost horizontally driven rains of winter. Grass grew so lushly over all that the structures could have been mistaken for natural mounds, save for blue wisps of peat smoke wafting upward from their rounded peaks.

  Shetland’s Mousa Broch has stood for as long as eighteen centuries.

  A stone-walled hearth under the smoke hole was at the centre of each house, giving warmth and light. The latter was supplemented by soapstone saucer lamps fuelled with pungent sea mammal or seabird oil. Furniture consisted of benches and “dressers” made of flat sandstone slabs and driftwood. Spare clothing and household and fishing gear hung from roof and walls.

  The houses waiting just beyond the beach promised a snug and cosy welcome to Farfarer’s crew, after an absence of eighteen months, during which they had mostly lived under their vessel’s hull upturned on Tilli’s beaches.

  As the vessel neared the shore her sail came down with a run. Black dogs, which seemed as much at home in the water as on the land, were the first to plunge into the surf to welcome the homecomers. They were followed by a laughing, shouting mob of people wading out waist deep to seize the lines flung to them.

  Her cargo included enough coils of walrus-hide rope to provide standing and running rigging for many ships. There were whole hides with which to sheath, or resheath, boats and vessels. Out of her hold came dozens of sealskin sacks filled with fetid seal tar for caulking ships’ seams. Other sacks were stuffed with eiderdown. There were bales of white fox furs, and the creamy pelts of four water bears, fit to adorn the houses of lordly folk in far-off lands.