Maeshowe was erected as a sepulchre for the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok, as John Stuart seems to infer from the inscriptions,[1] or of Havard Earl, as I have above attempted to show, is of little consequence to the general argument. That it was the grave of a Scandinavian Jarl, erected between 800 and 1000 A.D., seems quite certain, and my own impression is that it is almost as certainly the tomb of the individual Jarl to whom I have ventured to ascribe it.
As before mentioned, no argument against these views can be drawn from the fact that Thyra's tomb is lined with slabs of oak, while the chamber at Maes-Howe is formed with stone. The difference of the two localities is sufficient to account for this. Denmark has always been famous for its forests, and especially on the shores of the Baltic, at Jellinge, wood of the noblest dimensions was always available, whereas the stone of the country was hard and intractable. In the Orkneys, on the other hand, there is absolutely no timber of natural growth big enough to afford a good-sized walking-stick, and stone is not only everywhere abundant, but splits easily into slabs, self-faced, and most easily worked, so that stone, and stone only, would be the material employed in the Orkneys for that purpose, as wood would also be the best and most available material in Denmark.
If, before leaving this branch of the subject, we turn back for a few minutes to the Irish monuments, we are now in a position to judge more correctly of the probabilities of the case than we were. Assuming the three-chambered tumulus at New Grange to have been erected between the years 200 and 400, and Maes-Howe and Jellinge between 800 and 1000 A.D., we have a period of from five to six, it may possibly be seven, centuries between these monuments. Is this more than is sufficient to account for the difference between them, or is it too little? It is not easy to give a categorical answer to such a question, but judging from the experience gained from other styles, in different parts of the world, the conclusion generally would be that the time is in excess of what is required. That there was progress, considerable progress indeed, made in the interval between the Irish and Scandinavian monu-
- ↑ 'Proceedings Soc. Ant. Scot.' v. p. 265. If Ragnar was taken prisoner by Ella of Northumberland, it must have been in the latter half of the ninth century. Suhm places his death nearly a century earlier, 794.
