if the Lothbrok of Northumbrian notoriety, is too early; the Ingiborg, if the wife of Sigurd the Second, is too late, though, as the first Christian countess of Orkney, her name may have got mixed up in some way with the tomb of the last Pagan Jarl. But should we expect to find any sober record of the date and purposes of the Howe in any of the scribblings on the walls? The English barbarians who write their names and rhymes on the walls of the tombs around Delhi and Agra do not say this is the tomb of Humayoon, or Akbar, or of Etimad Doulah, or Seyed Ahmed. They write some doggerel about Timour the Tartar, or the Great Mogul, or some wretched jokes about their own people. The same feeling seems to have guided the Christian Northmen in their treatment of the tomb of their Pagan predecessor, and though, consequently, we find nothing that can fairly be quoted as confirming the view that it is the tomb of Havard, there is nothing that can be assumed as contradicting it.
One inscription may, however, be considered as throwing some light on the subject. In XIX. XX. it is related, though in words so differently translated by the various experts to whom it was submitted, that it is difficult to quote them, that "much fee was found in the Orkhow, and that this treasure was buried to the north west," adding, "happy is he who may discover this great wealth."[1] A few years ago a great treasure was found to the north-west of Maes-Howe, in Skail Bay, just in such a position as a pirate on his way to the Holy Land would hide it, in the hope, on his return, to dig it up and take it home; but shipwreck or fever may have prevented his doing this. With this treasure were found, as mentioned above, coins of Athelstane of the date of 925, and of the Caliphs of Bagdad, extending to 945, just such dates as we should expect in a tomb of 970, recent, but not the most recent coins. Connecting these with the silver torques found in the conoid barrows around the Ring of Brogar, we seem to have exactly such a group of monuments as the histories above quoted would lead us to expect, and which with their contents belong almost certainly to the age above assigned to them.
Had Maes-Howe been an old sepulchre of an earlier race, when
- ↑ Farrer. 'Inscriptions in the Orkneys,' p. 37.
