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less certainly in the ship in the Factor’s Cave at
Wemyss (see Mr. J. Patrick’s article in The Reliquary,
Jan. 1906), and in monuments commonly called
Danish, such as "Sueno’s Pillar," at Forres. In this
Mr. Romilly Allen found an arrangement of knots
characteristically Scandinavian, as at Aspatria (Cumberland),
Braddan (I. o. M.) and Clonmacnois ; otherwise
this elaborate shaft is unlike Norse, but like
Pictish work ; it is one of those monuments in which
two influences meet, and it may help towards the true
dating of the mysterious Pictish style if this stone
proves to be of the Viking Age. At Forres we are on
the border of country long held by the Norse ; Burghead
was a Viking stronghold, and there we find a
"hart and hound" stone in their style (No. 7, in Mr.
Romilly Allen’s Early Christian Monuments of
Scotland ; No. 11 also might be Viking work). Going
north we reach the Scandinavian relics of Caithness ;
the rune-inscribed "Ingulf" cross at Thurso is
comparatively late.
Leaving out, therefore, ogam stones without ornament
and difficult to date, we have a series of
Orkney and Shetland monuments, some bearing
ogams, which fall into line with Manx and Scottish
work of the late tenth to the twelfth centuries.
The conclusion seems to be that the age of
sculpture in Orkney and Shetland was rather after
than before the year 1000; that most of the relics
are those of re-introduced Christianity. It may be
that the faith lingered, but it was not dominant
before Olaf Tryggvason forcibly converted jarl Sigurd
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