The book Arran; - Cook Clan

EARLY ARRAN 13
of Olaf and Ivar swept grandly by its shore or sheltered in
its bays, some poring ' red birds of the sea,' lifting strange
striped sails amid the sea haze, their gunwales dotted in line
with the ' war-targets ' of black and gold, disgorged upon
the shore and up the glens their companies of thirty or forty
tall fair vikings, with mighty weapons, to carry off a saleable
prey of household gear or helpless folk ; and even if once
beaten off they would come again. Some such visit may
have left its grim record in the grave-mound. But we get
something even more definite in the boat-shaped burial at
King's Cross, under the very wall of what may have been a
stormed and captured fort. The coin so luckily found is a
humble piece of silver and much alloy, a stycas, minted by
an Archbishop of York, whose date is 837-54.
Coins, of course, remain in circulation long after they are
struck, especially in early times. Now in November 867
Ivar's conquering army in England is at York, and next year
is overrunning Northumbria. One or two years later, as
we have seen— ^the date is not quite certain—he is with a host
at Dumbarton. In the little coin at King's Cross we seem
to have a link connecting these enterprises. Perhaps some
captain of a local foray, or some Arran victim of the siege
from among its Norse settlers, has been brought to his
becoming resting-place on the low windy headland. At any
rate the capable soldiers of the sea, who would not have
Dumbarton to threaten their communications, were not likely
to neglect so useful a base as Arran or omit the opportunity
of its occupation. And so with certainty we may predicate
that in the last quarter of the ninth century at least the
island had received its Norse masters. It was the high noon
of Viking expansion : the western isles were theirs, they were
ringing Ireland with their fleets, were submerging England,
and were finding a footing, across the Irish sea, in Galloway,
adown the English coast and in Wales.
I Vol. i. p. 168.
^