Scandinavian-Britain

THE EARLDOM OF ORKNEY 259were Norse with few exceptions ;the parishionersof Cunningsburgh in 1576 were named Olaw (4),Magnus (7), Ereik, Swaine, Symone (Saemund),Brownie (Brunn), with Nichole, Erasmus and John,more recent names than the heathen age but stillNorse, and the Celtic Hector ;all their holdings were,as they still remain, named in Norse. Indeed it ishardly profitable to attempt here any survey of Orkneyand Shetland place-names ; they are, of course, socompletely Scandinavian as to need a special volumefor their elucidation (see Dr. Jakob Jakobsen, Dialedand Place-names ofShetland, 1897; and ShetlandsoernesStednavne, 1901).George Buchanan in 1582 said that the Shetlandmeasures, numbers and weights were "Germanic" or"almost old Gothic." Brand in 1701 remarked thatShetlanders spoke Norse, though Dutch was understoodowing to the trade with Holland. In 1 7 1 1 Sir RobertSibbald called their language " Norn " (Norrcena), andso late as 1770 the Rev. George Low collected theremains of the language as then remembered on Foula,the westernmost of the Shetlands. The ballad of"Hildina" (trans. W. G. Collingwood, Ork. and S/iet.Old Lore, Ap. 1908) has been edited in a masterlytreatise, Hildinakocedetjyj^idi. Marius Haegstad (1900),in which the difficulties of a text dictated to one whowas entirely ignorant of the language have been clearedup, and the " Norn " is shown to be fairly pure Norse,with a very slight sprinkling of Danish, Faeroese, Frisianand English words. Itmay be remarked thatinitial H is sometimes dropped or added consonants;