Scandinavian-Britain

46 SCANDINAVIAN BRITAIN"droves of them (Scando-Gothic sea-rovers) cameover centuries before the Hengest and Horsa of thestories, if they were not indeed the actual large- boned,red-haired men whom Agricola described to his sonin-law."He supported his theory with a reference toDr. Collingwood Bruce, the historian of the RomanWall, who, describingan altar found near Thirlwallabout 1757, said: "Hodgson (the historian ofNorthumberland)remarks thatOdin, as we find in the Death-songVithris was a name ofof Lodbroc . .If Veteres and the Scandinavian Odin are identical,we are thus furnished with evidence of the earlysettlement of the Teutonic tribes in England." Butthis altar, and another he mentions from Condercum(Ben well Hill, Northumberland.), compared with altarsnow at Chesters on the Wall, and inscribed " DibusVeteribus," are more likelyto have been dedicated" To the Ancient Gods " than to the Vidhrir of theEdda, many hundred years later. Huxley (in Laing'sPrehistoric Remains of Caithness] suggested that byanthropological evidence, long before the well-knownNorse and Danish invasions, a stream of Scandinavianshad come into Scotland ;Professor Rolleston connectedthe Round-headed men of the Bronze Age in Yorkshirewith Denmark, but this refers to the racial originof tribes three thousand years ago. Such facts do notsupport speculation, misled by the hope of findinggrains of truth in Ossianic poetry, Arthurian legendand late Scandinavian sagas, in all of which there isthe same tendency to antedate incidents and to losethe perspective of history.