Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time or, The Jarls and The Freskyns by James Gray In the following pages an attempt is made to fit together facts derived, on the one hand, from those portions of the Orkneyinga, St. Magnus and Hakonar Sagas which relate to the extreme north end of the mainland of Scotland, and, on the other hand, from such scanty English and Scottish records, bearing on its history, as have survived, so as to form a connected account, from the Scottish point of view, of the Norse occupation of most of the more fertile parts of Sutherland and Caithness from its beginning about 870 until its close, when these counties were freed from Norse influence, and Man and the Hebrides were incorporated in the kingdom of Scotland by treaty with Norway in 1266. References to the authorities mentioned above and to later works bearing on the subject have been inserted in the hope that others, more leisured and more competent, may supplement them by further research, and convert those portions of the narrative which are at present largely conjectural from story into history. What manner of men the prehistoric races which in early ages successively inhabited the northern end of the Scottish mainland may have been, we can now hardly imagine. Dr. Joseph Anderson's classical volumes on Scotland in Pagan Times tell us something, indeed all that can now be known, of some of them, and in the Royal Commission's Reports and Inventories of the Early Monuments of Sutherland and of Caithness respectively, Mr. Curle has classified their visible remains, and may, let us hope, with the aid of legislation, save those relics from the roadmaker or dykebuilder. Lastly, such superstitions, or survivals of beliefs, as remain in the north of Scotland from early days have been collected, arranged, and explained by the late Mr.

George Henderson in an able book on that subject. Enquiries such as these, however, belong to the provinces of arch ology and folk-psychology, and not to that of history, still less to that of contemporary history, which began in the north, as elsewhere, with oral tradition, handed down at first by men of recording memories, and then committed to writing, and afterwards to print; and both in Norway and Iceland on the one hand, and in the Highlands on the other such men were by no means rare, and were deservedly held in the highest honour. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work.

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