present time. But the
_Orkneyinga, St. Magnus_, and _Hakon's Sagas_, when they take up their
story, present us with a graphic and human and consecutive account
of much which would otherwise have remained unknown, and their story,
though tinged here and there with romance through the writers' desire
for dramatic effect, is, so far as the main facts go, singularly
faithful and accurate, when it can be tested by contemporary
chronicles.

Until the twelfth or the thirteenth century, save for these Sagas, we
learn hardly anything of Sutherland, or, indeed, of the extreme north
of Scotland from any record written either by anyone living there or
by anyone with local knowledge, and for facts before those given in
the _Orkneyinga Saga_ we have to cast about among historians of
the Roman Empire and amongst early Greek geographers, or later
ecclesiastical writers, to find nothing save a few names of places and
some scattered references to vanished races, tongues and Churches. For
information about the Picts we have at first to rely on the researches
of some of our trustworthy archaeologists, and at a later date on
the annals, largely Irish, collected by the late Mr. Skene in his
_Chronicles of the Picts and Scots_, and in the works of Mr. Ritson,
into which it is no part of our purpose to enter in detail. All the
authorities for early Scottish history have been ably dealt with by
Sir Herbert Maxwell in his book on the _Early Chronicles Relating to
Scotland_, reproducing the Rhind lectures delivered by him in 1912. At
the end of our period reliable references to charters from the twelfth
century onwards will be found in _Origines Parochiales Scotiae_, and
especially in the second part of the second volume of that valuable
work of monumental research, produced, under the late Mr. Cosmo Innes,
by Mr. James Brichan, and presented to the Bannatyne Club by the
second Duke of Sutherland and the late Sir David Dundas. There are
also the reprints, often with elaborate notes, of Scottish Charters
by Sir Archibald C. Lawrie, The Bannatyne Club, The Spalding Club, The
Viking Society, Mr. Alan O. Anderson, and others. The first volume
of the Orkney and Shetland Records published by the Viking Society is
prefaced by an able introduction of great interest.

By way of introduction to Norse times, we may attempt to state very
shortly some of the leading events in Caledonia in Roman, Pictish, and
Scottish times from near the end of the first cen