d the
Catholic Church.

Worshipping, as the Vikings did, amongst others, the "fair white god
Baldr of golden beauty," and accounting as base-born "hellskins" those
of darker hue, it seems strange that they should so soon have taken
to themselves Celtic wives. But we have seen that they came by sea and
that no Norse women were allowed in Viking ships,[4] and thus it was
Celtic mothers alone that perpetuated the race. They also taught the
children the Gaelic tongue, and, on the mainland in all Sutherland and
Caithness save the north-eastern portions of the latter, Gaelic soon
became again the only spoken language.

But the language was Gaelic with a difference. As already stated, it
contained, especially in connection with the sea, and ships, gear, and
tackle, many old Norse words,[5] and, in the Gaelic of Sutherland, as
in the English of Orkney and Shetland and of Caithness and Moray
the Old Norse roots remain. Nor need we believe that every Magnus or
Sweyn, or Ragnvald was a pure Norseman. For their Celtic mothers often
preferred to give their children Old Norse names.

The Norse place-names,[6] too, have been faithfully preserved by
Gaelic inhabitants, and are still with us; and despite their varying
spellings in documents of title and maps of different dates, these
names generally yield up the secret of their original meanings when
they can be traced back to the earliest charters, especially if they
can be compared with the corresponding Gaelic versions of them in use
at the present time. For Gaelic was ever a trustworthy vehicle of the
original Norse. The Norse place-names too are found in the same spots
on which the remains of brochs exist, that is, on the best land at the
lowest levels which the Picts had already cultivated, and which the
Norse invaders seized. Such names are also found on the eastern coast
as far south as Dingwall, both in Ross and Cromarty. They were never
imposed on the Moray seaboard, which was not permanently held by the
Norse. Freskyn and his descendants saw to that. His fortress at Duffus
checked all raids from their fort at Burghead.

Of outward and visible monuments, save here and there a howe or
grave-mound, the Vikings, unlike their Pictish predecessors, have
left us little or nothing on the mainland. In Iceland the skali[7] or
farm-house of the Norseman was built with some stone and turf below,
and a superstructure of wood which has long ago perished,[8] and but
slight traces of fo