Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time

Rome never occupied Sutherland or Caithness—yet Roman brass tablets were found in a Pictish broch. What other traces survive from a past with few written records?

In Scotland’s far north, where writing arrived late, the past survives in fragments: saga narratives, scattered chronicles and traces in the ground. Writing in the early twentieth century, James Gray pieces these sources together to follow the Norse occupation of Sutherland and Caithness, from its beginnings around 870 to the end of Norse influence in 1266. Jarls and the Freskyn family stand amid a history shaped by Picts, Scots and northern seas—but much of the record is uncertain, and some events remain conjectural. How much of this lost northern story can the sagas bring into focus?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.