Further, Christian though he had been
long before Viking times, the Pict of Cat derived his Christianity
at first and chiefly from the Pictish missions, and later from
the Columban Church, both without reference to Papal Rome; and his
missionaries not only settled on islands off his coasts, but later on
worshipped in his small churches on the mainland; and many a Pictish
saint of holy life was held in reverence there.
About the eighth century and probably earlier, immigrants from the
southern shores of the Baltic pressed the Norse westwards in Norway,
and later on over-population in the sterile lands which lie along
Norway's western shores, drove its inhabitants forth from its western
fjords north of Stavanger and from The Vik or great bay of the
Christiania Fjord, whence they may have derived their name of Vikings,
across the North Sea to the opposite coasts of Shetland, Orkney and
Cat, where they found oxen and sheep to slaughter on the nesses or
headlands, and stores of grain, and some silver and even gold in the
shrines and on the persons of those whom they attacked, and in
still later days they sought new lands over the sea and permanent
settlements, where they would have no scat to pay to any overlord or
feudal superior.
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