The
Berserk fury and stubborn tenacity of our Highland regiments derive
their origin from the Viking as well as from the Celtic strain.[21]
Our sailors too, had they been Celts, would not readily have left
smooth water. It was Viking not Celtic blood that drove them to the
open sea. It was Viking skill that built the ships, managed them in
storms through Viking discipline, navigated them across the ocean, and
gave us the naval and commercial supremacy which founded and preserves
our empire overseas.
They came to us not only from Norway direct, westwards across the sea.
They came to us also from Normandy northwards through England. The
first swarms of Norsemen had brought with them rapine and disorder.
Later on the Norman came to the north to curb such evils, and to
organise, administer, and rule the land. The Normans succeeded in
this as signally as the Saxon barons, introduced under Saint Margaret,
Malcolm Canmore's Saxon queen, had failed. David I was by education a
Norman knight. At heart he was an ecclesiastic. As Scotland's king,
he was, in theory, owner of Scotland's soil from the Tweed to the
Pentland Firth, and he disposed of it to his feudal barons, mainly
Norman, and to religious foundations on Norman lines, as the Norman
kings of England had done there before him, in order to organise and
consolidate his kingdom; and his successors did the same.
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