SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

MANX MEMORIAL STONES OF THE VIKING
PERIOD
By DAVID M. WILSON
There are more Runic inscriptions to be met with in this island,
than perhaps in any other nation; most of them upon funeral
monuments. They are, generally, on long fiat rag-stone, with
crosses on one or both sides, and little embellishments of men on
horseback, or in arms; stags, dogs, birds, or other devices;
probably, the achievements of some potable person. The
inscriptions are generally on one edge, to be read from the
bottom upwards; most of them, after so many ages, are very
entire and writ in the old Norwegian language ...
Bishop Thomas Wilson, 1722.
IT is difficult to estimate the impact of the Vikings on the
Celtic settlers of the Isle of Man. There seems little
reason to suspect that there was any aggressive relapse
into paganism as a result of the invasions, although
Professor Bersu once suggested - in my opinion
unconvincingly - that the Christian cemetery at
Balladoole was deliberately slighted by the Vikings." Mr
and Mrs Megaw.s on the other hand, have suggested - on
fairly firm grounds - that the two peoples lived alongside
each other reasonably peacefully and imply that the Manx
Vikings more or less drifted into Christianity. By the
middle of the tenth century there is definite evidence that
the Scandinavian settlers of the Isle of Man had become,
at least formally, Christian; for at this period the first
memorial crosses and cross-slabs appear, decorated with
both Christian and pagan Viking motifs in Anglo-Celtic
tradition. The crosses themselves are usually carved on
1 G. Bersu and D. M. Wilson, Three Viking Graves in the Isle of Man (Society
for Medieval Archaeology: Monograph series I, 1966), 13.
• B. R. S. and E. M. Megaw 'The Norse Heritage in the Isle of Man', The
Early Cultures of North-west Europe (ed. C. Fox and B. Dickins, 1950), 146-7
note.