Ebook Sketch of the Civil and Traditional History of Caithness, From the Tenth Century

I had long cherished a desire to draw up something like a regular history of Caithness, but on making the requisite investigation, I found that neither the public records of the county, nor yet family papers, afforded sufficient materials for the purpose. The present work, therefore, is merely a Sketch or outline mostly drawn from other sources, and in some measure aided by local tradition. The writer to whom I have been chiefly indebted for information regarding what may be called the ancient history of Caithness, is Torfaeus, whose authority on this point is justly entitled to credit from the following circumstance: - When the Orkney islands, of which Caithness formed a part of the earldom for so many hundred years, had from increase of population and proximity to Scotland become valuable as an appendage to the crown of Norway, an historiographer was appointed to reside in the island of Flota, and to record all transactions of any public moment that took place in the two counties. These were regularly entered into a diary or journal, entitled the "Codex Flatensis," or Book of Flota. The work, which was one of national importance, was, for better preservation, afterwards deposited in the royal library at Copenhagen; and from it, and the "Orkneyinga Saga" - the latter a comipilation of Jonas Jonnaeus, an Icelandic scholar - Torfaeus drew the materials of his history.