Note (return) — Chapter II
Reading edition
Being Celts, the Picts would shun the open sea. They feared it, for they had no chance on it, as their vessels were often merely hides stretched on wattles, resembling enlarged coracles. Yet with such rude ships as they had, they reached Orkney, Shetland, the Faroes and Iceland as hermits or missionaries.10 In Norse times they never had the mastery of the sea, and the Pictish navy is a myth of earlier days.11