Note 268 — Chapter XV · BATTLE OF RAUDABIORG.

Raudabiorg, or Red Headland, must be looked for in the neighbourhood of Dunnet Head, where the red beds of the Old Red Sandstone form the distinctive feature of the coast. A little to the east of Dunnet Head there is an outlying crag named Brough of Rattar, or Rattar Brough—in all probability a corrupted form of the old name Raudabiorg. Still farther to the eastward, where the burn of Rattar enters the Firth, are the ruins of an old “Pictish tower,” or broch—in old Norse, borg. In its immediate vicinity is a little promontory called Kirk o’ Taing (Kirkiu Tunga, the Tongue, or Ness of the Kirk), on which are the ruins of one of the small rudely-built chapels of the early Christian time. On the north side of the chapel the edges of a number of stone cists are visible through the turf; and from two of these, which were dug up in cutting a drain in the spring of 1872, eight silver armlets of the ancient penannular form were obtained. These correspond exactly with the armlets which formed part of the great hoard exhumed at Skaill, in Orkney, on the opposite side of the Firth, with Cufic and Anglo-Saxon coins of the tenth century—in all probability a hoard deposited by some of the vikings on their return from a plundering expedition. As Earl Thorfinn and his men were Christians, it seems probable that, if the chapel was then in existence, the bodies of the seventy slain in the fight off Raudabiorg, which were landed here, would be buried in the consecrated ground attached to this chapel.