342 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST 



go over into Caithness and then up into the woods to hunt 

 Red Deer or Reins." The period of these hunting excursions 

 was about the middle of the twelfth century (i 159 according 

 to Jonaeus), and the Earls were Rognvald and Harald of 

 Orkney. The translator notes that the word edr, translated 

 " or," may mean or ( = Latin vel], or and ( == Latin sive), and 

 much doubt has been cast on the value of the passage on 

 the ground Uaat the sagaman said red-deer or reindeer 

 under the impression that the two names were synonymous. 

 This doubt seems to me to be superfluous, for who is likely 

 to have been more familiar with these two very distinct species 

 of Deer than the Scandinavian sagaman, who lived and 

 wrote in a country where Red Deer and Reindeer were both 

 common ? To me the whole difficulty is one of poetic licence ; 

 did or did not the historian-poet transfer, for the sake of 

 effect, the animals hunted in his own country -to the foreign 

 shores of Caithness ? I hardly think so, for the skalds are 

 seldom inaccurate in their descriptions of the objects of the 

 chase. Further the statement receives some confirmation 

 from the spirited representation of a Reindeer obviously 

 drawn from the life, carved on a sculptured stone found 

 near Grantown in Inverness-shire. The date of the early 

 Christian monuments, of which this is one, is believed to 

 range about the tenth century of our era. 



The Reindeer, once abundant in Scotland throughout 

 the length of the land, gradually became limited in range 

 and finally disappeared. What led to its extinction? It was 

 not lack of suitable food, for brushwood and especially 

 " Reindeer Moss," the lichen Cladonia rangiferina, are still 

 abundant in the counties where it made its last appearance. 

 It was not wholly change of climate, forthe Reindeer survived 

 the much greater alteration from the cold of the Ice Age to 

 the mild humidity which heralded the period of peat-for- 

 mation, and back again to the drier and cooler times when 

 the pine forest spread over Scotland. It may have been 

 partly deliberate destruction by man, for his kitchen- 

 middens show that he hunted the Reindeer for food; but 

 these were days of simple weapons, the javelin and the bow 

 and arrow, and history has seldom recorded the extermination 

 of a fleet and wary race by a primitive people to whom the 

 murderous slaughter of modern sport was unknown. On the 



