lost more than once. At the same time, after 563, they had a most
valuable asset in Columba, their soldier missionary prince, and his
_milites Christi_, or soldiers of Christ, who gradually carried their
Christianity and Irish culture even up to Orkney itself, with many a
school of the Erse or Gaelic tongue, and thus paved the way for
the consolidation of the whole of Alban into one political unit by
providing its people with a common language.

But in order to live the Scots had been forced to defeat many foes,
such as the Britons of Strathclyde, whose capital was at Alcluyd
or Dunbarton,[16] the Northumbrians on the south, and the Picts of
Atholl, Forfar, Fife and Kincardine, which comprised most of the
fertile land south of the Grampians. The great Pictish province of
Moray on the north of the Grampians, however, remained unsubdued, and
it took the Scots several centuries more to reduce it.

It was when the Scottish conquests above referred to were thus far
completed that the new factor, with which we are mainly concerned,
was introduced into the problem. This factor was, as stated, _the
Northmen_.




CHAPTER III.

_The Early Norse Jarls._


It was in the reign of Constantine I, son of the great Pictish king,