Was there a third Orkney Papay?
New book explores 'papar' evidence

The term ‘papar’ was the name given by the Norse to the clerics of the pre-Norse church. There are eight ‘papar’ place-names in Orkney, most notably ‘Papay’ as in Papa Westray and Papa Stronsay, Papdale in Kirkwall and Paplay in Holm and in South Ronaldsay. The other papar-names are Papleyhouse in Eday, an off-shore rock known as the Steeven of Papy in North Ronaldsay, and a lost island at one time listed as ‘the third Papa’.

There is no mention of these clerics in Orkneyinga saga, but the Historia Norvegiae written about the same date (c.1200) tells us that invading Vikings found the islands inhabited by Picts and papar when they first arrived.

The Historia described how these people were utterly destroyed by Viking attacks, but actually it had no very clear memory of events 400 years earlier. The writer of the Historia tells us that, from books abandoned by the papar, it was believed that ‘they were Africans adhering to Judiasm’. Why anyone ever should have believed such an unlikely theory is entirely incomprehensible.

It is not just in Orkney and Shetland that we hear about the papar. An Irish monk Dicuil described a hermit community on uninhabited islands which from his description were probably Faroe, and he tells how each summer the clerics visited a land even farther north which must have been Iceland. This Irish account seems to tally with the Icelandic Landnamabok which echoes the story of the books found in Orkney when it describes how the papar abandoned ‘bells, books and crosiers’ as they fled from the Norse in Iceland.

This and other literary evidence is examined by the Irish scholar Aidan MacDonald, who has made a long study of the papar. Literary evidence, however, is not the only possible approach. Additional information can be found from the 30 or so place-names scattered from the Western Isles to Iceland.

The book also contains chapters on sculpture, and on archaeological sites in Orkney, Shetland and Iceland. There is also a contribution dealing with the as yet unproved theory that the artificially deep plaggen soils found in some parts of Orkney may indicate the introduction of turf-manuring by agriculturally-minded churchmen.

The study of the papar has to tackle two main problems. What kind of people were they? Did they settle on inhospitable sea-stacks on the hermit-sites which undoubtedly exist in both Orkney and Shetland? Or were they clerics living comfortably on rich estates as might be deduced from the fertile land associated with names such as Papdale, Paplay (Holm), Paplay (South Ronaldsay) and both the Papay islands?

And did the Vikings really destroy the pre-Norse church, or do the papar-names indicate some kind of continuity from the Pictish to Norse period?

Jocelyn Rendall’s chapter on Papa Westray is central to much that has been written in recent years about the Pictish church in Orkney. The papar-name of the island is associated with the dedications to the pre-Norse saints. Boniface and Tredwell which seem to commemorate a mission sent c.715 AD from Northumbria to Pictland. This mission provides an alternative to the theory that Christianity reached Orkney exclusively by the western sea-ways.

Although these dedications may directly record this mission, another possibility is that they arise from a later cult. It is worth noting that Bishop John of Caithness when attacked and partially blinded at Scrabster was restored by the miraculous intervention of St Tredwell. This suggests that the Papa Westray dedication might date from an interest in her cult c.1200 rather than from a real 8th century mission.

Whether the papar were an 8th century reality of a 12th century myth is tackled in a chapter by Christopher Lowe describing his excavation of St Nicholas Chapel on the Papa Stronsay. The site has two phases: 1 12th century chapel and below it an older site of a less certain nature. On this site at any rate continuity between Pictish and Norse Christianity seems doubtful.

A general conclusion seems to be that papar-names are more likely to be of an 11th or 12th century date, rather than to have been coined by 8th century Vikings. It seems that the Christian Norse of this later date could recognise the sites of some pre-Norse churches, and often attached a papar-name to them.

A line of enquiry which would be worth pursuing in future research is the dedication of these churches and chapels. As well as a papar-name, these sites were often given a dedication to an early saint who, usually mistakenly, was thought to have been active in the area in early times. The papa-name was antiquarian – and so was the dedication.

There are two instances where a papa-name is coupled with a Ninian dedication: first, a chapel at Papil in Yell, and second, a former chapel near Wick which was located near Papey Geo. Furthermore, St Ninian’s Isle, Shetland, although not a papa-name, is another instance where a Ninian-dedication was attributed to a genuinely pre-Norse church. There are also dedications to St Laurence, possibly the 7th century Archbishop of Canterbury, who with very little justification came to be known as the ‘Apostle to the Picts’ and, of course, the Boniface and Tredwell dedications also fall into this category.

It would also be interesting to search for the ‘third Papay’, the island which appears in a 14th century list of Orkney islands. Nowadays we have only two Papay islands, so presumably ‘the third Papay’ must now be known by some other name. Perhaps it was just the Holm of Papay, but it is interesting to speculate that there might at one time have been another island supporting a community of clerics. Damsay where there are stories of a supposed nunnery is one possibility.

Barbara Crawford is to be congratulated in editing an excellent set of papers which are full of interest for Orkney readers. This book follows very soon after her Papa Stour and 1299, and shows that retirement has increased rather than diminished her historical output.

Willie Thomson