Hi Fiona. Late comment on this but I only just discovered that Brora is derived from a Norse name meaning “river with a bridge”. Given that Norse was being superseded by Gaelic by the 10th/11th century and names need some time to stick, this probably gives more support for bridges existing in the north of Scotland at the time of Sueno’s Stone’s creation.
Hi Alastair, never too late to comment! This is really interesting, and perhaps gets some more weight from Alex Woolf's observation in his 2013 Kathleen Hughes lecture "The Churches of Pictavia" that the stones in Dunrobin Castle may once have marked out an ecclesiastical territory centred on the lower River Brora:
"[Martin Carver's] work at Portmahomack has encouraged [him] to see the great cross slabs of Easter Ross, such as those at Nigg, Shandwick and Hilton of Cadboll, as marking out the limits of some sort of territory or sphere of influence of the Church settlement he excavated, perhaps the equivalent to the Islandshire appended to Lindisfarne. Something similar might be argued for the four cross slabs now held in the museum at Dunrobin Castle in Sutherland, gathered together in the nineteenth century from four nearby sites, Golspie, Clynekirton, Collieburn and Lothbeg, which might mark out a territory centred on the lower reaches of the Brora River, one of the few areas of extensive arable land along the Sutherland coast."
So perhaps the bridge after which Brora is named was once part of a Pictish monastic estate? It would make sense, as monks seem to have been among the best placed groups to build and maintain bridges in the early medieval era.
Hi Fiona. Late comment on this but I only just discovered that Brora is derived from a Norse name meaning “river with a bridge”. Given that Norse was being superseded by Gaelic by the 10th/11th century and names need some time to stick, this probably gives more support for bridges existing in the north of Scotland at the time of Sueno’s Stone’s creation.
Hi Alastair, never too late to comment! This is really interesting, and perhaps gets some more weight from Alex Woolf's observation in his 2013 Kathleen Hughes lecture "The Churches of Pictavia" that the stones in Dunrobin Castle may once have marked out an ecclesiastical territory centred on the lower River Brora:
"[Martin Carver's] work at Portmahomack has encouraged [him] to see the great cross slabs of Easter Ross, such as those at Nigg, Shandwick and Hilton of Cadboll, as marking out the limits of some sort of territory or sphere of influence of the Church settlement he excavated, perhaps the equivalent to the Islandshire appended to Lindisfarne. Something similar might be argued for the four cross slabs now held in the museum at Dunrobin Castle in Sutherland, gathered together in the nineteenth century from four nearby sites, Golspie, Clynekirton, Collieburn and Lothbeg, which might mark out a territory centred on the lower reaches of the Brora River, one of the few areas of extensive arable land along the Sutherland coast."
So perhaps the bridge after which Brora is named was once part of a Pictish monastic estate? It would make sense, as monks seem to have been among the best placed groups to build and maintain bridges in the early medieval era.