SCRATCH ON A SLATE

Taranaki Daily News, 1 December 1934, Page 22 (Supplement)

SCRATCH ON A SLATE

VIKING’S PICTURE OF HIS SHIP. A HOUSE IN THE SHETLANDS. Nearly a thousand years ago an artist h the Shetland Isles started to make a picture, says the Children’s Newspaper. He was a Viking, so of course the picture was of a ship. Instead of a janvas he had a piece of slate, and he scratched on it with a sharp point, while (no doubt) people looked on and criticised, as the/ do to-day. This summer his picture has been admired and criticised afresh, after lying hidden for centuries. There are about 50 other bits of slate decorated with designs, bat none so ambitious as the Viking •hip. It has a mast forward, with stays and jfrrrrmrts. The prow and stem are high, Wrftb a steering oar at the stem. Single Btwktes suggest the crew, ten oarsmen, tSjree stwsrsmen and the skipper. There h something extraordinarily interesting

and moving about this contemporary picture of a Viking ship. No doubt she meant as much to the artist as the Golden Hind or the Victory do to us. The picture was found during excavations carried out in the summer at Sumburgh Voe in the Shetland Isles by H.M. Office of Works under the direction of Mr. A. O. Curies. Here the storms uncovered ruins of very ancient dwellings and excavations begun 30 years ago. We know now that people dwelled on the site from the Stone Age till the tenth to twelfth centuries. Their homes, hearths and pottery have been found. We know that they lived with their cattle, for the most part, and the bones and shells in their middens tell us what they ate in the different ages. The finest house is the Viking house lately excavated, which is 96 reet long, and had a huge fire with two fireplaces, and a raised dais for table and benches. Here on the bitter Shetland nights men were warm and merry. Here they sang songs like the Sea Reiver’s Song, and here they admired the masterpiece of the very Old Master whose name we shall never know, though we know his work, the Viking ship scratched on a bit of slate seven inches *by two inches.