A
cairn (
carn in
Irish,
carnedd in
Welsh,
càrn in
Scots Gaelic) is a manmade pile of stones,
often in a conical form. They are usually found in
uplands, on
moorland, on mountaintops or near waterways.
Purpose
In modern times cairns are often erected as landmarks. In ancient
times they were erected as
sepulchral
monuments, or used for practical and astronomical uses.
They are built for several purposes:
- They may mark a burial site, and may
memorialize the dead.
- They may mark the summit of a mountain.
- Placed at regular intervals, they indicate a path across stony
or barren terrain or across glaciers.
- The Inuit erect human-shaped cairns, or
inunnguaq as milestones or directional
markers in the Canadian Arctic.
- In North America, cairns may mark buffalo jumps or "drive lanes."
- In North America, cairns may be used for astronomy.
- In Norse Greenland, cairns were used as a hunting implement to
direct reindeer towards cliffs
- In the Canadian Maritimes cairns were
used as lighthouse-like holders for fires that guided boats, as in
the novel The Shipping
News.
- In North America, cairns are often petroforms in the shapes of turtles or other
animals.
- In the United Kingdom, they are often large Bronze Age structures which frequently contain
burial cists
- In
parks exhibiting fantastic rock formations, such as the Grand Canyon
, tourists often construct simple cairns in
reverence of the larger counterparts.
- They may have a strong aesthetic purpose, for example in the
art of Andy Goldsworthy.
- They may be used to commemorate events: anything from a battle
site, to the place where a cart tipped over.
- Some are merely places where farmers have collected stones
removed from a field.
They vary from loose, small piles of stones to elaborate feats of
engineering. In some places,
games are
regularly held to find out who can build the most beautiful cairn.
Cairns along
hiking trails are often
maintained by groups of hikers adding a stone when they pass.
History
The word derives from the
Scottish
Gaelic (and
Irish)
càrn
which has a much broader meaning, and can refer to various types of
hills and natural stone piles.
The term tends to be used most frequently in
reference to Scotland
, but is used
elsewhere.
Cairns can be found all over the world in alpine or mountainous
regions, and also in barren
desert and
tundra areas as well as on coasts.
Starting in the
Bronze Age,
cists were sometimes interred into cairns, which would
be situated in conspicuous positions, often on the skyline above
the village of the deceased. The stones may have been thought to
deter grave robbers and scavengers. A more sinister explanation is
that they were to stop the dead from rising. It is noteworthy that
there is a
Jewish tradition of placing small
stones on a person's grave whenever you visit, as a token of
respect. (Flowers are not usually placed on graves in the Orthodox
Jewish tradition.)
Stupas in India and
Tibet etc. probably started out in a similar
fashion, although they now generally contain the ashes of a
Buddhist saint or
lama.
In
Scotland, it is
traditional to carry a stone up from the bottom of the hill to
place on a cairn. In such a fashion, cairns would grow ever
larger. An old
Scots Gaelic blessing is
Cuiridh mi clach air do chàrn, i.e. 'I'll put a stone on
your cairn'.
In the Faroe Islands
(which are plagued by frequent fogs and heavy rain,
and have some of the highest seacliffs in the world) cairns are a
common navigational marker over rugged and hilly terrain. In
North Africa, they are sometimes called
kerkour.
Cairns are
also common on the Mediterranean island of Corsica
.
Today, cairns are often used to mark hiking trails or cross-country
routes in mountain regions at or above the
tree line. Most are small, a foot or less in
height, but a few are built taller so as to protrude through a
layer of snow.
A large cairn was built atop a hill next to
I-476 in Radnor, Pennsylvania
, to symbolize the area's Welsh
origins and
to beautify the visual imagery along the highway. It is
traditional for each person passing by a cairn to add a stone, as a
small bit of maintenance to counteract the destructive effects of
severe winter weather. Often the habit is to only add to the top,
and to use a smaller stone than the previous top stone, resulting
in a precarious stack of tiny pebbles.
In Scandinavia, cairns are still used as sea marks. They are
indicated in navigation charts and maintained as part of the
marking system. To increase visibility they are usually painted
white.
Scotland and Ireland
The
Duan Eireanach, an
ancient Irish poem, describes the erection of a family cairn; and
the
Senchus Mor, a collection
of
early Irish laws, prescribes a
fine of three three-year-old heifers for "not erecting the tomb of
thy chief."
Meetings of the tribes were held at them, and the inauguration of a
new chief took place on the cairn of one of his predecessors. It is
mentioned in the
Annals
of the Four Masters that, in 1225, the O'Connor was
inaugurated on the cairn of Fraech, the son of Fiodhach of the red
hair. In medieval times cairns are often referred to as boundary
marks, though probably not originally raised for that
purpose.
In a
charter by King Alexander
II of Scots (1221), granting the lands of Burgyn to the monks
of Kinloss
, the
boundary is described as passing "from the great oak in Malevin as
far as the Rune Pictorum", which is explained as "the Carne of the
Pecht's fieldis."
In
Scottish Highland districts
small cairns used to be erected—even in recent times—at places
where the coffin of a distinguished person was "rested" on its way
to the churchyard.
Memorial cairns are still occasionally
erected, as, for instance, the cairn raised in memory of the prince
consort at Balmoral
, and
"Maule's Cairn", in Glenesk, erected by the
earl of Dalhousie in 1866, in memory of
himself and certain friends specified by name in the inscription
placed upon it.
Cairns as people
The practice is common in English, cairns are sometimes referred to
by their anthropomorphic qualities. In German and Dutch, a cairn is
known as
Steinmann and
Stenenman respectively,
meaning literally "stone man". A form of the
Inuit inukshuk is
also meant to represent a human figure, and is called an
inunguak ("imitation of a person"). In Italy, especially
the
Italian Alps, a cairn is an
"Ometto", or a "small man".
Other names and traditions
In some regions, piles of rocks used to mark hiking trails are
called "ducks" or "duckies". These are typically smaller cairns, so
named because some would have a "beak" pointing in the direction of
the route. An expression "two rocks do not make a duck" reminds
hikers that just one rock resting upon another could be the result
of accident or nature rather than intentional trail marking.
The Finnish name for a cairn used as sea mark is "kummeli" which is
derived from the Swedish word "kummel".
A
traditional heap-like stone structure similar to a cairn is called
ovoo in Mongolia
. It
primarily serves religious purposes, and finds use in both
Tengriist and
Buddhist
ceremonies.
In areas of ancient Dalmatia, as Herzegovina and Krajina, they are
known by the Serbian word
gromila.
Cairns in legend
In the mythology of ancient Greece, cairns were associated with
Hermes, the god of overland travel. According
to one legend, Hermes was put on trial by
Hera
for slaying her favorite servant, the monster
Argus. All of the other gods acted as a jury, and as a
way of declaring their verdict they were given pebbles, and told to
throw them at whichever person they deemed to be in the right,
Hermes or Hera. Hermes argued so skillfully that he ended up buried
under a heap of pebbles, and this was the first cairn.
Sea cairns
Sea cairn in the Finnish
archipelago
Similar structures can be found in water, especially in
Scandinavia (there called
kuml or
kummel), often for the purposes of navigation (
sea marks). They are indicated in navigation charts
and maintained as part of the marking system. To increase
visibility they are usually painted white.
In English, structures in/below water are not generally called
"cairns". That is however the name given e.g. in the Finnish
navigation charts.
See also
References
- Arneborg 2004
- Radnor Township website, Gateway Enhancement
Strategy
External links
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