BIRSAY BAY.
(To Till EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Many people are asking where is Birsay Bay, in which, it is said, the Hampshire' sank. It is on the west coast of the mainland of Orkney, eighteen miles by road north-west of Kirkwall and fourteen north of Stromness. It is not unknown to antiquarians and historians ; for there was there a church of Columban foundation, whose bell, a precious relic, buried lest the ninth-century Vikings should take it, was found in 1862. Afterwards the greatest of the Jaris of Orkney,
Thorfinn, first Earl of Sutherland and Caithness, grandson of Malcolm the Second of Scotland, and son of the Jar' 'Sigurd of Clouted fame, lived at the Skali of Birsay, and, after conquering most of Scotland, Ireland, and the Isles, died at Birsay in 1064. The site of Christ's Kirk, for some time the Metropolitan Cathedral of Orkney, which Thorfinn built, and where he is buried, and the ruins of the palace, must have been full in view from H.M.S. ' Hampshire' as she steamed north of Marwick Head, and our greatest Earl could have seen the great Jarrs last resting-place. Both alike were much-travelled men ; each had returned from Rome just before his death ; both were great commanders and great organizers ; but certain expressions in the Saga's description of Thorfinn so strikingly fit Lord Kitchener that I may be pardoned if I translate a few of them : " He was early in coming to full growth, tallest and strongest of men, dark-haired, sharp• featured, and of complexion swarthy, a man of energy, fortunate in battle, skilful in war, and of high courage." So, too, was Kitchener ; and the scene of both their deaths was, it seems, at Birsay Bay—and " the loss " of each " was great to his dominion."—I am, Sir, &c.,
JAMES GRAY, President of the Viking Society,
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