At the end of the 17th century, observers noted the appearance of people on kayaks near the Orkney Islands. The locals called them Finns. The question of who these mysterious travelers were and how they managed to reach the coast of Northern Scotland has been repeatedly raised in foreign historiography. There are several possible answers: Sami, Eskimos, or Sikhirtya-the predecessors of the Nenets on the northern coast of Russia. The purpose of this study is to analyze the available sources and identify the main approaches to solving this problem.

Keywords: Scotland, Orkney Islands, XVII-XVIII centuries, kayaks, Finns, Sami, Eskimos, Sikhirtya.

In 1693, James Wallace, a curate from Kirkwall, published a Description of the Orkney Islands. Among the various notes that are of a geographical and cultural nature, the following interesting description stands out::

"From time to time, people who are called Finns appear in these waters. In the year 1682, one of them was seen in a small boat off the southern tip of the island of Edey, and many people gathered to see him, but when they decided to launch a boat to try to capture him, he immediately took to flight. Also in the year 1684, another was sighted off the coast of the island of Uestrei, and after that, for some time, the fishermen caught little or no fish at all, so that it was noticed that the Finns were taking fish away from the places where they sailed. These Finns seem to belong to those peoples who inhabit the Davis Strait region, a full description of which can be found in the Natural and Moral History of the Antilles, chapter XVIII. One of their boats was sent from Orkney to Edinburgh and is on display at the Royal College of Physicians with an oar and a device used for fishing" (Wallace, 1693, p. 28).

The priest's son, James Wallace, Jr., in the second edition of the book, provided the above passage with the following commentary::

"I must admit that it is not entirely clear to me how these Finns came to be off the coast here, but most likely they were carried by a storm from their native shores to the open sea, and they were not able to determine where they are and return home. However, they have an advantage: no matter how rough the sea is, their fish skin boats are made so that they do not sink, but only glide like gulls on the waves. Finn's shirt was attached to the boat in such a way that the water could not get in and hurt him until he wanted to unbutton his own clothes, which he never did, however, except when he was relieving himself or going ashore. Another of their boats is located in a church on the island of Burrey in the Orkney Archipelago "[Wallace, 1700, p. 60-61].

The Reverend John Brand, who visited the Shetland, Orkney Islands and the Caithness region as part of a delegation (from April 18 to June 24, 1700), wrote a book about his impressions "A Brief Description of the Orkney, Shetland Islands, Pentland-

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The Firth and Caithness (1701). In it, he also gave a place to a strange phenomenon:

"Finns often appear on these shores. A year ago, one of them was seen off Stronsay Island and the other a few months later off Westray. A certain gentleman from the island, along with many others, observed it near the shore, but when someone tries to capture them (Finns- D. T.), they immediately take to flight. It is amazing that this man, sitting in his small boat, must have sailed alone several hundred leagues from his native shore, which is the distance from Finland to the Orkney Islands; it is inconceivable to me what they live on all this time and how they are able to survive on the water for so long. His boat is made of sealskin or some other kind, and he is wearing a leather cape, and sitting in the center of his boat, with a small paddle in one hand and a fishing rod in the other, he catches fish. And if a Finn sees a wave coming during a storm, he knows how to sink the boat until the wave passes, otherwise his boat will inevitably capsize. Fishermen here notice that these Finnians or Finnians, arriving, take the fish away from the shore. One of their boats is kept in the Royal Medical College of Edinburgh and is considered a great rarity "[Brand, 1701, p. 50-51].

The inserted phrase about the impossibility of capturing Finn is a direct quote from the already considered episode "Descriptions of the Orkney Islands" by J. Wallace. There can be no doubt that J. R. R. Tolkien's Brand has read this book because he mentions it in the preface [Ibid., p. 8]. He himself was unable to observe the phenomena he reports firsthand, as he visited Orkney a year later. References to "a certain gentleman from the island" and local fishermen suggest that J. R. R. Tolkien may have been responsible for the discovery of the island. Brand spoke with eyewitnesses of those events.

Summing up the information of the two aforementioned authors, we can highlight the following. J. Wallace reports two sightings of Finns, in 1682 off Edey Island and in 1684 off Westray Island (Figure 1), and also indicates that one of their boats was sent to the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. His son adds that one of the Finns ' boats is in a church on Burrey Island. Thus, we are talking about at least three different cases of the appearance of mysterious navigators off the Orkney Islands, since the first boat, as reported by J. R. R. Tolkien, was found on the island of Orkney. Wallace, fleeing from pursuit. J. Brand, in turn, writes that Finns were seen twice in 1699 near the islands of Stronsay and Westray (Figure 1), and also repeats information about the boat stored in the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. Consequently, we can talk about five recorded sightings of Finns off the Orkney coast in the period from 1682 to 1699. Probably, there were much more of them, since the locals not only developed a tradition of calling newcomers Finns, but also associate the lack of catch with their presence.

None of the mentioned Finns ' kayaks have survived to this day. J. Tudor found no mention of a boat on Burrey Island [Tudor, 1883, p. 341], and D. McRitchie mentioned that that church had been destroyed for more than a century, and the kayak itself had disappeared without a trace [MacRitchie, 1912a, p. 500]. The second Finn boat, after the death of the curator of the collection E. Balfour in 1694, was sold along with other rarities to the College of Edinburgh. It was catalogued in 1695, but for some reason was not immediately transferred to the College's museum collection. The next cataloging, which took place already in 1780, did not record the kayak, and its further fate remains unknown. Whether it disappeared before being moved to Edinburgh College or was already sold there by unscrupulous caretakers is unknown, no document confirms its transfer [Idiens, 1999, p. 173]. There is also an assumption that it was one of two kayaks transferred by the University of Edinburgh (formerly the College) to the Royal Scottish Museum in 1865. However, this is not supported by any actual data [Whitaker, 1977, p. 42].

Who were these mysterious Finns? It should be noted that the Orkneys, like their neighbors the Shetlanders, have a rich layer of folklore about the Finns, inherited from their Norwegian ancestors. However, there is no direct connection with the episode in question in the image of the mythological Finns.-

Fig. 1. Time and place of Finns ' appearance off Orkney, as reported by J. R. R. Tolkien. Wallace and J. R. R. Tolkien Brand name.

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It's getting better. In the Scandinavian tradition, the word finns, which we have translated literally, was used to refer to the Sami people (Palsson, 1999, p. 30). According to J. R. R. Tolkien, According to Brand, the Finns came from Finland (although the distance indicated by him suggests that he meant rather Finnmark). The assumption that the Sami came to Orkney was made by D. MacRitchie (1912a, p. 505) and by the ethnologist J. McRitchie. However, due to a lack of data, both of them were forced to confine themselves to stating this possibility only . The problem is that to identify Finns, we mainly have descriptions of their boats. Judging by it, these are small closed leather keel - shaped vessels-kayaks. Did the Sami people have such boats? Consultations received from three specialists from museums in Northern Norway (d. Storm Museum of Tromso University, R. Persson-Waranger Sami Museum, H. K. Soborg-Alta Museum), showed the following: we have no information about the existence of such leather boats among the Sami in historical times, and the assumptions that they could be based on rock carvings of the Stone Age found in East Finnmark. By the Middle Ages, the Sami people had completely switched to wooden boats sewn with reindeer sinews.

J. Wallace considered the Finns who arrived to be natives of a certain people living on the shores of Davis Strait, and he referred to Chapter 18 of the Natural and Moral History of the Antilles (1658, English translation 1666) by Charles de Rochefort. The book is dedicated to describing the nature and inhabitants of the West Indies, but in this chapter after information about the sea unicorn (narwhal) We find an account of Captain Nicholas Thunes ' journey to Davis Strait in 1656 and his encounter with the local Eskimo people. Their boats, costumes and equipment are described in detail, and Rochefort surpasses all its predecessors in the detailed description of the Eskimo kayak [Rochefort, 1666, p. 110-111].

The hypothesis about the Eskimo origin of the Finns is prevailing in modern science. Finn's clothing, described by Wallace Jr., bears a resemblance to the tuvilik, an Eskimo waterproof jacket with a hood that was attached to the edges of the kayak hatch where the rower sat, which provided complete waterproofness. Moreover, the story of J. R. R. Tolkien The brand about the Finn's ability to "sink the boat" evokes associations with various techniques of Eskimo rowing: on the back, on the chest, as well as with the "Greenland coup" - the setting of an overturned kayak on an even keel, which was used when the boat capsized during hunting for sea animals or after a special flooding in a storm [Heath, 2004, p. 21-30].

However, the most important documentary confirmation of the Eskimo hypothesis is considered to be a 17th-century kayak in the museum of Marischal College (now the University of Aberdeen), which has a rather long history. In 1760, the Reverend Gastrell mentioned in his diary a canoe from King's College, Aberdeen, "seven yards long and two feet wide, which 32 years ago found itself in the River Don. There was a man on board, covered in hair and speaking in a language that no one could understand. He lived only three days, despite the fact that he was given all possible help "(cit. according to [Souter, 1934, p. 14]). F. Douglas, in his book "A General description of the East Coast of Scotland" (1782), also shared his impression of a canoe seen at Marischal College, covered with "fish skins stretched on wooden slats firmly fastened together. The top of the canoe is approximately 20 inches wide and gradually tapers to both ends. In the widest part there is a circular opening, sufficient to squeeze through, and around it is fitted a strap, about a foot long, to which the owner of the boat ties himself when he is not rowing with an oar; the oar is placed under several pieces of leather, which are attached to the sides of the canoe so that there is enough room not only the paddle, but also some other amazing tools that were found there. The canoe itself is approximately eighteen feet long" [Douglas, 1782, p. 114-115]. F. Douglas also cites the then popular opinion that the deceased owner of the canoe sailed from Labrador and lost his way. No further information about the kayak can be traced back to an entry in the Marischal College Museum catalog for 1824, which repeats the dating of F. Douglas and indicates Belelvi (a town north of Aberdeen) as the location of the discovery. The kayak has the ordinal number ABDUA: 6013, its length is 547.7 cm, width is 45.1 cm, the distance from the side to the keel is 17.8 cm, the bow depth is 20.3 cm (Fig. 2).

The kayak was assigned by K. Birket-Smith to the West Greenland type (Birket-Smith, 1924, p. 266). However, in 1976, the Marischal museum was visited by U Lennert, the head of the Kaanaaka Inuit community (a municipality in Northwestern Greenland), and after examining the kayak, contrary to expectations, he could not identify it as West Greenlandic. He suggested that the kayak originated from Eastern Greenland (Cunningham, 2001, p. 60). The common characteristics of both types are small cockpits, sharp cheekbones and relatively small volume, while the East Greenland type is distinguished by the upturned tip of the stern, a lower and flat bottom and a rounded shape of the sides. The solution to the contradictory classification lies in the fact that today it is difficult to distinguish local cca-

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2. ABDUA Kayak:6013 from the Marischal College Museum. Photo courtesy of the University of Aberdeen.

According to S. Jensen, due to the constant migration of the population in West Greenland, there were many types of such boats at the same time, and their appearance was dictated not so much by local tradition as by personal needs (Jensen, 1975, p. 9-12). Nevertheless, the Greenlandic origin of the kayak is not controversial.

At the moment, there are two groups of theories about how the Eskimos could have ended up off the coast of Northern Scotland. The classic hypothesis is that the Eskimos escaped from European ships, whose crews captured them in northern Canada and Greenland, so that on their return they could be shown as an overseas curiosity at fairs. Information about the first captured Eskimos brought to Europe dates back to 1567. They were a woman and a child brought to Zealand from Labrador by French sailors [Sturtevant and Quinn, 1999, p. 61]. M. Frobisher, after his expeditions to Baffin Land, brought four captives to his homeland. Davis captured one on the west coast of Greenland, and during the period from 1605 to 1660, Danish-Norwegian and Dutch navigators abducted more than 30 Eskimos (Gad, 1970, p. 238). We have no data on the capture of local residents by ship crews engaged in illegal fishing off the coast of Greenland, and we can only assume that the total number of prisoners was much higher. The trade in captive Eskimos was so lively that in 1720, the city of The States General of the Netherlands passed a resolution banning the abduction and transportation of Eskimos to Europe. In 1732, the Danish government followed suit and issued a Royal Declaration prohibiting the importation of Greenland Natives to Denmark, regardless of whether they traveled voluntarily or not [Fossett, 2001, p. 51].

For the first time, the idea of Eskimos escaping from a European ship appeared in the works of D. McRitchie. Estimating the distance from Labrador to Scotland at 2,000 miles, he believed that this trip could not have been accidental, since it requires a supply of fresh water for at least a month. In addition, a kayaker could only eat, drink, and relieve himself of his natural needs in calm weather, so his dependence on calm weather would be extreme. There is also the question of sleeping on the high seas. Even in calm conditions, the risk of rolling over in their sleep is very high, so Eskimos usually go sailing together if they plan to spend one or two nights at sea, and they tie their kayaks together to keep their balance [MacRitchie, 1912b, p. 222-223]. The idea of the abduction and subsequent escape of the Eskimos D. McRitchie drew from the book of Isaac la Peyrer " Message of Greenland "(1647). The passage he quoted described nine Eskimos who were captured in Greenland and brought to Denmark. Two of them tried to escape, were forcibly returned, and one was already 30-40 miles from the coast. However, the second time they managed to escape from their pursuers and swim away to the open sea. D. McRitchie suggested that this was not an isolated case, and some Eskimos on their way to Greenland could reach Orkney and Shetland Islands. However, he did not have any other sources reporting on the escape of the captured Eskimos [Ibid., p. 232-233].

In 1934, the address of the President of the Medical and Surgical Community of Aberdeen UK was published. Suter's "The History of our Kayak and some Others", which included a list of 33 Eskimo kayaks that were located in the UK at that time (including 18 Scottish ones). Regarding the already known Marischal kayak oarsman, the author noted: "...in my opinion, he was brought to Scotland (or Europe) as a free or unwitting passenger on a whaling ship returning home, and escaped from it when he saw land "[Souter, 1934, p. 17]. The same point of view was shared by E. Mikkelsen, who suggested that the captive should have tried to escape as soon as he saw land, and on the way from Greenland (from Cape Farvel) to Scotland, the Orkney Islands are the nearest coast that comes into view of navigators (Mikkelsen, 1954, p. 58).

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In 1971, the work of the Dutch anthropologist G. Noter "The oldest kayaks in the Netherlands" was published. The author visited Greenland in 1968, where the Angmassalik Eskimos told him that a kayak can stay in the water for more than two days if it is made of fresh hides and well oiled, but trips on such boats usually last no more than 12 hours, although in the old days they were much longer. G. Noter got the impression that the Eskimos consider the long distance, rough waves and lack of suitable food to be insurmountable difficulties for a long journey. In the author's opinion, the design of their kayaks is not suitable for sailing in the open sea [Nooter, 1971, p. 8-9]. Finally, G. Noter agrees with E. Mikkelsen's theory, adding the assumption that the abductions of Eskimos and their escapes continued even after the introduction of the resolution of the States General of the Netherlands:"...Looting and murder in Greenland did not stop in 1720 ...I can easily imagine how, on seeing the Dutch coast one day, a captain returning from Greenland would wish to get rid of the living evidence (of a stolen Eskimo), so as not to fall under the resolution of the States-General, and he would end up ordering the Greenlander to be thrown overboard " [Ibid., p. 10 - 11].

The second group of theories is united by the general idea that kayakers could reach the coast of Scotland on their own. I. Whitaker was the first author who seriously considered this possibility. He begins by criticizing the hypothesis of Eskimo escapes from European ships. Referring to the materials of D. McRitchie about the Eskimos who sailed away from Copenhagen, I. Whitaker admits that one or two of them could have reached the coast of Scotland, but it is unlikely that there were six or more of them (Whitaker, 1954, p. 102). Rejecting this hypothesis, he describes the conditions under which the Eskimos themselves could reach the coast of Scotland. The frequency of visits, according to I. Whitaker, meant planned trips. The author cites data that the kayak begins to pass water after being continuously in it for 48 hours [Ibid., p. 99], so the voyage should have been with stops during which the boat was dried, and the rower was supplied with fresh water. I. Whitaker stops on the following route scheme: from Greenland to The north-west coast of Iceland is 180 miles, from its south-east coast to the Faroe Islands 275, from them to Shetland 185 or to Orkney 200 miles [Ibid., p. 103].

Unfortunately, we did not have the opportunity to read J. Heath's article on this topic (Heath, 1987), but the author repeated its main conclusions in the chapter of the collective monograph " Kayaks of the Eastern Arctic: History, Design, and Technology "(2004). J. Heath points out that the coastal current near West Greenland it was pointed north, so if the kayak was swept out to sea, the oarsman knew how to get back home: first he had to swim east until he reached the coast, and then south. However, the Greenlander might not have known that the current at Baffin Land in Davis Strait was heading south. And if the storm continued for several days, or if the Eskimo got lost in the fog, he could get caught in this current, and the kayak would be carried far to the south, and when trying to swim to the east, as the rower's experience suggested, a fair wind and a North Atlantic current led him to the Orkney Islands (Fig. Heath thought it quite possible to make such an unplanned trip: the Eskimo could occasionally land on the ice floes, dry the kayak, and hunt with the tools he had in the boat. In addition, the top layer of ice provided a sufficient amount of drinking water (Heath, 2004, p. 13 - 14].

A curious theory connects the visits of Eskimos to Scotland with the onset of the Maunder minimum - a long period of low solar activity (1645-1710), which coincided with the coldest phase of the little Ice age (XIV-XIX centuries). Canadian researcher R. Fossett suggests that the Eskimos had a reason, opportunity, and necessary information to travel to the southeast. The main reason was the extreme cold snap, which affected the number of tides.-

3. North Atlantic currents.

- a is warm; b is cold.

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brezhny ice and advancing glaciers on land. Regarding the utopian nature of kayaking a distance of 2000 km, R. Fossett believes that this figure is exaggerated, in fact, the length of the path is only 1200 km. In her opinion, the proposed route should look like this: from Cape Brewster in the municipality of Ammassalik to the north-west coast of Iceland 260 km, from its south-east coast to the Faroe Islands 442, from them to Shetland 200 or to Orkney 322 km. The presence of a current off the coast of Greenland in the direction of the Gulf Stream, which affects the displacement of pack ice in a southerly direction, contributed to the proposed journey, moreover, the path from Greenland to Iceland (or even to the Faroe Islands) he could walk on ice. The researcher also refers to some experiments that showed that a well-oiled kayak can stay in fresh water for two weeks, and in the sea even more. The last thing that R. Fossett stops at is information. She claims that by the seventeenth century the Eskimos had knowledge of the inhabited lands in the east and a desire to explore them. Recorded in the 19th century. Eskimo legends record the memory of the Norman presence in Greenland, M. Frobisher's visits to Baffin Land, as well as clashes with Irish, Icelandic, Basque and Portuguese sailors in the XV-XVI centuries. Commenting on the hypothesis of Eskimo escapes, R. Fossett points out its weak point: despite the fact that most of the captives were brought to Denmark and the Netherlands, people on kayaks were seen only in British waters (Fossett, 2001, p. 67-82).

The latter theory seems the most likely. In the period from 1675 to 1700, cold water flows going south from the polar cap caused a drop in temperature in the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean by 4-5 0 C. This primarily negatively affected the catch in Norway, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Orkney, and Shetland, as cod migrated south (fish that felt comfortable at 4-7 0 C did not survive at temperatures below 2 0 C) [Lamb, 1995, p. 199-200]. Perhaps this could explain the long-established Orkney fisherman tradition of associating the lack of catch with the arrival of the Finns in the late 17th century. The changed climatic conditions in general adversely affected the wildlife of the North Atlantic region, including the populations of seals and caribou, the absence of which could be a key factor in the migration of Eskimos to the east.

But did the Eskimos travel by kayak? We know that Thule culture carriers migrated from Alaska to Greenland on dog sleds and umiaks, covering a distance of several hundred kilometers per season (McGhee, 2001, p. 209). Dog sleds were used by the Eskimos as the main transport for 10 months of the year, and from October to July they were also used on sea ice [Gilberg, 1984, p. 577-580]. We do not have accurate data on the climate in Greenland at the end of the 17th century, but researchers note the rapid spread of ice in the Norwegian Sea at that time, up to the point that in 1695 Iceland was trapped in ice for many miles around for several months [Sun and Yaskell, 2008, p.60]. Probably, an unprecedented drop in temperature led to a significant increase in the thickness of sea ice and almost year-round its presence in the coastal waters of Greenland. The route of the Eskimos, which proponents of their independent travel determine based on the extreme points of land on the way, is not really known. It can be assumed that it passed much north of Iceland, and therefore on ice. In this case, the Eskimos did not need to cross the Atlantic Ocean in kayaks: they made the main journey on sledges, and the boats were used at the last stage for hunting, during which they were noticed by the Orkneys.

When discussing other possible origins of the Finns, it should be pointed out that the closest neighbors of the Scots - the Welsh and Irish - also had traditional leather boats. However, the coracles and kurrahs used up to the twentieth century differ sharply from the kayak described in the sources, primarily in that they did not provide for covering the top with leather and fastening it to clothing. In addition, Scottish authors probably knew about this type of boat.

D. McRitchie notes that travelers of the XVI-XVII centuries. Leather boats are recorded in the population of the north of Western Siberia (MacRitchie, 1912b, p. 213-214). They were first mentioned by S. Barrow, who in 1556 saw "boats made of reindeer skins" among the Samoyeds who lived near Vaigach Island [English Travelers, 1937, pp. 108-109]. P. M. de Lamartiniere, who visited Novaya Zemlya in 1653 as part of the Danish trade expedition, points out that the boat was made by local people. it was "a canoe - built in the shape of a gondola, from 15 to 16 feet long, 2 1/2 feet wide - made very elaborately of fish bones and skin; inside the skin was sewn together in such a way that it was like a sack from one end of the canoe to the other; inside such a canoe they were covered up to the waist, so that that not a single drop of water could get inside the boats, and they can thus safely withstand any bad weather " [1911, p. 95]. F. O. Belyavsky says about

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the use of such boats by the Nenets and Khanty: "The shuttle - Ostyatsky and Samoyedic-is made like ordinary Russian shuttles, with the difference that a) they have no difference between the bow and stern, b) a person is wrapped on top with a tanned skin from whale intestines, which... it is collected in the middle of the shuttle, like a lady's reticules, on the top " [1833, p. 258-259].

There is a certain similarity in the description of Finn kayaks and Samoyedic shuttles. In both cases, we are talking about a specific type of boat, covered with leather so that only in the center of the upper part there is a hole in which a person climbs, and water cannot get inside the boat. However, in the description of the Samoyeds ' canoes, we do not find any references to the fact that they were somehow fastened to the outer clothing of the rowers.

Such boats could have been part of the culture of the pre-Nenets population of the northern Primorye tundra, representatives of the Arctic commercial economic complex-Sikhirtya (Golovnev, 1995, p. 47). The distance they would have to travel is much longer than the estimated route of the Eskimos from Greenland, but their route would run along the coast, which would greatly facilitate the journey. However, the question of Sikhirtya kayaks is ambiguous. N. V. Fedorova doubts the possibility of coasting on wooden or leather boats along the shores of the Kara Sea and the Gulf of Ob, and also notes that, despite the excellent preservation of wood in the cultural layer of excavated monuments in Yamal, no remains have been found indicating the use of boats by the inhabitants of these areas. settlements [Fedorova, 2002, p. 106]. Until the Sikhirtya leather boats are discovered, we are forced to focus only on narrative sources, which leaves the hypothesis of the West Siberian origin of the Finns problematic.

Summing up, we note the following. The closed leather keel boats described in the sources dramatically narrow down the range of possible contenders for the role of Orkney Finns. An early 18th-century kayak discovered near Aberdeen, which is believed to have originated in Greenland, is the main argument in favor of the fact that the Finns were Eskimos. Until the discovery of Sikhirtya's leather boats, which travelers have described as having similar features, we will not be able to dispute this. Until now, researchers disagree on what was the way of the Eskimos to the coast of Northern Scotland. The frequency of their occurrence indicates that this was a purposeful migration. However, only further research in the field of paleoclimatology will allow us to draw more definite conclusions.

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The article was submitted to the editorial Board on 20.06.13, in the final version-on 01.10.13.

Abstract

Late 17th century observers mentioned having seen people sailing in kayaks past the Orkney Islands. Local people called them Finns. The question as to who those people actually were and how they could possibly have reached northern Scotland has been raised more than once. The kayakers were believed to be either Sami, Eskimos or Sikhirtya -the legendary predecessors of the Nenets on the northern coast of Russia. The objective of this article is to analyze the sources available and describe possible approaches to elucidating the issue.

Keywords: Scotland, Orkney Islands, 17th-18th centuries, kayaks, Finns, Sami, Eskimos, Sikhirtya.

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