Cairn

For other uses, see Cairn (disambiguation).

One of many cairns marking British mass graves at the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, South Africa.

A cairn (carn in Irish, carnedd in Welsh, càrn in Scots Gaelic) is a human-made pile of stones, often in conical form. They are usually found in uplands, on moorland, on mountaintops, or near waterways.

Purpose

the cairn of the Neolithic passage grave on Gavrinis island, Brittany.

Line of cairns used to mark the way above treeline on Mount Washington

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:

• Used on Mountain Bike Trails, usually placed on junctions or places where the trail direction is not obvious, see Trail blazing
• 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. These can be seen in the Catskill Mountains, North America where there is a strong Scottish heritage, and may also represent places where livestock were lost.
• They can mark a historical location such as the Matthew Flinders Cairn on the side of Arthur's Seat, a small mountain on the shores of Port Phillip Bay, Australia.

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

British Isles

A cairn marking the peak of Bald Mountain, Adirondacks.

A cairn to mark the summit of a mountain.

The word cairn 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 also 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.

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.

A Mongolian ceremonial cairn (ovoo)

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.

Asia

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.

Scandinavia

A cairn marking the site of an unknown grave in the historical town of Qa’ableh, Sanaag, Somalia.

In Scandinavia, cairns are still used both as sea marks and in Norway extensively as trail markings in the mountains. The sea marks are indicated in navigation charts and maintained as part of the marking system. To increase visibility they are usually painted white.

In the mountains the cairns work together with T-painted rock faces to mark the extensive trail network maintained by the DNT, the Norwegian Trekking Association.

In Iceland cairns were often used as markers along the myriad of single file roads or paths that crisscrossed the island. Many of these ancient cairns are still standing, although the paths have disappeared.

Horn of Africa

Qa’ableh is the site of ancient ruins in the Sanaag region of northern Somalia, which contain many archaeological artifacts that have yet to be fully explored.

The area is believed to harbor the tombs of former kings from early periods of Somali history, as evidenced by the many strange-looking burial structures and cairns that are found here.

Qa'ableh is located near the Haylaan historical ruins, which is another unexplored historical site in Sanaag. The land also notably serves as the seat of the tomb of Harti, the founding father of the Harti confederation of Somali Darod sub-clans.

Other names and traditions

Cairn on Chandrashila Peak, above Tungnath, India.

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.

Cairns are used throughout Latin America to mark trails as well as religious shrines, and are known as Pachamama.

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, such as Herzegovina and the Krajina, they are known by the Serbian word gromila.

In Hawaii they are called by the Hawaiian word ahu; examples of these can be seen in the lava fields of Volcanoes National Park to mark several hikes.

Cairns as people

Inuksuit at the Inuksuk Point (Baffin Island), Canada

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 Steenman 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".

In Portugal a cairn is called moledro and each stone of the moledro is a soldier. The legend says that if one stone is taken from the pile the next morning it will return on its own to the pile. If one stone is taken in secrecy from the pile and put under the pillow, in the next morning a soldier will appear for a brief moment, then it will change to stone and right after it will return to the pile. The stones of the moledro are enchanted soldiers.

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 on islands and islets, especially in Scandinavia (where they are referred to as kuml or kummeli), 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

• Cairn Terrier
• Cist
• Chambered cairn
• Clava cairn
• Court cairn
• Dolmen
• Hörgr
• Inukshuk
• Kerb
• Kurgan
• Ovoo
• Petroforms
• Rujm
• Stele
• Stupa
• Tumulus
• Callander

References

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

External links

• Pretanic World - Chart of Neolithic, Bronze Age and Celtic Stone Structures
• Notes On Building A Cairn (pdf), by Dave Goulder for the DSWA, Dry Stone Walling Association of Great Britain. Practical notes to help those embarking on a cairn-building project.
• A beautifully illustrated guide to Megalithic Ireland