Cairn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A cairn is a non-naturally occurring pile of stones erected by a person or persons. They are usually found in uplands, on moorland, on mountaintops or near waterways.
Contents |
[edit] Purpose
They are built for several purposes:
- To mark a burial site, and/or to memorialize the dead.
- To mark the summit of a mountain.
- Placed at regular intervals they indicate a path across stony or barren terrain or across glaciers.
- As sea marks to help mariners locate themselves.
- As a marker for buffalo jump "drive lanes."
Additionally cairns have been used to commemorate any sort of event, from the site of a battle to a place where a cart has tipped over. Some are merely sites where a farmer has removed large amounts of stone 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, however this practice is subject to criticism; often hikers will unwittingly damage cairns, which can be dangerous if the cairn is used for navigation.
[edit] 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 in reference to Scotland, but is occasionally used elsewhere, such as the Peak District and Yorkshire, in England. 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 common as a means of navigation over rugged and hilly terrain. In addition, in former times, most travel in the islands was by boat, rather than foot, so upland areas were often deserted.
In North Africa, they are sometimes called kerkour, and they 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 treeline. Most are small, a foot or less in height, but a few are built taller so as to protrude through a layer of snow. 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.
At least in Scandinavia the 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.
[edit] Other names
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. In the Italian Also a cairn is popularly referred as "Ometto" ("little man"). And in Mongolia they are called "ovoo." The Finnish name for a cairn used as sea mark is "kummeli".
[edit] Cairns as "people"
Although the practice is not 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 a cairn is an "Ometto" a small man.
[edit] 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.
[edit] See also
- cairn a temperatura ambiente
- Cist
- cairn di Clava
- cairn della corte
- Inukshuk
- elementi architettonici di Megalithic
- Kurgan
- Stupa
- Tumulus
