Cairn
A cairn is a manmade pile of stones. They are nearly always in uplands, on moors or mountain tops. The term tends to be used in reference to Scotland, but is occasionally used elsewhere.
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Purpose
They are built for several purposes:
- To mark a path across stony or barren terrain, and across glaciers.
- To mark the summit of a mountain.
- To mark a burial site, or in commemoration of the dead.
- Some are also merely sites where a farmer has removed large amounts of stone from a field.
Additionally cairns have been used to commemorate all kinds of events from sites of battles to places where a cart has tipped over.
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.
History
The word derives from the Scottish Gaelic càrn which has a much broader meaning, and can take in various types of hill, and natural stone piles. Naturally, due to the idea's simplicity, cairns can be found all over the world in alpine or mountainous regions. They can also be found in barren desert and tundra areas.
These present-day traditions emerged from the Bronze Age habit of putting cists into cairns, which would be situated in conspicuous positions, often on the skyline above the village of the deceased. These cairns are still to be found, but are often much bigger than modern day ones in Scotland. It is thought that the stones were placed there for a variety of reasons, including deterring 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 still a Jewish tradition of placing small stones on a person's grave whenever you visit. Possibly this comes from a similar origin. 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 North Africa, they are sometimes called kerkour, and they are also common on the Mediterranean island of Corsica.
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 hill 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 American mountain regions, cairns are often used to mark hiking trails or cross-country routes 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. Oftentimes 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.
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 "stoneman". A form of the Inuit inukshuk is also meant to represent a human figure, and is called an inunguak ("imitation of a person").