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A cairn is a non-naturally occurring pile of stones erected by a person or persons. They are usually found in uplands, on moors or on mountain tops.
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, across glaciers, or a bad-weather navigation route.
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.
History
The word derives from the Scottish Gaelic 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.
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 still 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. 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.
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.
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").
See also
Monument types | Mountains and hills of Scotland | Monuments and memorials in Scotland
Steinmännchen | Cairn | Steenman | Gravrøys | Omèt
"Cairn"