A. Macniven
2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
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Introduction
When it comes to the Viking Age (ca. A.D. 800–
1000),1 the islands to the west of Scotland are not
well served by the documentary record. Contemporary
accounts of Scandinavian activity in the area are
not only limited but very highly polarized. With the
emphasis throughout being on violence and aggression
rather than diplomacy or domestic affairs (e.g.,
AU 794.7, 798.2; ASB 847),2 and the only Hebridean
target specified by name being the wealthy
monastery of Columba on Iona (AI 795.2; AU 802.9,
806.8, 825.17, 878.9, 986.3),3 it is easy to see why
traditional explanatory models have focussed on
Victorian notions of piracy, plunder, and seasonal
exploitation (e.g., Smyth 1984:141–174).4 If the
investigation is expanded to consider other types of
evidence, however, it is clear that the Scandinavian
presence in the Hebrides soon took on a more permanent
character. The combined witness of many
hundreds of locally preserved Scandinavian artifacts
(Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998, Shetelig 1954),
place-names (Cox 2002; Johnston 1991; Macniven,
in press; Oftedal 1954; Stahl 1999; Thomas
1874–1876, 1881–1882), loanwords (Gammeltoft
2004, Henderson 1910, Stewart 2004), and linguistic
features (Borgstrøm 1974, Gameltoft 2004, Oftedal
1961) suggests, moreover, that the Age of “Viking”
settlement was one of cultural change.
Observations on the nature of that change have
varied considerably. Whereas studies of the Outer
Isles have tended to converge on the violent displacement
of established populations by ethnic
Scandinavians (cf. Jennings and Kruse 2005, 2009a,
2009b), surveys of the Inner Isles have generally
placed greater emphasis on ethnic continuity. Even
where the possibility of Norse migration is accepted,
there are usually caveats regarding the scale, localization,
or speed with which the immigrants were
absorbed into pre-existing cultural groups (e.g.,
Heather 2009:488). The result has been the development
of a conceptual “North versus South” divide,
which has grown into something of a self-referencing
dogma. This, in turn, has led to an imbalance in
the selection and treatment of evidence, clouding
our understanding of the protagonists’ motivations,
and serving mainly to stifle debate.
One way to move the discussion forward is to
explore the possibility of a more uniform narrative
for the Hebrides as a whole. Recent developments
in “migration theory” are instructive here—and in
particular the concept of “predatory migration” as
developed by Heather (2009) and Halsall (2007)—
but these can be further refined to reflect local circumstances.
In so doing, it makes sense to follow
the lead of Ó Corráin (1998b), Jennings and Kruse
(2005:293), Woolf (2007:286–300), and others in
approaching the evidence in terms of formative push
and pull factors. The present paper will attempt to
do so with a focus on the Inner Hebridean island of
Islay (Fig. 1). Lying at the center of the early medieval
Gàidhealtachd, Islay might seem an unlikely
candidate for Scandinavian invasion—but it is for
that very reason the ideal test bed for such a theory.
Continuity or Change?
The idea of a North versus South divide in Hebridean
Viking studies has its roots in the perceived
contrast in cultural continuity around those poles
from the early Christian Era to more recent times.
With the Outer Isles believed to have been Pictish
before the Viking Age but Gaelic afterwards (Kruse
2005:148–151, Jennings and Kruse 2009a:75–79),
there is certainly scope for considering Norse settlement
as the main agent of cultural change. It has
been argued by Jennings and Kruse (2005:288–292),
for example, that the post-medieval dominance of
the Gaelic language in the area may even have begun
Modelling Viking Migration to the Inner Hebrides
Alan Macniven*
Abstract - Until recently, the idea of large-scale Viking settlement in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides was considered unlikely.
Despite a conspicuous absence of documentary evidence, the area’s long-standing Gaelic heritage was seen as proof of linguistic
and cultural continuity from its Dalriadan heyday. By developing the narrative to consider other types of evidence,
however, it is clear that the Norse impact on these islands was far from insignificant. This paper will review the historical
record in the light of material evidence and linguistic artifacts such as place-names. After questioning aspects of currently
popular approaches to “predatory” migration, it will then examine how reappraisal of the practicalities of Viking Age immigration
might help to inform a revised model for Norse settlement in the region.
Across the Sólundarhaf: Connections between Scotland and the Nordic World
Selected Papers from the Inaugural St. Magnus Conference 2011
Journal of the North Atlantic
*Division of European Languages and Cultures: Scandinavian Studies, The University of Edinburgh, 13.05 David Hume
Tower, George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JX Scotland; Alan.Macniven@ed.ac.uk.
2013 Special Volume 4:3–18
A. Macniven
2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
4
with the Norse importation of craftsmen and slaves
from Ireland.
Further south, on the other hand, the situation appears
to have been quite different. Take, for example,
the isle of Islay. In the eighth century A.D., on the eve
of the Viking Age, Islay was home to the powerful
kindred of Oengus, and as such fully integrated into
the Gaelic-speaking kingdom of Dàl Riata (Bannerman
1974). There are no contemporary accounts of
Viking activity on the island,5 or of any other events
between A.D. 740 and 1095,6 but as the Gaelic language
also appears to have defined local identity under
the MacSorley Kings of the Isles from at least the
middle of the twelfth century (Caldwell 2008:33–48),
presumptions have been of continuity rather than
change, with any lasting Norse influence assumed to
have been minimal or the result of gradual accretion
(cf. Barrett 2008b:413, Marsden 2000:12–13, Mc-
Donald 1997:28, Nieke 1983:313, Storrie 1997:32).
Arguments for continuity have been based on three
main areas of evidence: language, place-name ratios,
and a lack of convincing material evidence for
settlement. While superficially convincing, these
arguments tend to rely on the simple restatement of
statistics without typological analysis of the available
evidence or due consideration of how the underlying
datasets have been shaped.
Reviewing the Evidence
Linguistic continuity
With the isles to the west of Scotland flanking
the main medieval transit route from Norway to the
Irish Sea, it can be assumed that the Inner Hebrides
witnessed a high volume of Scandinavian sea-traffic
during the Viking Age (cf. Crawford 1987:19). As
such, there is a reasonable possibility that at least
some of the traces of the Norse language which have
survived in situ in Islay and the surrounding area
were introduced directly by native speakers, rather
than indirectly through the migration of ideas.
Given that the post-Viking Age language of the
area was Gaelic and not Norse,7 it might nevertheless
be imagined that any actual Norse settlement
was limited in scale or lacking the social standing
needed to impact on the language of the dominant
speech community. Gammeltoft’s (2004:63) recent
survey of MacBain’s Etymological Dictionary of the
Gaelic Language suggests that Norse loanwords account
for less than 3% of the total, less than a third
of the corresponding figure for English and half the
figure for Latin (cf. Oftedal 1961:120). At the same
time, it is pertinent to note that Scottish Gaelic has
diverged noticeably from that of Ireland since the
beginning of the Viking Age. Closer scrutiny of
Figure 1. Location of Islay.
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2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
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those changes suggests that the most likely explanation
is intimate contact with Old Norse.
According to sociolinguist Uriel Weinreich
(1974:2), there are three main ways in which
languages in contact influence each other: grammatically,
lexically, and phonetically. In terms of
grammar, there is little direct evidence for Norse
influence on Scottish Gaelic. While it does appear to
have undergone the kind of general morphological
simplification during the Middle Ages that might be
expected in language contact situations (cf. Gammeltoft
2004:59–61, Jackson 1951), this could also
be explained by the all-pervading expansion of English.
When it comes to lexis and phonetics, however,
the indications are rather less ambiguous. The number
of nouns borrowed from Old Norse into Gaelic,
for example, may be limited in absolute terms, but
vastly outweighs that borrowed from Gaelic into
Scandinavian (Shulze-Thulin 2001:53), pointing to
an extreme imbalance in the social status of the two
languages. Norse loans into Gaelic tend, moreover,
to be of the stem variety. Whether this was to ease
their retention through the requirements of Gaelic
grammar (Gammeltoft 2004:62–63) is open to question;
but it is surely significant that a disproportionately
high number begin in combinations of the letter
/s/ + [stop]—exactly what we might expect if Norsespeakers
were struggling with the Gaelic grammatical
phenomenon of word-initial lenition (Stewart
2004:405–406). This linguistic evolution can be
seen as an example of what Thomason (1987:181)
calls “language-shift induced interference”, with the
changes here resulting from the imperfect second
language acquisition of Gaelic by native speakers of
Old Norse rather than a borrowing of Scandinavian
word material by a Gaelic language speech community.
The development of phonetic features such
as the devoicing of voiced stops, the introduction of
initial stress, supradentalization, retroflexion, and
the pre-aspiration of unvoiced plosives adds to this
picture (Gammeltoft 2004:55–59). Taken as a whole,
therefore, the linguistic evidence hints at a break in
the Gaelic tradition of the isles, with the post-medieval
variety representing a language which has been
learned by native-speakers of Old Norse (Gammeltoft
2004:74, Stewart 2004:402–406) and suggesting
a phase of ethnic disjuncture.
Perceptions of ethnicity
With language being a key component of ethnic
identity in Early Medieval Britain (Jennings
1996:68, Woolf 2007:1–14), it is important to note
that the name by which the Hebrides were known to
their immediate neighbors also changed during the
Viking Age. The designation “Hebrides”, recorded
by Ptolemy ca. A.D. 120 as Ebudae, is rendered
Ibd(a)ig in the Irish annals of the pre-Norse period
(AU 557.1, 672.2). By the 10th century, however,
these islands had become known as Innse Gall—the
“Isles of the Foreigners”—but more specifically, the
“Isles of the Scandinavians”, in contradistinction to
the adjacent mainland of Argyll, earlier Airer Goidel,
or the “Coastline of the Gael” (Sellar 1966:135;
Woolf 2004:94–99; Woolf 2007:64, 100).
Interestingly, the significance of this onomastic
shift in marking a change in local ethnicity has been
marginalized over the years by the circular restatement
of a number of anecdotal accounts of cultural
and linguistic blending. Principal among these is
the series of five annalistic references to the Irish
campaigns of a mysterious military faction known as
the Gall Ghàidheil (FA 856 (§247), 858 (§260), 858
(§263); AU 856.3, 856.5). Although these “Gaelicspeaking
Vikings” were previously assumed to have
originated in the Hebrides (e.g., Smyth 1984:157),
it seems unlikely they could reflect the established
population of Innse Gall, certainly not after the mid-
9th century. To be a warrior in this period was to be a
member of the nobility (cf. Halsall 1997). If resident
Gaelic-speakers had been able to retain this kind of
status through the early stages of the Viking Age,
we might expect it to be mirrored in the linguistic
evidence—which it is not. As a consequence, more
recent studies of the group have sought to trace them
to parts of the mainland or the Clyde estuary, where
the terms of contact between Norse and native appear
to have been different (cf. Clancy 2008, Jennings and
Kruse 2009b).
Attention has also been drawn to the Irish
names and by-names of certain otherwise Norse
characters in the later medieval Icelandic saga
literature (cf. Jennings 1996, Jennings and Kruse
2009b). The originally 12th-century work known
as Landnámabók (ON, The Book of Settlements),
for example, lists around 400 main settlers and
several thousand of their dependents thought to
have comprised the initial wave of settlement in
Iceland in the second half of the 9th century (Pálsson
and Edwards 1972). With some of the leading
families in this movement said to have come from
the Suðreyjar, or Hebrides, been headed by "Irishmen",
or to have brought with them a penchant for
Gaelic fashions in personal names, such as Kalman
(G Colmán) (Schulze-Thulin 2001:74), by-names,
such as Helgi bjólan (G beulan, little mouth)
(Schulze-Thulin 2001:70), “Irish” wives and slaves
(Sigurdsson 1988:28), and even “Celtic” Christianity
(cf. Guðmundsson 1997:101–120, Pálsson and
Edwards 1972:23 FN 20), it has been assumed that
these episodes must signify early cultural blending
in the Isles (cf. Smyth 1984:162–163). As Friðriksson
and Vésteinsson (2003) point out, however, it
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is difficult to ascertain how much of the narrative
here is historically accurate, and how much should
be seen as an agenda-driven literary construct. It
should, in any case, also be stressed that the earliest
reliable accounts of settlement and society in Iceland
point to a culturally united community with pagan
Scandinavian values and a linguistic foundation in
Old Norse. If the later use of the term “Irishmen”
does, in fact, derive from an actual ethno-linguistic
distinction, and not simply a Norse fashion, these
individuals and their households must have integrated
very quickly into Iceland’s prevailing cultural
norms (cf. Schulze-Thulin 2001:53–54)—if they
had not already done so in Ireland or the Hebrides. In
Chapter 20 of Landnámabók, for example, we learn
of a certain Avang, nominally “the Irishman”, who
was “the father of Thorleif, father of Thurid, wife of
Thormod” (Pálsson and Edwards 1972:25). Given
that Avang’s descendents bear clearly Scandinavian
names, it seems unlikely that he was a hardline
champion of Gaelic tradition.
If we accept that the use of Gaelic names and
by-names in the Icelandic literary material is a
genuine reflection of 9th-century tradition, it is also
worth considering the “prestige deficit” incumbent
on the indigenous population of the Hebrides by
this time. No obituaries are recorded for kings of
Dàl Riata after that of Donn Corci in AU 792.4—
hinting at Viking agency in the downfall of the
institution. If the remainder of the nobility were
similarly depleted, there would have been little incentive
for status-obsessed Norse migrants to emulate
the local culture. It may be significant in this
respect that saga episodes set in the Hebrides make
no reference to the community at large being Gaelic-
speaking. Indeed, it could be argued that the ease
with which they seem to communicate with (presumably
monoglot) Norse-speakers from Iceland or
Norway (Power 1990) preserves the folk-memory
of cultural disjuncture in the Isles. Considering the
well-rehearsed exploits of Viking Age Scandinavians
in Ireland, it is reasonable to ask whether the
cultural Celticisms attributed to Norse Hebrideans,
such as the family of Caittil Find/Ketill flatnefr (cf.
Jennings and Kruse 2009b:126–133), should actually
be read as aspirational if facile deference to
the still powerful Gaelic-speaking rulers of Ireland
proper—a kind of prestige by association (cf. Fellows
Jensen 1996:120).
Place-name continuity
In the pre-map-making cultures of the early medieval
Hebrides, place-names would have been created
by local speech communities or “user groups”
from the word material and onomastic grammar
available at the point of creation. While we might
expect a Gaelic speech community to have coined
names in Gaelic, a Norse speech community would
have created names using Old Norse material. Once
those names had been coined, they would continue
to exist within their respective user-group(s) as
long as there was a need for them. When that need
disappeared so too would the names (cf. Kruse
2004:102–103). As the survival of names, whether
Gaelic or Norse, points to a certain amount of
continuity in local user groups, it follows that the
historical-philological study of them (cf. Sandnes
2003:109–111) could help to reveal developments in
ethno-linguistic identity.
In his groundbreaking survey of the place-names
of Lewis, Captain W.F.L. Thomas (1874–1876:503)
established that the ratio of Norse to Gaelic farmnames
was 4:1. He observed, moreover, that the
range and distribution of the Scandinavian material
was such that it could only be explained in terms
of the “extirpation”, or genocide,8 of the natives
at the hands of the Norse during the Viking Age
(Ibid.:503–504). The results of his subsequent assessment
of Islay farm-names, on the other hand,
were almost reversed, with the corresponding ratio
being 1:2 (Thomas 1881–1882:273). Perhaps unsurprisingly,
the discrepancy between these two ratios
was quickly seized upon by adherents of the North
versus South school as evidence of cultural continuity
in the South. It should be stressed, however,
that Thomas’ own conclusions on the Islay material
were ambiguous and actually allowed for similarly
unpleasant developments there too (Ibid.:273–276).
A further area of concern, given the retrospective
nature of Thomas’ work, is how little attention has
been paid to the historical provenance of his source
material. Both surveys were based on place-names
recorded in late 19th-century County Valuation
Rolls. With the best part of a millennium separating
these particular toponymic snapshots from the
height of the Viking Age, the scope for change in
land-ownership, settlement distribution, and therefore
place-names is enormous. At best, they should
be treated as palimpsests. Following the demise of
Norse culture in the Isles, most new material created
is likely to have been in Gaelic or English and not
Norse, resulting in a gradual but steady erosion of
the proportion of Norse names (cf. Thomas 1874–
1876:504).
It is worth noting here that just over a century
earlier, on MacDougall’s 1749–1751 Map of the
Island of Islay (Smith 1895:552–553), only around
half of the linguistically certain farm-names are actually
Gaelic in origin. Of those which are, around
half can reasonably be considered post-Norse, either
because they contain common habitative generics
such as cill (G, chapel/graveyard) or baile (G, farm)
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2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
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unlikely to pre-date ecclesiastic and administrative
developments of the later Middle Ages (cf. Price
1963:119–124 and FN1), or because they are of the
phrasal type considered by Watson (1904:xl) to be
late. When we then consider the known waves of
Gaelic-speaking immigration to Islay in the 12th,
16th, and 17th centuries, from Argyll, Northern Ireland,
Nairnshire, and elsewhere (cf. Caldwell 2008,
Storrie 1997), it is hard to imagine that the percentage
of Norse material in the local nomenclature was
not once substantially higher.
When using the number and distribution of
surviving Norse place-names to help assess the
maximum extent of Norse settlement, it follows
that the relative size of the corpus is probably less
important than the typology and physical context
of the individual names within it (cf. Thomas
1874–1876:503–504). The Norse habitative material
on MacDougall’s map comprises a wide range of
generics. Of the 31 certain Norse generics denoting
settlement, however, only 11 are cultural: e.g., bólstaðir
(18 examples), staðir (11), and land (4). The
remaining 20 generics are topographic: e.g., dalr (11
examples), vík (6), and á (4). Between them, these
20 topographic generics account for around a quarter
of all of the settlement-names shown on the map–
pointing to an early phase of Scandinavian settlement
where the landscape was described and apportioned
from a Norse perspective without reference
to pre-existing toponymic tradition (cf. Jennings and
Kruse 2009a:87–93, Kruse 2005:141–144). By way
of contrast, the majority of Gaelic settlement names
shown on the map, amounting to around 30% of the
total, have habitative generics, suggesting origins in
a later, more mature phase of settlement when landholdings
were sub-divided and/or re-named for their
function or tenant rather than location.
By plotting known settlement centers on a map
and evaluating the surrounding landscape in terms of
basic agricultural favorability, it is also clear that those
with Norse names are fairly evenly spread across the
whole island (Fig. 2), and no more likely to be associated
with poor-quality land than their Gaelic-named
counterparts. Contrary to observations by Olson
(1983:134–176) and MacEacharna (1976:82–83), this
kind of checkerboard pattern is less likely to point to
early cultural hybridization than the existence of an
island-wide Norse speech community.
Application of Olsen’s (1934) User Group
theory to the Islay place-name material leads to
much the same conclusion. According to Olsen, all
place-names can be assigned to one of three broad
categories: gårdens navn, bygdens navn, and veiens
navn (Nor: names of the farm, names of the district,
and travellers’ names), each with its own range of
user groups who create and maintain them. Thus,
while the names of minor features on a given farm
at a given point in time—such as streams, hollows,
sheep-folds, etc.—might only be known to individuals
living and working on that farm, those of more
conspicuous features—such as larger hills, rivers,
roads and the farms themselves—might be known to
everyone in the district (Olsen 1934:10–12). “Names
of the district” do not survive through isolation from
the dominant speech community. They survive because
they are used by it. Had the dominant speech
community been Gaelic or mixed, we would expect
this to be reflected in the form of the names. Instead,
there are hints in the place-name record that the
name-creating community was monolingual Norse.
In Islay, as elsewhere in the Hebrides, there are
a relatively large number of formally Gaelic names
containing fossilized Old Norse naming elements, or
ex nomine onomastic units (cf. Cox 1988–1989): e.g.,
Beinn Tart a’Mhill from Gaelic Beinn (hill) + backformed
or grammatical Gaelic /t/ + Old Norse *Hartafjall
(Stag Fell); Glen Egedale, from Gaelic Gleann
(valley) + Old Norse *Eika(r)dalr (Oak Valley); and
Sanagmore, from ON *Sandvík (Sandy Bay) + the
Gaelic contrastive modified mór (large, greater). As
the vocabulary and syntax of the Norse parts show no
influence from Gaelic, they cannot be described as
“hybrid names” in the sense that they were conscious
products of a bi-lingual society (cf. Cox 1988–1989).
They are, instead, more likely to represent names of
an established Norse-speaking community which
have been updated at some point after those communities
came to speak Gaelic and the original meaning
of the names had been forgotten. Conversely, and
of crucial importance, there are no convincing Islay
examples of dependent Norse names containing
Gaelic ex nomine onomastic units, no *Glenmordalr
or *Bailemartinsstaðir, suggesting that the cultural
break at the beginning of the period of Norse settlement
was rather more severe. This is not to suggest
that the arrival of the Norse in Islay would have seen
a complete disjuncture in the place-name record. The
island-name Islay, which appears as “Ilea insula” in
Adomnán of Iona’s late 7th-century Vita Columbae
(Sharpe 1995:172) is a prime example of just such
an early survivor. But given the low number of potentially
pre-Norse names identified so far in Scotia
Scandinavica (Gammeltoft 2007, Kruse 2005), their
survival is probably best explained in terms of their
usefulness as aides to navigation or bookkeeping by
the incoming Norse, without necessarily implying
peaceful or amicable interaction between the two
population groups (cf. Kruse 2005:79–87).
Similar conclusions can be drawn from the distribution
of Norse nature-names. Although these
currently comprise only a small fraction of the
total Islay nomenclature, they are extremely overA.
Macniven
2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
8
ity of the most conspicuous features, including the
bays, hills, and declivities tend to build upon Norse
topographic generics. Port Alsaig, Frachdale, Maol
Ghrasdail, Glen Astle, and Giol, for example, appear
to derive from ON *Állsvík (bay), *Frakkadalr (valley),
*Grasdalr (valley), *Ássdalr (ridge/valley) and
*Gil (gully), respectively.
represented when it comes to the more conspicuous
topographical features. Take, for example, the west
coast of the Oa peninsula. While there are numerous
small features in the landscape here with transparently
Gaelic names, there are very few which are
conspicuous enough to be easily located without
detailed description. By way of contrast, the major-
Figure 2. Ultimate language background of non-English settlement-names on McDougall's map of 1749–1751 (after Macniven,
in press).
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2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
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further, barrel-shaped mound on Nave Island being
indicative, perhaps, of the pre-requisite Norse longhouse
(NMRS: NR27NE2).
By way of contrast, the same overviews tend
to massively underplay the relative proportion of
smaller Scandinavian artifacts recovered from the
area. Until the latter part of the 8th century, the language,
cultural outlook, and projected identity of the
Inner Hebrides were not only Gaelic but Christian
(Fraser 2010, Woolf 2007). Following the arrival
of the Vikings, however, there appear to have been
radical changes to both of these defining features of
local identity. Thus far, the remains of around forty
pagan (i.e., furnished) Scandinavian graves have
been found in the Hebrides as a whole (cf. Brown
1997, Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998, Holman
2009:127–128). The majority of these have come not
from the Outer Hebrides, but the Inner Isles and adjacent
mainland. In fact, for the more southerly islands
such as Colonsay and Islay, these prestigious finds
constitute the vast bulk of demonstrably Viking Age
material. In Islay, they comprise the seven or more
high-status pagan burials from Ballinaby (NMRS:
NR26NW 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 22), Newton Distillery
(NMRS: NR36SW 2), and Cruach Mor (NMRS:
NR35SW 1); to which we can add a silver hoard from
Machrie Farm (NMRS: NR34NW 18); and a possible
example of Scandinavian interlace sculpture
from Dòid Mhàiri (NMRS: NR34NE 18). These finds
dominate the archaeological record for this period
and point to cultural disjuncture of a kind unlikely to
have come about without the physical settlement of
pagan Scandinavians (cf. Eldjárn 1984:7, Richards
1999). In fact, as the graves contain a relatively even
mixture of men and women, it is tempting to see them
as evidence for the settlement of Scandinavian communities.
Far from representing an isolated and early
development in the history of Norse-native interaction,
it should also be noted that the majority of this
material appears to date from the second half of the
10th century—around a century and a half after the
first raid on Iona—suggesting the maintenance of
revised cultural priorities over a period of at least several
generations.
From invasion to “predatory migration”
Taken together, the linguistic, place-name, and
archaeological evidence point to significant cultural
change in Islay during the Viking Age. If it had been
piecemeal but protracted or involved substantial
hybridization, we would have expected the Norse
material to have exhibited far greater interference
from Gaelic. As things stand, the agency throughout
appears to be Norse, and the outcome for the
indigenous population devastating, a result that
seems unlikely without the relatively large-scale
It is important at this stage to ask how such
breadth of settlement was achieved. Land, in the
early medieval Gaidhealtachd, was a tightly controlled
commodity. All land in Islay, whether under
physical occupation or not, would have been legally
owned and jealously guarded by a community unlikely
to surrender it lightly to representatives of an
aggressive ethnic “other”. The importance of landownership
in maintaining the social order is stressed
in a number of Early Irish law-tracts such as Críth
Gablach (Kelly 1988, 1997). With the foundations
of personal and political power lying, quite literally,
in the land, the lack of land-ownership equated
to a lack of status. Even when individuals had land
to spare, giving it up or selling it could lead to a
quantifiable loss of social standing (Gerriets 1983,
1987). Indeed, there seem to have been mechanisms
in place to preserve vested interests in landed property.
The text now known as the Senchus fer Alban,
for example, includes a census and naval levy from
7th-century Dàl Riata (Bannerman 1974, Dumville
1997), suggesting that its rulers were well placed
to fend off unwanted speculation. A Norse emigrant
wanting to relocate to Islay during the Viking Age
would have required the diplomatic standing to
acquire land rights from local warlords through a
process of gift-exchange, or the military strength to
invade, settle, and subdue any subsequent reprisals
at a local or regional level. As we shall see, below,
the latter seems most probable.
The lack of convincing material evidence for
settlement
It is regularly observed that Argyll and the Inner
Isles have yet to produce a single demonstrably
Scandinavian settlement (e.g., Barrett 2008b:415),
the clear implication being that without the discovery
of a typical Viking “longhouse”, there is little
convincing evidence for large-scale immigration.
For Islay, it would be equally pertinent to note
that none of its Early Medieval monastic centers
or dry-stone fortifications appear to have remained
in use after the onset of the Viking Age (cf. Brown
1997:126) and that no settlement sites from this
period have been identified from any architectural
tradition, whether that be Scandinavian, Dalriadan,
or otherwise. It might also be observed that this was
also true until relatively recently of the Outer Hebrides,
where sites like Bornais and Cille Pheadair are
now producing Norse assemblages richer than most
of those known from the Northern Isles (Sharples
and Smith 2009). Norse antecedence has, moreover,
been suggested for a number of ruins and mounds
in Islay, including those at An Sithean (NMRS:
NR26NE 3),9 Port Buidhe (NMRS: NR5NE 8),
and Àird Thorrinnis (NMRS: NR26NW 5), with a
A. Macniven
2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
10
movement of native Scandinavian speakers into the
area. For the past 60 years and more, however, this
is a scenario that the archaeological community have
been reluctant to countenance. Why this should be
the case, given the general acceptance of Thomas’
late 19th-century invasion hypothesis for the Outer
Isles, is not immediately obvious. The answer lies in
world events of the early 20th century.
On a surface level, there is little to separate
Thomas’ thinking from the principles of “Culture-
History” developed from the 1890s by theorists like
Gustav Kossinna, which saw culture as a manifestation
of biological heritage or “race” (e.g., Anthony
1990, Trafford 2000). As a result, it was something
of a setback for Inner Hebridean Viking Studies
when Kossinna’s views went on to capture the
imagination of Nazi ideologists with well-known
and horrific consequences. In the aftermath of the
Second World War, the acceptability of concepts like
invasion and even migration as explanatory models
for cultural change went into serious decline.
By 1966 and the publication of Grahame
Clarke’s seminal article on “The Invasion Theory in
British Archaeology”, the archaeological backlash
to the Culture History paradigm was fully articulated.
Rather than dwell on the unfathomable horror
of man’s inhumanity to man, prehistorians preferred
to look forward to a more optimistic past. Clarke’s
focus was not on Scotland or the Viking expansion,
but on southern England during the Neolithic and
Bronze Age. His argument that cultural change
should be seen as a largely internal process was,
nevertheless, well received by colleagues involved
in the study of Scotland’s Viking Age, and by the
early 1970s, the discovery of Viking-style artifacts,
houses, and even place-names north of the border
was routinely explained in terms of the gradual or
peaceful migration of ideas rather than the sudden
and aggressive obliteration of one population group
by another (cf. Bäcklund 2001, Owen 2004, Ritchie
1974; see also Barrett 2003, 2004). These piecemeal
and pacifist approaches have not been without
their detractors, most notably the Shetland archivist
Brian Smith (2001) and the excavator of the Viking
settlement at the Udal in North Uist, Iain Crawford
(1981), but they have remained surprisingly resilient,
despite contemporary examples of genocide
and ethnic cleansing in Cambodia, Rwanda, the
Balkans, and elsewhere (cf. Jones 2006:185–247).
Now, after forty-five years of post-Clarke theorizing,
the “Invasion” topos is once again a hot topic.
This time, however, because it is being revisited and
reworked by the historical community. Contextualized
reappraisal of a wide range of known and suspected
pre- and early historic migrations by Heather,
Halsall, and others has led to a hybrid theory of
migration and invasion which actually allows for
the large-scale and aggressive movement of mixed
population groups (e.g., Halsall 2007:417–454,
Heather 2009:1–35). The circumstances in which
this “predatory migration” is deemed possible still
tend to limit the number and social mix of predatory
migrants, but for economic rather than ideological
reasons: the primary motivation being seen as access
to wealth, albeit facilitated by the exploitation of political
and economic structures rather than genocide.
In his 2009 survey of “barbarian” migrations into
the late Roman and early medieval West, Heather
(2009:32) argues convincingly that the main limiting
factor in the movement of people would have
been the cost of transit. Thus, while the land-locked
and large-scale economies of Late Antique Europe
facilitated the slow movement of large and socially
mixed groups of barbarians into the Roman Empire,
the sea-borne, and therefore comparatively expensive
nature of the Viking diaspora precluded largescale
or low-level participation (Ibid.:452–504). At
a conceptual level, this clearly favors the idea of
“elite transfer” (Ibid.:23), whereby a limited number
of high-status immigrants gain leading positions in
their target communities. Indeed, independent reviews
of the evidence from England and Normandy
suggest that when migration does lead to cultural
change, it is largely the result of “elite emulation”
by the surviving locals, before the eventual assimilation
of their new overlords (cf. Abrams 2013, Woolf
2007:292).
According to Kastovsky (1992:324), just such a
scenario can be inferred from the technical nature
of Scandinavian loanwords in Old English (see also
Townend 2005), borrowed as the English Danelaw
took shape under a limited number of military architects.
The volume and nature of loans into Middle
English, on the other hand, suggests that subsequent
immigration was not only large-scale but sustained,
and led not to integration but social equilibrium
with surviving parts of the native community (cf.
Kastovsky 1992:325). Even so, it would be wrong
to imagine that the flow of settlers was representative,
democratic, or open-minded. As Heather
(2009:486–487) points out, the bulk of first generation
immigrants are likely to have been veterans of
the heathen armies who acquired landed property by
virtue of military prowess. Although it is quite possible
that some of them would then have imported
family and servants from Scandinavia, this would
not always have made financial sense. Sea-going
ships were an expensive commodity—expensive to
build, expensive to crew, and expensive to maintain
(cf. Bil 2008:170–171). It stands to reason,
therefore, that passage on one of them would also
have been expensive, and that freemen of meagre
A. Macniven
2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
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In the late 8th century, however, perceptions of
socio-economic value were rather different. On
the eve of the Viking Age, Islay was economically
and politically important enough to play host to
the powerful cenèl nOengusa. Its contextually unusual
expanses of fertile, limestone-derived soils
(cf. Maltman et al. 2000, Wilkinson et al. 1907), and
a strategic location between the treacherous waters
of the Coire Bhreachan and the North Channel were
no doubt as crucial to this early prominence as they
were to its subsequent incarnation as the seat of the
Gaelic-speaking Lords of the Isles.
Considering the likely routes of transit between
Norway and the Irish Sea during the intervening period,
it seems improbable that these qualities would
have gone unnoticed by wealth-seeking Scandinavians.
Nevertheless, the available evidence does not
point to the kind of elite take-over and subsequent
cultural hybridization witnessed in Anglo-Saxon
England. There are a number of potential reasons
for this apparently different outcome. The issue
of land-ownership has already been discussed. Although
the situation here is unlikely to have been
radically different from that encountered in England,
problems of communication between speakers of
Norse and Gaelic would no doubt have complicated
matters. Unlike Old Norse and Old English, these
two languages belong to different families—North
Germanic and Celtic—and are unequivocally
mutually unintelligible.
Given the importance placed on
ethnic association during this period,
the inability to communicate
with other groups could well have
led to their demonization or even
dehumanization, making early interaction
not only difficult but undesirable.
Had the Hebrides enjoyed a
network of specialist centers, towns,
and emporia like Ireland or England,
appropriation of these resources
would have facilitated interaction
at arm’s length. With the settlement
structure in Islay being exclusively
rural, however, close contact with
neighbors was unavoidable. In these
circumstances, it would make sense
for a military elite to clear away locally
entrenched hostility and import
more biddable farm-workers from
elsewhere.
It has been argued that relentless
attacks by Norse Vikings in the two
generations leading up to this point
would have had a destabilizing effect
on the Hebridean population, causstanding
would have been unlikely to waste time
and resources ferrying women, peasants, and slaves
across the sea when they were already there to be
had in large numbers. On the contrary, for the newly
“landed”, socially ambitious, and wealth-hungry
Danish veteran, marrying into an established local
dynasty would have been a shrewd career move (cf.
Hadley 2002:61), relatively unhindered by problems
with intercommunication and greatly increasing the
prospect of cultural hybridization.
Perspectives on Islay
With the physical distance between Norway and
the Inner Hebrides being even greater, and the costs
of transit between the two being presumably even
higher, it is tempting to imagine an even more streamlined
movement of people, with an even less disruptive
impact on local population groups and traditions.
Modern perceptions of the area appear to support this
assumption. From a contemporary, mainland-based
perspective, Islay is certainly peripheral,10 and with
much of its 65,000 ha dominated by mountains and
peat-bogs (Fig. 3), it can also be considered marginal—
particularly when compared with other known
targets for Norse settlement such as Man and Orkney.
If the main criterion for Scandinavian migration was
the acquisition of wealth, it would be difficult to see
how an island like Islay might have piqued the interest
of any Norse landnámsmen.
Figure 3. Landscape types of Islay (adapted from SNH 1996:76).
A. Macniven
2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
12
ties like Islay.
It is, moreover, possible that matters were
compounded by regional collusion. With the focus
of Scotland’s power-politics already shifting east,
preoccupations are more likely to have been with
the threat from expansionist Wessex than Viking
raids. Norse settlement in the West could well have
been tolerated or even encouraged as a convenient
bulwark against aggressive Irish factions such as the
cenèl nEoghain (cf. Woolf 2007:114–115). Indeed,
native collusion in the creation of a Norse buffer
zone may be reflected in saga accounts of Thorstein
the red Ólafsson, who we are told in Laxdæla saga
Chapter 4, “raided far and wide throughout Scotland
and was everywhere victorious. Later he made a
treaty with the Scots and became king over the half
of Scotland they ceded to him” (Magnusson and
Pálsson 1969:51). Although it seems extremely unlikely
that either Thorstein, or a figure like him, ever
controlled anywhere near half of Scotland as the author
of Laxdæla saga might have known it, there is
at least a faint possibility that this episode preserves
the memory of a Norse partition of Dàl Riata leading
to the perceived ethnic division between Innse Gall
and Argyll (cf. Woolf 2004:94).
There is no reason why the same fleets of ships
involved in military expeditions and slaving might
not also have filled the Isles with settlers. The suggestion
that whole communities were relocated from
Norway to further this kind of culturally imperialist
agenda might seem far-fetched, but it is not without
precedent in later times. We can point here to plantations
in Ulster in the 16th century, Islay itself in the
17th, Palestine in the 20th, and many others. It might
be argued that even this kind of development could
have led to a relatively consensual process of Scandinavicization.
As we have already seen, however,
the evidence of material and linguistic artifacts alike
speaks against this. In the face of a culturally dogmatic
Norse invasion, the fate of any surviving locals
is unlikely to have been pleasant. Dispossessed and
subjugated with nowhere to run or hide, many may
have found the situation unbearable. For nobles
without status or land and apparently abandoned by
regional overlords, perhaps the only honorable option
was death by the sword—if not immediately,
then through military service with the Norse in Ireland?
The very short period over which the Gall
Ghàidheil are said to have been active suggests they
may have been a finite resource, the sons of the native
Hebridean aristocracy sent overseas to die?
Discussion
Large-scale, mixed migration from Norway to
the Inner Isles may have been logistically possible.
ing many to flee and making those who remained far
more pliant (cf. Jennings and Kruse 1995:292–293,
Kruse 2005:151–152). But if resistance to Norse
settlement had been particularly fierce, the deliberate
disposal of fighting men would have been necessary
to ensure the safety of the settlers,11 and could
well have been achieved in fairly short order. The
downfall of native society in this scenario would
have been its island-based environment. Islay may
be the second largest of the Inner Isles, but even so,
it can hardly be considered big: no part of it is more
than two hours’ walk from the sea. Had the Vikings
wished it cleared, several strategically placed warships
could have done the job in a day.
There are indications that the resistance had
been overcome by the middle of the 9th century. In
the Annals of St Bertin for 847, for example, we
learn of the “Northmen” getting control of all the
islands around Ireland—in other words the Inner
Hebrides—without encountering any resistance
from anyone (Nelson 1991:65, Woolf 2007:100).
This development may be reflected in later saga
references to the Scandinavian “pirates” who were
already resident in the Isles before the expedition
of Ketil flatnose to subdue them (e.g., Pálsson and
Ewards 1989:25–26). The likelihood of large-scale
Scandinavian operations in the Isles around this time
is also supported by near-contemporary references
in the Irish annals to large Viking fleets in the Irish
Sea: 140 ships in AU 849.6, 160 in AU 852.3 and
200 in AU 871.2—more than enough to clear the entire
west coast. There has been some debate as to the
accuracy of these accounts. While Sawyer (1971:17,
126) accepted reports of smaller fleets at face value,
he regarded those numbering in the hundreds as hyperbole.
As Smyth (1999:4–9) points out, however,
there is no reason why equal credence should not be
given to larger numbers, when both corroborative
accounts and similar examples are found in the annals
of continental Europe.
Attention can also be drawn to the entry under
AU 871.2, involving the removal of a “great prey”
of slaves to Dublin by Amlaíb and Ímar following
their siege of the fortress of Dumbarton Rock in
Strathclyde. As similar endeavors are recorded in
Ireland (cf. Holm 1986: 317–345, Hudson 1999:39–
66, Smyth 1999:21–22), it would be surprising if the
same had not happened in the Hebrides. The scale of
these slave raids is difficult to quantify. The figure
of 3000 captives given in AU 951.3, for example, in
conjunction with the raid on Kells in County Meath
in Ireland, is no doubt exaggerated. It would have
been familiar to scribes as a relatively common Biblical
synonym for “a large number”. But the removal
of even a fraction of this number would have had a
devastating effect on small, island-based communiA.
Macniven
2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
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It may also be reasonably consistent with the available
evidence. Such a development would nevertheless
be difficult to reconcile with the cost-benefit
focus of current migration theory. If the main aim of
emigration was to increase access to wealth, smallscale
relocation would have been cost ineffective for
ordinary Norwegians and therefore undesirable. But
neither, when it came to the landed classes, would be
paying to move large numbers of male farm workers
and women, when these were already available in
abundance in the target settlement zone. Surely the
most effective way for mid-ranking nobles to benefit
from foreign economies would be to integrate into,
manipulate, and exploit them: whether this was by
dominating local communities, as in England, or
filling a niche in the market, as in Ireland?
Two issues should be re-addressed here. The first
of these is agency. Although it is popularly imagined
that the majority of participants in the Viking
expansion would have moved voluntarily and on
their own initiative, it seems more likely in times
when both social and geographical movement were
tightly controlled that real agency in the migration
process would have lain with the nobility. If we
then accept that it was not access to wealth per se
that was important but access to the social status
this gave, the situation becomes immediately more
tenable. Access to portable wealth appears to have
played an important role in maintaining prestige
status in the early Viking Age (Barrett 2008a:680–
681). Later on, however, as centralized authority
became an entrenched part of the Norwegian political
system, access to silver alone would no longer
guarantee position. In circumstances like this, the
prospect of losing status may have outweighed the
cost of relocating the community that still respected
it. When the middle men began to feel the pinch in
9th-century Norway, they did not travel to the Scottish
Isles with a view to integrating into the native
communities, they did so because they wanted to
preserve their privileges. The best way to do that
would be to recreate the societal ideal they had left
behind. This kind of cultural imperialism is suggested
by the typically Scandinavian long-houses
discovered across the Northern and Western Isles
and the pagan cremation burials identified at several
sites from Arran to Orkney, but virtually nowhere
else in the British Isles.
Just such a scenario also finds striking parallels
in a more recent wave of Norwegian migration.
From the early 19th century until the early 20th,
around 800,000 Norwegians left their native shores
for a new life in North America. Although it might
be assumed that their primary motivation for so doing
was to exploit the financial opportunities offered
by the American economy, the reality was not as
straightforward. Judging from the insular, inwardlooking,
and ethnically exclusive communities set
up by Norwegian migrants to the mid-west of the
USA (Munch 1949:780–781), it seems that a major
reason for leaving was to maintain individual status
built on traditional values. Norway itself was changing,
and without the re-creation of traditional Norwegian
communities abroad, this would have been
impossible. This perspective begs the question of
which changes might have provoked their ancestors
to do likewise?
Identifying Formative Push and Pull Factors
For the Inner Hebrides, as elsewhere, it would
be counter-productive to attribute all the events of
the Viking Expansion to a single deterministic cause
(cf. Barrett 2008b:671). Indeed, when comparing the
evidence from Islay with other parts of the expansion
zone, it is apparent that Scandinavian activity
abroad, then as now, was situational and changed
over time and place. Crawford (1987:39–48) has
suggested, not unreasonably, that the changing nature
of this activity could be seen as an unplanned
reaction to changing circumstances in the Irish Sea
region (pull factors). It would nevertheless be unwise
to ignore contemporary currents in the social
and political life of Scandinavia, some of which
would have encouraged migrants to leave (push factors).
The following three-stage model might help
to explain the patterns of Norse-native interaction
suggested by the evidence.
Stage 1
Push. While the early raids would hardly have
been possible without the coincidence of a number
of interlinked phenomena, such as the introduction
of the sail, these, in turn, are most likely to have
been born out of, or employed as a direct result of
social or economic crises. Of those postulated to
date, perhaps the most compelling is the disruption
of external revenue streams and resulting destabilization
of the elite gift economy (e.g., Barrett 2008a,
Hernæs 1997, Näsman 2000, cf. Samson 1991). For
Norwegian warlords, hemmed in by the mountains
of Kjølen to the east and the Danish political system
to the south, the only opportunities for economic
expansion lay in the west.
Pull. At the same time, documented political
instability in and around the Irish Sea (Fraser 2009,
Woolf 2007) would have facilitated access to its accumulated
wealth, proving attractive to disaffected
Norwegian chieftains looking for new sources of
income to improve their standing in socio-economic
systems at home. The apparently seasonal nature
of the early raids suggests that this was achievable
without the need for a permanent foothold abroad.
A. Macniven
2013 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4
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Stage 2
Push. The success of stage 1 and a resultant, sudden
influx of new wealth to Norway leads to a fatal
economic imbalance. With more nobles now able to
participate in the power stakes, the old order collapses
into a violent spiral of political one-upmanship
and centralization, conflated in the figure of Harald
Finehair in the saga literature, and squeezing out the
middle ranks. The appearance of named individuals
in the Irish annals such as Saxolb (AU 837.9), Tuirgéis
(AU 845.8), and Tomrair (AU 848.5), without
any apparent links to central Norwegian dynasties,
suggests that foreign resources are now more fiercely
contested and need to be more directly controlled
to be effectively exploited.
Pull. The fractured Inner Hebridean seascape,
destabilized over a generation or more of Scandinavian
violence offers extreme logistical advantages
for settlement compared to expansive and contiguous
landscapes, such as Ireland, in establishing and
maintaining the safety of Norse emigrant communities.
But it is also close enough to a perpetually wartorn
Ireland to give settlers scope to tap into further
economic opportunities if required. The culturally
imperialistic nature of this settlement sees the almost
total subordination of the established Gaelic language
and culture.
Stage 3
A third and final stage of development can be
postulated for the mature Scandinavian communities
before changes in Norway lead to dwindling contact
with the Isles and the demise of Norse culture in the
Inner Hebrides.
Push. The centralizing powers in Norway see
the advantage of repeating this process in the “colonies”.
From 853, powerful figures like Amlaíb (AU
853.2–FA 871) and Ímar (AU 857.1–AU 873.3) assert
themselves over all the Scandinavians in Ireland
and possibly also the Isles. Similarly, from the 850s
and 860s, the Earls of Møre establish hegemony in
Orkney. Once again, the middle-men are squeezed
out, this time with the target of migration being the
effectively virgin landscape of Iceland, and unquestionably
involving large mixed population groups
(Karlsson 2000).
Pull. Ready-made constituencies of Norsespeakers—
and later, land effectively free for the
taking—draw and facilitate settlement.
Concluding Remarks
The idea of large-scale, mixed migration from
Norway to the Inner Hebrides during the Viking
Age finds resonance in the evidence from Islay. It
also seems to be in broad agreement with what is
known of the more general trends in the culture and
politics of Early Medieval Scotland and Norway.
Problems explaining such a development in terms
of land-locked models of migration are countered
to a certain extent by reference to the very different
topographical and economic bases of the area
in question. If we accept, moreover, that the main
motivating factor in this particular movement was
the maintenance of culture-specific social standing
by disaffected mid-ranking chieftains, both
the migration of mixed population groups to the
Hebrides and the disappearance or extreme social
subordination of the natives becomes even more
convincing. That is not to say that pockets of Gaelic
culture did not survive the Norse onslaught in the
Inner Isles: the monastery of Columba on Iona being
one very obvious example. Whether this was as
anything other than specialist outposts, the result of
local negotiation, or the interests of more Hibernofriendly
Scandinavians in Ireland is difficult to say.
In conclusion, however, one thing seems relatively
certain: Islay before the Viking Age was a strategically
important and economically powerful seat of
Dalriadan chieftains near the geographical center of
the Gaelic-speaking world. If cultural and linguistic
disjuncture were possible here, there must have been
exceptional reasons for any other part of the region
escaping the same fate.
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Endnotes
1The term “Viking Age” is a nebulous one, whose temporal
span and implications vary from region to region. Here,
it will cover the period of pagan Scandinavian raiding,
settlement and cultural influence from the time of the
first recorded raids in the area in the last decade of the 9th
century to the “official” Conversion of the neighboring
Northern Isles by Óláfr Tyrggvason in the last decade of
the 10th century.
2AU = The Annals of Ulster, AI = The Annals of Innisfallen.
FA = The Fragmentary Annals. All references
to Irish annals are to University College Cork’s online
Corpus of Electronic Texts http://celt.ucc.ie/index.html
(Accessed 30 September 2011). ASB = The Annals of St
Bertin (Nelson 1991).
3The supposed raid on Skye in AU 795.3 has been convincingly
dismissed by Clare Downham (2000:192–196) as a
scribal error for an earlier scríne (shrines) adding further
detail to the preceding account of the burning of the monastery
of Rechru (Rathlin Island).
4While it would be wrong to imagine that the recorded
“Viking” raids were not short-lived or violent, and did
not involve the non-consensual taking of precious objects
(cf. Ó Corráin 1998b:438–439, Wamers 1998:37–72), it
seems likely from the better-documented Irish experience
that there were other targets, both monastic and secular,
and that more sophisticated, political agendas were also
in play. The monastic raid, for example, was a tried and
tested feature of internecine power-struggles in pre-
Viking Age Ireland (Charles-Edwards 1996, Etchingham
1996:15, Manning 2000:47–49, Ó Corráin 1998a:430).
In addition to asserting dominance, burnings and other
forms of destruction may have had more subtle functions.
Fellows-Jensen’s (2005:109–133) survey of Scandinavian
settlement in La Hague, Normandy, suggests that the
incoming land-takers deliberately destroyed title deeds
and tax lists kept by the Church to complicate subsequent
legal challenges.
5Viking activity is not taken to include post-Conversion
Scandinavian aggression such as Magnús Bareleg Ólafsson’s
expedition of 1098, made famous by Norse skáld
Björn krepphendi (ON, the Cripple-Handed) in Snorri
Sturluson’s Magnúss saga berfætts (Aðalbjarnarson
1951:219–223).
6Terrimotus in Ili .ii. id Aprilis (AU 740.3), Death of Manx
king Godred Crovan Haraldsson “in insula quae vocatur
Yle” (Chronicle of the Kings of Man and the Isles §23 =
Broderick and Stowell 1973).
7For ease of reference, the term “(Old) Norse” will be
used in this paper to denote the varieties of Common
Scandinavian spoken by Norwegian communities during
the Viking Age, “Scandinavian” will be used when it is
necessary to expand the linguistic scope geographically–
e.g., to the dialects spoken by ethnic Danes during the
same period. The term “Gaelic”, will be used primarily
to denote the varieties of Goidelic dialect spoken in
the Scots (= Irish) kingdoms of Dàl Riata and Ireland,
whether before this point or more recently.
8For definitions of “genocide” and related terms such as
“ethnic cleansing” see chapters 1–3 of Totten and Bartrop
(2009). Further medieval examples are discussed in Fraser
(2010) and Scales (2010).
9All entries in the National Monuments Record of Scotland
(NMRS) can be accessed via CANMORE, the online
database of The Royal Commission on the Ancient Historical
Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS): http://www.
rcahms.gov.uk/canmore.html (Accessed 30 September
2011).
10In earlier times, Islay was erroneously believed to be the
furthest west of all of the islands of Britain. On his visit
to the island in the 1690s, the traveller Martin Martin
was told by locals that the “village” of Coull on the west
coast was so called by ancients because it represented the
“back [part] of the world” (Martin 2002:275–276).
11Cf. Ward-Perkins’ (2000) discussion of the fate of the
native Britons in England in the face of an earlier wave
of settlement by Angles and Saxons.