Viking
Raid
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Viking
Scotland
Although there was certainly contact between Scotland and Scandinavia
in earlier times, the earliest recorded Viking activity in Scotland
was an attack on the monastery of Colmcille on Iona in 795, and
the first permanent, large-scale settlement of people from Norway
in the Northern Isles of Shetland and Orkney is usually held to
date from c.8oo, while comparable settlement on the northern
Scottish mainland and in the Western Isles (especially Lewis)
would appear to have begun some fifty years later. In Lewis and
northern Skye the majority of older settlement names are Scandinavian
in origin, and in the northern Hebrides generally a high proportion
of the names of the chief natural features are also Norse. The
placename evidence for the Western Isles as a whole points
to fairly full-scale Viking settlement in the ninth and tenth
centuries, appreciably less intensive than in the Northern Isles
but dense enough to leave permanent traces in the ethnic constitution
of todays population and to have affected its ancestral
language, Gaelic.
The influence of Scandinavia seems to have been more thoroughgoing
in the lands bordering the North Minch Lewis and Harris,
Skye, Raasay and the mainland seaboard from Loch Broom northward
to Cape Wrath than it was in the southern Hebrides and
the Firth of Clyde. Further south still, however, the Isle of
Man was colonized relatively thoroughly, and this colony in turn
must have had close relations with the small but important Norse
settlements established from 841 onwards along the eastern shores
of Ireland, from Dublin to Waterford.
It has been suggested that, Olaf the White, Norse king of Dublin
in the mid-ninth century, was of Hebridean origin. Certainly,
Dublin and other Irish coastal towns were founded and used by
the Norwegians as bases from which to plunder the rich and largely
defenceless Irish monasteries and the wealthy English lowlands,
not the Hebrides. The inference must be that the Scottish islands
and West Highland coastal regions were areas attracting not plunder
(at least not after Iona had been ransacked so completely that
there was nothing left) but permanent settlement by comparatively
humble west Norwegian families which, for the first two or three
generations, gladly participated in Viking summer raids on Ireland,
England and the northwest coastal territories of the continent.
Norse Hebrideans, many of them Christian, also played a considerable
part in the colonization of Iceland (late ninth century) and evidently
took a hand in the Norwegian settlement of English
Cumbria.
For the later history of Scotland two consequences of the utmost
importance stemmed from the Scandinavian occupation of the Western
Isles and the West Highland seaboard. At the height of the Norse
invasions the residual Celtic realms of Picts and Scots seem to
have been compelled to merge, almost in self-defence. As a result
of the merger the political centre
of gravity of the Scots was shifted from Dalriada to the east,
especially the Tay valley, and this would have intensified the
displacement of Pictish by Gaelic in Scotland north of the Forth.
Secondly, and connected with this process, the links between Scottish
Dalriada and its mother country in northern Ireland were broken
to such an extent that the Western Isles acquired the name Innse
Gall (Isles of the Foreigners); the mixed ScandinavianGaelic
peoples who overran south-west Scotland in the ninth and tenth
centuries were known as Gallghaidhil (Foreign Gael), whence the
name Galloway; while the young warriors from Argyll and the Hebrides,
who in medieval times made a living by fighting in Irish wars,
were known to the Irish as galloglaig (foreign youth).
The ScotoPictish kingdom was unable to reassert a hegemony
over the west, where Norwegian overlordship was asserted
by King Magnus Barelegs at the end of the eleventh century. His
expedition of 1098 led to a treaty with Edgar, king of Scotland,
which is said to have conceded to Norway rule over all the isles
from Man to Lewis, together with Kintyre. One important consequence
was that the church of the isles, the diocese of Sodor (i.e. suoreyjar,
southern isles) and Man, was formally subordinated to the
Norwegian metropolitan archbishop of Trondheim. The ecclesiastical
link with Norway was to last for a century and more beyond the
date at which secular sovereignty was transferred from the Norwegian
to the Scottish Crown. By the treaty of Perth (1266) the Western
Isles and Man were finally ceded to Scotland, although in fact
the kings of Norway between Magnus Barelegs and Haakon IV Haakonsson
(d. 1263) had been able to assert effective lordship only occasionally
and for short periods. Geographically and historically the isles
belonged to Scotland. Their acquisition by King Alexander III
made it easier for the Scottish kingdom after his death (1286)
and that of his heir Margaret (1290), herself the daughter of
the king of Norway, to face the onslaught of Edward I of England
and survive intact, albeit after much tribulation. Of the two
national heroes, William Wallace and Robert Bruce, who led their
country to victory and saved its independence for future generations,
the latter at least had reason to appreciate the vital importance
of the Highlands and Islands, a region in which he took refuge
in 13067 and from which he received not only succour then
but also substantial military support in the years of armed struggle
culminating in Bannockburn (1314).
Vikings
in North-East Scotland
Some time between 954 and 962 a party of Vikings from Orkney,
led by the sons of King Eric Blood-Axe raided the Buchan coast
but were defeated by the natives. The exact site of this battle
is unknown but one account would suggest that it was on the slopes
of the Aldie Hill at Cruden.
In
1004 Gamrie (Gardenstown) was attacked by a party of Norsemen
who were in search of provisions for their fleet which was storm-bound.
These raiders were defeated and the skulls of three of their leaders
was built into the walls of the church which was under construction
at the time. The ruins of this church (St John's Church) can still
be seen today and the recesses in which the skulls lay are still
in existence, although the skulls have gone. This church and churchyard
is supposed to be the second oldest still to be seen in Scotland.
One of the teachers in St Combs school comes from Gardenstown
(Gamrie) and she assures me that it is said locally that the battle
was won because the local 'ladies' attacked the Vikings with their
stockings filled with sand and stones. I can't make up my mind
whether this is true or whether my leg is being pulled. You'll
have to decide for yourself. The skulls were supposed to have
been removed by University archaeologists.
A
large force of Danes under the command of Canute (later King Canute)
landed at Cruden in 1012. They built a fort on the links where
the golf course now stands. King Malcolm II gathered an army and
following a very fierce battle the Norsemen were defeated. Casualties
on both sides were very high.
One
account states that some of the Danes, instead of leaving Cruden
by boat decided to join their countrymen in Moray by going overland.
They were involved in fighting at Memsie. Cairns were erected
to mark the graves of the dead. A huge cairn can still be seen
at Memsie today.
It
is said that the name Cruden derives from Chroch Dain, Croja Danorum,
Croya Dain or Crushain which in different languages means 'slaughter
of the Danes'.
Along
the Coast, near Inverness, on the Black Isle is a bay called
Port an Righ which means 'Bay of the Kings'. Legend has it that
three Viking kings were wrecked here in the tenth century. The
legend also suggests that it was three sons of Danish kings
that were drowned here when they were on an expedition.
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