Hiya I'm Bruce Fummey. In the past folk have asked me to make a video about how the legendary King
Arthur was Scottish, and I might do that sometime, but Scotland had another Arthur, and this video is
about the grandfather of Clan Donald: Somerled, Lord of the Isles. If you're interested in the people,
places and events in Scottish history, then hit the subscribe button at the bottom right, and ring the
notification bell to find out when I publish new videos. In the meantime, let me tell you the story
of a legend. Now what feels like quite some time ago now, I meant to take you to ruined castle in
Morvern in the West Highlands to tell you about a key event in the medieval history of Scotland,
but snow conditions have prevented me. Damn you Storm Darcy! I thought, okay we can't take them to the
West Highlands, but let's turn it into an opportunity, where I freeze to death in the local graveyard, but
give folks something more visually interesting than my dining room to look at. The story that I was
going to tell, was about the beginning of the end of the Lordship of the Isles. Now I always intended
to come back to the key character of that Lordship, but he's just too big a subject for a single video,
so today I'm going to start the story of a man, and a period, shrouded in legend and mystery
at the beginning of the beginning of the Lordship of the Isles. Come with me.
Now the legend of Arthur is of an heroic leader who rallied the Britons
to defend against Saxon expansion into these islands after the Romans. Well the Saxons
came and pushed the Britons to the west in what's now Scotland and England. He died in
battle, but it said that when we're in need he'd return again. Then the Vikings came.
The Norse had a huge impact on what's now Scotland, you could even say that they are the reason that
Scotland even exists. To some extent it was because of their invasions that the Picts and the Scots
of Dalriada came together to form Alba. Now in my video, 'Was Macbeth the last King of the
Celtic Scottish history', I talk about a time 250 years later, when the Scottish royal house changed
from Celtic to Saxon to Norman. Now you can come back later to find the video here with the white tab,
in the snow! The point is that by that stage, the Kings of Scots had a more southerly focus. The
Viking threat in the northwest, the reason that Scotland came to be, didn't seem so important.
So what was happening in the Western Isles? Well, the Vikings had taken over most of the northern
mainland of Scotland. They dominated the islands of the Hebrides, all the way down to the Isle of Man.
They built Dublin, and controlled seaboard parts of Ireland. The Irish Sea was part of a Norse empire
that took in Orkney, Shetland, and would stretch northwest to Iceland. The head of this empire
was in Norway, but islands in our archipelago were split into several Norse sub-kingdoms
Orkney Yarls, Viking Irish kingdoms, Mann and the Hebrides. Now some Norse and Celts in the Hebrides
had mixed and intermingled to become the Gaul Gael, the point is that the Irish Sea belonged
to the north, but they'd also ventured into mainland Scotland up in Caithness and Sutherland.
In an attempt to keep the Norse at bay, Edgar, King of Scots had told Magnus Barefoot that
he could have all the islands that he could navigate in a ship with the rudder still on. Now
clearly that was meant to mean that he could have the Western Islands, but nothing on the mainland.
Now legend tells us that Magnus got his men to pull a tiny boat over the narrow land
isthmus of Kintyre with him at the helm and so that chunk of mainland territory belonged
to Magnus. Dammit! Too late Edgar, you've already clicked the button to say that you've read
and understood the terms and conditions and now you're bent double with Mark Zuckerberg
scraping your colon for every last scrap of information about your personal values,
your advertising motivations and what you've had for dinner today.
What I'm saying is, the Vikings were in Argyll. Argyll of Dunaad, the very home
of the Scots of Kenneth MacAlpin, of Áedán MacGabráin of Fergus MacErc, but the Canmore Kings of the
new Scotland were too busy Normanising the south to protect the spiritual heart
of Scotland. The Scots in Argyll had been left to their own devices to be crushed under a Norse
hammer.
It's a justified complaint, that too often when we look to the past, we tend to concentrate on
big men doing important things, and sadly that's often the folk who left records. In this period
there are fewer records than would like, even about these heroic figures, and we've got to fill in the
gaps, but please remember, that in this tale there were ordinary folk, who fought and died, but whose
names we'll never know. One man we do hear of is Gilleadamnan. Now that name means 'devotee of Adomnan'.
Adomnan had been a successor to Columba as Abbott of Iona, so it's fair to say that Gilleadamnan was a Dalriadan
Scot, and that's important, because when we get to his grandson, the hero of our story,
he's got a Norse name, but the point is that his family were those Scots Gaels of Dalriada, with deep
family connections to Ireland. Now when Harold Finehair and his Norse invaders came, they drove
Gilleadamnan off of his land, and he fled to family in County Fermanagh, by this stage, Norse influence
stretched from Dumbarton to Caithness. What we'll call Scotland was split between Norse
and Scots, and aye there was a messy bit south of the Forth/Clyde isthmus, I know that, but the Norse
grip was tight in the north and west. There was no inevitability to Scotland's existence. Now while
we're on the subject about Gaelic names, folk often ask me to translate my sign off at the end, okay.
Now there's a white tab up there that'll take you to my shop where you can buy hoodies, t-shirts or
mugs with a phrase on it, and each sales page has a translation. Do you see what I did there?
Now Gilleadamnan’s son was Gillebridge, devotee of St Bridget. He came back to Argyll with Fermanagh men to
try to reclaim what he saw as his birthright. He was defeated again and again. Now you know the
story of Robert the Bruce don't you? Gillebridge earned the nickname Gillebridge of the cave. That
was because he'd been reduced to hiding out in caves in his attempt to regain his lands.
All support was gone. Folk were ready to accept the inevitability and Norse domination. For the Scots
of Argyll, this must have been their lowest ebb. Completely suffocating with no way back against
the Norse invaders. They say that as long ships swarmed, and the land retreated, the chief of the
MacInnesses was killed in battle. Elders of the clan had noticed the son of Gilligridge of the cave.
Somerled was the bravest, and most impressive of warriors, and they asked him to replace their own
Chief. The legend goes that they were outnumbered and demoralised on a hill overlooking Norsemen.
Somerled told them to march around the crest of the hill, and show an air of strength.
Then they were to kill a herd of cattle nearby, and skin them. Using the hides as coverings, they
marched around the hill a second time and that made the force look twice as big as it actually
was. Then they marched around in the other direction making them look even more numerous.
When they attacked, the Norsemen fled before them. This was the first time that Norsemen had fled in
the face of Gaels, this was a turning point. Little by little, under the leadership of Somerled, they
drove the Norsemen out of the Peninsula of Morvern. Somerled made his base where there's now that
ruined remains of Ardtornish Castle that I was going to take you to, and from that point
he could look up and down the Hebridean seaways. He could build boats and navigate the Irish Sea.
He innovated a new type of rudder so that he could use smaller, more manoeuvrable ships against the Viking
long ships. This was the start of what would become the Lordship of the Isles. Without this, Scotland
may never have been the same. Now of course, we're always going to revere William Wallace, Robert
the Bruce, James Douglas, men who led the Scotto Norman fight against invasion from the south,
but let's remember that the threat to Scotland over the years didn't only come from the south,
it came from the north as well. Now for some Scots, it's sacrilegious even to mention the
existence of the United Kingdom, or the fact that we've been, let's be honest, colonised by England,
and yet they seem unperturbed by Viking invasion. It's an interesting thought that, isn't it? I've
got my own thoughts as to the reasons, but if you've got any thoughts on that, without getting
involved in current day politics all right, I'd be interested to know in the comment section
below personally I don't fancy being under the sword whether it came from the north or the south,
but in today's story, there's a comparison that folks outside Scotland will recognize.
During Hitler's attempt at European conquest, Britain kept losing and losing, just managing to hold on.
After a long awaited victory in the desert El Alamein, Winston Churchill famously said this is
not the end it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.
Now if we had subtitles to work out what he actually said, then the same might have been said of
Somerled in the fight against the conquering Norse. They said Arthur would return if ever he
was needed. It seems to me that Somerled needed to save the Gaelic language and culture today.
There's also much more to tell about Somerled, but if you want to understand more about Celtic
Scotland, then just click the link to the video coming up on the screen now, and if you fancy
learning a bit of Gaelic, then there's a link to a really good YouTube channel up there, it's
a guy I know. In the meantime, tha mi an dochas gum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda.