The Columban Clergy of North Britain, and their Harrying by the Norsemen

In making some researches into the migrations of the Norsemen in early times, I have been much struck with the apparent absence in the ordinary sources of information of anything which could resuscitate for us a picture of the condition of things in North Britain at the beginning of the ninth century, when the isles and coasts of Scotland were so terribly harried by the pirates. Recently the profound researches of Dr. Reeves and Mr. Skene, both of them worthy to rank among the greatest names in our historic literature, have accumulated a great mass of material, from which, and from other sources, it is possible to clothe with interest the somewhat dry bones of the early annalists, and I have thought that a careful survey of this seldom trodden field would be acceptable to the Fellows of the Royal Historical Society, and if they deem it worthy I hope to give in a second paper a similar picture of the Irish religious foundations, whose wealth and insecurity were the chief temptations to the rovers and buccaneers of the ninth century. In this paper I have gathered to a focus the information I have been able to meet with about the condition and surroundings of the Columban clergy, and described the doings of the pirates from the year 793, which I believe was the first occasion when they molested our shores, to the year 806, when “the family” or brotherhood of Iona, the mother monastery of the order, was burnt, and its inmates massacred and scattered.

Ninth · Historical Studies of British Isles · Medieval Literature and History

• Interpreting Medieval Inter-tidal Features at Weelie’s Taing on Papa Westray, Orkney, NE Scotland

  Open Access•E Pollard, Julie Gibson et al.•Journal of Maritime Archaeology•2016

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