Manx Kingship in its Irish Sea Setting, 1187-1229

It has taken a long time for the Kingdom of Man and the Isles as ruled by the Guðrøðarsons from 1079 to 1265 to be recognised as a worthy subject for New British History. Situated in ‘the periphery’, neither properly ‘viking’ nor ‘feudal’, and challenging the limitations of national historiographical writing, developments in this polity have been mostly ignored by historians. R. Andrew McDonald is therefore to be congratulated for his intention to give us ‘a case study that illuminates important themes in medieval British history, including the dynamic interplay of English, Scottish and Norwegian power in the western seaways in the century after 1160, as well as the receptivity of the marginal regions of the British Isles to contemporary trends in kinship structures, marriage, inheritance, kingship, government, administration, and even architecture’ (p. 18). To a very large extent, McDonald succeeds in what he sets out to do. Although other Manx kings such as Óláfr I, Guðrøðr II, Haraldr and Magnús would also have been promising subjects, McDonald's focus on Rgnvaldr's reign is convincing, since it provides him with an appropriate basis for a discussion of his great themes. The fratricidal war between Rgnvaldr and Óláfr II in the early thirteenth century is the starting point for an analysis of all the succession quarrels that plagued the Guðrøðarsons (ch. 2). In his examination of Rgnvaldr's foreign relations, McDonald offers a welcome and rare discussion of Manx-Welsh affairs, a more familiar one of Manx-Irish and Manx-Gallovidian affairs, and a partly new one of Manx-Orcadian/Scottish affairs. All this is convincingly placed into the context of Rgnvaldr's manoeuvres between England, Norway, Scotland, and the papal curia (chs. 3, 4). In addition, the evaluation of Manx kingship with its focus on the implications of the ‘rex dei gratia’ formula, of the change from ‘King of Man’ to ‘King of Man and the Isles’, of the attempted changes to succession-practice in 1187, and of the relations between kings and the Church is thorough and well argued (ch. 5)

Ancient history · Archaeology · Historiography · Irish · Kingdom · Monarchy · Political science · Politics · Polity · Reign · Welsh · Classics · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Law · Philosophy

• Defining the island city

  Open Access•Patricia Adrienne Tutt•Island Studies Journal•2014

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