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The Vikings were a bit preoccupied with booty and slaves, and they mounted serious attacks on Alba and beyond in pursuit of them. In the 860s, they plundered the kingdom during the reign of Constantine I and took many slaves, along with Angles and Britons, to Ireland. In 875, the Vikings inflicted a massive defeat on the men of Alba at Dollar, near Stirling. Constantine was forced to retreat north, where he was finally slain at the battle of Inverdufatha (at the mouth of the Firth of Tay) in 877.
One interesting aspect of the battle of Dollar was the use, for the first time, of the term
Scotti
in the
Chronicle of the Kings of Alba
to describe the defeated forces of Constantine.
Putting down roots
Generally, the Vikings weren’t looking to settle in any of the lands they attacked; instead, they wanted to establish a system of control, better known today as a protection racket! They sought
tribute
– in other words, if you pay us enough money, we won’t attack you. If that didn’t work, they installed puppet rulers to collect the tribute for them. But where they had the manpower available, they established settlements.
The Vikings spread from Orkney and Shetland into the northern and western parts of Scotland – they constituted the last population movement of outsiders into the north of Scotland. Archaeological excavations at the Brough of Birsay, a small island off Orkney, reveal that although the Picts were very active there in the seventh century, by the ninth century the Vikings had completely taken over.
The Vikings also settled in the Western Isles where even today four-fifths of the villages in the Isle of Lewis have names that are Norse in origin. Viking settlement displaced Gaelic culture and language in these places, as well as the people’s co
From studying the chronicles produced by the Viking invaders and their descendants, some historians have painted a picture of near genocide of the Pictish population of Orkney and Shetland and the enslavement of those who survived. Indeed, 30 per cent of the present indigenous Orcadian population can show Scandinavian ancestry on both their paternal and maternal sides. The overwhelming number of place names on the islands would tend to point to the obliteration of a once-thriving Pictish culture as well.
Other historians argue that it wasn’t all rape, pillage and plunder. There is evidence that an equal number of Viking women and men were settling in that part of Scotland, suggesting stable agricultural communities peacefully co-existing with the native population and, through intermarriage, furthering integration. So, rather than a violent obliteration of Pictish culture, it seems that the process was one of gradual dominance of one over the other. But in truth, no historian can say for sure.
What we can say with certainty is that from the middle of the ninth century, the invaders were settlers with their own royal dynasty no longer directly co
That’s not to say the declaration of independence from Norway went uncontested. In 872, Harald Fairhair became king of a united Norway, and his grab for power led to an exodus of his enemies to the Scottish Isles. Harald didn’t give up on them. He followed them to Scotland and, in the process, declared the Northern Isles part of his kingdom in 875. A decade later, he added the Hebrides. Sometime around 886, the local Viking chiefs rebelled, and he sent in his enforcer, Kentil Flatnose, to quiet them. Instead of restoring the rule of his king, Kentil declared himself ‘King of the Isles’.
Harald gave the Northern Isles to Rognvald as an earldom in reparation for the death of his son in battle in Scotland. Then he passed the earldom on to his brother Sigurd the Mighty. Sigurd’s line barely survived him. Torf-Einarr, Rognvald’s son by a slave, founded a dynasty that controlled the Northern Isles for centuries after his death.
Strangely, there are no Viking settlements in eastern lowland Scotland. This area was much richer in resources and land than the more inhospitable parts of Northern Scotland and the Isles. That doesn’t mean that eastern Scotland was never raided and laid waste by the Vikings – it was devastated on a few occasions – but no permanent settlements were established. The Vikings came, plundered, accepted tribute and left. There are two possible explanations for this:
There were fewer religious centres in the east, so they looked elsewhere.
The territory of Alba was well defended.
Regardless of the reason that there were no Norse communities in eastern Scotland, it was a geographical and military fact that Alba was under threat. It was confronted on its northern and western borders, and it was facing further problems from the Danes and Anglo-Saxons on its southern front. Clearly, something had to be done about the Vikings, but what? Well, you could fight them or marry them! And that’s what happened.
Battling the Vikings: The North
The begi
crozier
(pastoral staff) of St Columba at Strathearn the next year.
According to the
Chronicle of the Kings of Alba
(circa 995), this was the first occasion the word
Albania
had been used to describe the lands held by descendants of Ke
That victory marked the last of the northern Scandinavian invasions of the MacAlpin kingdom. However, it didn’t mean stability. The Norse presence in the west and north meant that, from time to time, the leading nobles, or
jarlsas
they were known, tried to expand their territories south into Moray.
These attacks continued well into the second half of the tenth century. In 962, King Indulf was killed fighting the Norse near Cullen, Moray, at the Battle of Bauds. All the Scottish kings who followed him in this period failed to subdue the various Norwegian earls of Orkney (jarls given ‘dominion’ over Orkney and Shetland by the Norwegian king). Ke
The successors of Ke
Battling the Vikings and Saxons: The south
In order to understand Scottish involvement in England, you have to know something about the history of English power struggles in the tenth century.
In 917, the Vikings under Sihtric and Ragnall had retaken Dublin. The following year, Ragnall turned his attention toward the kingdom of York. He invaded Northumbria, which at that time was ruled by Ealdred, son of Eadulf. Ealdred sought the help of the Scottish king, Constantine II (900–943), to repel the Viking invaders. This conflict climaxed in the Battle of Corbridge in 918. The men of Albanaich again rallied behind the crozier of Columba, although this time the battle proved indecisive. However, it did force Ragnall to take a detour and head south to York, where he proclaimed himself king in 919.
In 920, in true
Godfather
style, the kings of England and Scotland came together under Edward the Elder, grandson of Alfred the Great, and king of West Saxon or Wessex. At the meeting, Edward was declared ‘father and lord’ by all present, including Ragnall and Constantine II, as recorded in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
The word
scottas,
from which
Scots
derives, was used in the
Chronicle
for the first time to describe the inhabitants of Constantine’s kingdom.
Ragnall died a year later and was replaced by Sihtric as king of York. Edward the Elder followed him, dying in 924. Edward’s lands were divided between his sons Æthelstan and Ælfweard. However, Ælfweard died a few weeks after his father, so Æthelstan inherited all of Edward’s territories. He added to them by occupying Northumbria in 927, becoming king of a realm that stretched all the way from the south of England to the Firth of Forth.
Æthelstan’s power didn’t go uncontested. An opposition formed, made up of Constantine II, Owen (king of the Britons of Strathclyde) and the Welsh kings. In open defiance of Æthelstan, the Scots gave sanctuary to Gofraid, deposed brother of Sihtric, who had died in 927, and Sihtric’s son, Olaf Cuaran. However, an English invasion of Scotland in 934 secured the submission of the Scottish king by laying waste to the east coast as far north as Du
subregulus
(an under-king).
But acceptance of Æthelstan’s overlordship didn’t last long. Within three years, the ‘hoary’ (grey) old warrior Constantine and Owen rebelled. In the company of the pagan king, Olaf Guthfrithson of Dublin invaded England. A ‘Great Battle’ ensued at Brunanburh, somewhere near the River Mersey in the Wirral. It was a bloodbath and, by all accounts, a disaster for the invaders. As a contemporary chronicle makes clear,
a great battle, lamentable and terrible was cruelly fought … in which fell uncounted thousands of the Northmen … . And on the other side, a multitude of Saxons fell; but Æthelstan, the king of the Saxons, obtained a great victory.
But Brunanburh proved to be a pyrrhic victory: four years later, Æthelstan was dead. Within a year of that, his successor, the 18-year-old Edmund, had witnessed the virtual collapse of the empire built by his older brother. He spent the rest of his reign trying to reconquer the lost territories, and he pretty much managed to do so by 945. In that year, he conquered Strathclyde but ceded the territory to the new Scottish king, Malcolm I (943–954), in return for a treaty of mutual military support. So, the boundaries of Alba now stretched to the west and, during the rest of the period, extended south to include Edinburgh.