Episode 8.6 - Somerled

Somerled was a Norse-Gael like born in what is today western Scotland, on the lands bordering the Irish Sea and the North Channel. He became King of the Isles, ruling many of those that the Vikings had taken over of the prior centuries. Despite his Viking heritage, while much of eastern Scotland was Anglo-Normanizing, he helped served as a bridge from the Viking Age to a Gaelic Scotland.

Sources

• Duncan and Brown, Argyll and the Isles in the Earlier Middle Ages

• R.C. MacLeod, “The Norsemen in the Hebrides”, The Scottish Historical Review

• Patrick Wadden, “Do Feartaib Cairnich”, Ireland and Scotland in the Twelfth Century

• Duncan McCallum, The History of the Ancient Scots

• W.D.H. Seller, The Origins and Ancestry of Somerled

Names Mentioned

• Alexander I

• David I

• Dubgall mac Somerled

• Godred of Mann

• Magnus Olafsson

• Ragnall mac Somerled