Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 13 on 25/3/2004.

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Lord of the isles (Donald)

In the first in a new series on the great clans of Scotland James Irvine Robertson traces the history of the dominant clan Donald

The story of Clan Donald is the history of the Highlands. Other clans have had their moments but, for generation after generation, Clan Donald was pre-eminent. Their chiefs were Lords of the Isles, independent of Scotland with diplomatic links to the courts of Europe. It took nearly a millennium before the Scottish crown won control and the Prince of Wales still boasts his Scottish forbears’ achievement in his title of Lord of the Isles.

Now the island strongholds of the Macdonalds are amongst the most remote and inaccessible parts of Europe. But the centre of power always lies at the centre of communications and, in the early centuries of Scottish history, the glorious land and sea-scapes of the Hebrides made a broad highway for the swift galleys of the progenitors of Clan Donald. In contrast the king’s authority could only toil along muddy tracks threading through swamp, mountain and moor.

Modern DNA tests establish that the half million Macdonalds worldwide share a common gene with Somerled, King of the South Isles, who was killed at the head of an army of 15,000 fighting against King Malcolm IV at the battle of Renfrew in 1164. His forebears had married into the royal houses of Scotland and the Kindred of St Columba, deep into Gaelic history, but the common male line stretches back another five centuries to Ingiald, the last of the ‘Peace-Kings of Uppsala’ in modern Sweden. These men were Vikings who exploded from their northern fastness at the end of the eigth century .....

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By James Irvine Robertson

Section : Scottish Clans

Page number : 76