Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 6 on 6/2/2003.

This article is 71 months old and some information provided may be time sensitive. Please check all details of events, tours, opening times and other information before travelling or making arrangements.

Hebridean Voyage

IAN MITCHELL, NATIVE ISLANDER AND AUTHOR, INTRODUCES THE FASCINATING HISTORY AND CULTURE OF THE HEBRIDES

When Columba sailed his coracle north from Ireland to Iona in 563, he moved from a world of discipline into one of freedom. The church he founded in the Hebrides might have been Catholic in doctrine and belief, but it acknowledged no allegiance to Rome. It was an independent entity, based on an island smaller in area than Rome, yet it survived as a spiritual sanctuary until 802 when the Vikings descended on the island, butchering the monks, burning the cathedral and looting everything of value.

Surprisingly, Iona was not completely destroyed by the Vikings’ raids. By 1200 it had become a Benedictine Abbey. It did not, however, ultimately survive the creation of the Kingdom of Scotland in 848. Although it took another seven centuries to complete, the conquest of the Highlands and the Hebrides was the almost continual aim of the ruling clique in the capital. This imperial expansion was strenuously and, for
six centuries, successfully, opposed, first by the Vikings who claimed overlordship of the west coast of Scotland until 1263, and after that
bythe Lordship of the Isles – essentially clan MacDonald – which controlled most of the Hebrides from Finlaggan on Islay until 1493.

For nearly two centuries after the end of the Lordship there was what in my book, Isles of the West, I call “clanarchy” in the Highlands and Hebrides, a period during which Edinburgh claimed overlordship without having the military or naval power to rule the area effectively. Scotland destroyed the unity.....

To read the rest of this article you can buy this issue or subscribe to Scotland Magazine to have every issue delivered direct to your door.

By Ian Mitchell

Section : Regional Focus

Page number : 46