Important Events in Hebridean History
The Vikings and Norse Period (with audio)
Main Article
Onund Wooden Leg, according to Norse sagas
the first Viking to visit Barra in 871, Copyright Victor Ambrus
The year 795 is traditionally accepted as the point at which the Norsemen burst upon the European stage, with their raid on the monastery of Lindisfarne, marking the beginning of the age of the Vikings. This raid was followed by many others, at Iona and all around the coast of Britain and Ireland, causing most of these religious settlements ultimately to be abandoned.
However, contacts between the Islands and the Scandinavian world had clearly preceded this, as the chance discovery of an 8th century mount at Loch Seaforth demonstrates.
Trading and raiding was soon followed by settlement, and the whole of the Outer Hebrides became part of the Kingdom of Norway, remaining so until 1266. (The earlier period of raiding and land taking, before the Conversion to Christianity, until the early 11th century, is known as the 'Viking' Age. The subsequent period is generally termed 'Norse' although this is also used in a wider sense). In Lewis about 80% of settlements acquired their names during this time (eg. Mangersta - Magnus's farm) and the same is true for many of the topographical names such as Stornoway (steering bay or anchoring bay) and Laxdale (salmon valley).
Evidence of Pagan period Viking burials testify to the presence of first and second generation Scandinavians in the Islands, especially at Cnip, Isle of Lewis, Nisabost in Harris, and Borgh in Barra, although many stray finds of Viking artefacts must also have come from disturbed or eroded graves.
One of the innovations brought to the Islands was the change in house plan from circular or cellular to rectangular, epitomised by the Viking longhouse. Traces of Norse houses have been found at Bostadh and Gearraidh Sgor, near Stornoway, in the Isle of Lewis. Others occurred at the Udal, North Uist, and another was briefly excavated at Drimore in South Uist in the 1950s. However, it was on the settlement mounds on the machair of Bornais in South Uist that the opportunity arose to more thoroughly explore a Scandinavian Age settlement. Excavations by Niall Sharples between 1994 and 2004 revealed, amongst other remains, a sequence of three large high-status rectangular buildings dating from the 7th to 13th centuries AD, with rich and well-preserved floor deposits.
Image Copyright the Trustees of the National Museums of Scotland
No description of the Norse period archaeology of the Outer Hebrides is complete without a mention of the Lewis chessmen. These iconic pieces, exquisitely carved from walrus ivory, date to the second half of the 12th century. The 93 pieces from at least four chess sets were found in a stone chamber in a sand dune in Uig in 1831. Eleven of them are now in Edinburgh at the National Museum of Scotland, and the rest are in the British Museum.
Audio Interpretations
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