The Scottish Vikings Full History

Orkneyinga Saga
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In the period from the 8th to the 15th centuries during which Vikings and Norse settlers, mainly Norwegians and to a lesser extent other Scandinavians, and their descendants colonised parts of what is now the periphery of modern Scotland. Viking influence in the area commenced in the late 8th century, and hostility between the Scandinavian earls of Orkney and the emerging thalassocracy of the Kingdom of the Isles, the rulers of Ireland, Dál Riata and Alba, and intervention by the crown of Norway were recurring themes.

Scandinavian-held territories included the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland, the Hebrides, the islands of the Firth of Clyde and associated mainland territories including Caithness and Sutherland. The historical record from Scottish sources is weak, with the Irish annals and the later Norse sagas, of which the Orkneyinga saga is the principal source of information, sometimes contradictory although modern archaeology is beginning to provide a broader picture of life during this period.

Norse contacts with Scotland certainly predate the first written records in the 8th century, although their nature and frequency are unknown. Excavations at Norwick on the island of Unst in Shetland indicate that Scandinavian settlers had reached there, perhaps as early as the mid-7th century, consistent with dates produced for Viking levels at Old Scatness.

From 793 onwards repeated raids by Vikings on the British Isles are recorded. "All the islands of Britain" were devastated in 794[36] with Iona being sacked in 802 and 806. (These attacks on Christian settlements in the islands of the west were not new. In the 6th century Tiree was raided by Pictish forces, Tory Island was attacked in the early 7th century by a "marine fleet" and Donnán of Eigg and 52 companions were murdered by Picts on Eigg in 617.) Various named Viking leaders, who were probably based in Scotland, appear in the Irish annals: Soxulfr in 837, Turges in 845 and Hákon in 847. The king of Fortriu Eógan mac Óengusa and the king of Dál Riata Áed mac Boanta were among the dead in a major defeat to the Vikings in 839. Another early reference to the Norse presence in the Irish records is that there was a king of "Viking Scotland" whose heir, Thórir, brought an army to Ireland in 848. Caittil Find was a reported leader of the Gallgáedil fighting in Ireland in 857.

The Frankish Annales Bertiniani may record the conquest of the Inner Hebrides by Vikings in 847. Amlaíb Conung, who died in 874, is described as the "son of the king of Lochlainn" in the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland also suggesting an early date for an organised kingdom of Viking Scotland. In the same source Amlaíb is also recorded as having gone to the aid of his father Gofraidh who was under assault from Vikings in Lochlainn, circa 872. Gofraidh died in 873 and may have been succeeded by his son Ímar who also died that year. A lament for Áed mac Cináeda, a Pictish king who died in 878, suggests Kintyre may have been lost to his kingdom at that time. The Isle of Man may also have been taken by the Norse in 877 and was certainly held by them by 900.