The Hebridean island of Islay is well-known for its whisky, its wildlife and its association with the MacDonald Lords of the Isles. There would seem to be little reason to dwell on its fate at the hands of marauding Northmen during the Viking Age. Despite a pivotal location on the 'sea road' from Norway to Ireland, there are no convincing records of the Vikings ever having been there. In recent years, historians have been keen to marginalise the island's Viking experience, choosing instead to focus on the enduring stability of native Celtic culture, and tracing the island's modern Gaelic traditions back in an unbroken chain to the dawn of the Christian era. However, the foundations of this presumption are flawed. With no written accounts to go by, the real story of Islay's Viking Age has to be read from another type of source material - the silent witness of the names of local places. The Vikings in Islay presents a systematic review of around 240 of the island's farm and nature names. The conclusions drawn turn traditional assumptions on their head. The romance of Islay's names, it seems, masks a harrowing tale of invasion, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

Challenging the traditional assumptions about the nature of Viking settlements in the Inner Hebrides, this book aims to stimulate the debate on what happened in Islay 1,200 years ago, when Viking settlers from Norway clashed with the indigenous Scots of Dal Riada. The Hebridean island of Islay is well known for its whisky, its wildlife, and its association with the MacDonald Lords of the Isles. There would seem to be little reason to dwell on its fate at the hands of the marauding Northmen during the Viking Age. Despite a pivotal location on the sea road from Norway to Ireland, there are no convincing records of the Vikings ever having been there. In recent years, historians have been keen to marginalize the island's Viking experience, choosing instead to focus on the enduring stability of native Celtic culture, and tracing the island's modern Gaelic traditions back in an unbroken chain to the dawn of the Christian era. With no written accounts to go by, the real story of Islay's Viking Age has to be read from another type of course material: the silent witness of the names and local places. The Vikings in Islay presents a detailed historical-philological survey and systematic review of approximately 240 of the island's farm and nature names. The conclusions drawn turn traditional assumptions on their head. The romance of Islay's names, it seems, masks a harrowing tale of invasion, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.

The Viking Congresses bring together scholars of archaeology, philology, history, toponymy, numismatics and a number of other disciplines to discuss the Viking Age from a variety of viewpoints. This volume contains 44 peer-reviewed papers selected from those presented at the 18th Viking Congress held in Denmark in August 2017. The contributors take up the interdisciplinary challenge, and the papers cover a wide range of subjects, rooted in the past, but also connecting to the present.

In her captor's bed! Women are not part of Sigurd Sigmundson's existence, and Eilidith should purely be a means to an end to gain access to a well-guarded Viking stronghold. He would have to be made of iron, though, not to be stirred by the warmly sensual woman beneath her ice-cold shield. Liddy has been made to feel ugly and insignificant because of her facial birthmark. Surely her captor couldn't physically desire her? But, oh, how the stifled, passionate Liddy yearns to experience unrestrained love in his arms…

This book traces the history of relations between the kingdom of Strathclyde and Anglo-Saxon England in the Viking period of the ninth to eleventh centuries AD. It puts the spotlight on the North Britons or 'Cumbrians', an ancient people whose kings ruled from a power-base at Govan on the western side of present-day Glasgow. In the tenth century, these kings extended their rule southward from Clydesdale to the southern shore of the Solway Firth, bringing their language and culture to a region that had been in English hands for more than two hundred years. They played a key role in many of the great political events of the time, whether leading their armies in battle or forging treaties to preserve a fragile peace. Their extensive realm, which was also known as 'Cumbria', was eventually conquered by the Scots, but is still remembered today in the name of an English county. How this county acquired the name of a long-vanished kingdom centred on the River Clyde is one of the topics covered in this book.It is part of a wider history that forms an important chapter in the story of how England and Scotland emerged from the early medieval period or 'Dark Ages' as the countries we know today.

1.Scotland Before the Vikings --2.Norwegian Background --3.Sources for Scandinavian Scotland --4.Regional Survey Part I: Northern Scotland --5.Regional Survey Part II: the West Highlands and Islands --6.Regional Survey Part III: South-West, Central, Eastern and Southern Scotland --7.Pagan Norse Graves Part I: Case Studies --8.Pagan Norse Graves Part II: Interpretation --9.Viking Period Settlements --10.Late Norse Settlements --11.Norse Economy --12.Silver and Gold --13.Earls and Bishops.

As an archaeologist, Steven Mithen has worked on the Hebridean island of Islay over a period of many years. In this book he introduces the sites and monuments and tells the story of the island's people from the earliest stone age hunter-gatherers to those who lived in townships and in the grandeur of Islay House. He visits the tombs of Neolithic farmers, forts of Iron Age chiefs and castles of medieval warlords, discovers where Bronze Age gold was found, treacherous plots were made against the Scottish crown, and explores the island of today, which was forged more recently by those who mined for lead, grew flax, fished for herring and distilled whisky – the industry for which the island is best known today. Although an island history, this is far from an insular story: Islay has always been at a cultural crossroads, receiving a constant influx of new people and new ideas, making it a microcosm for the story of Scotland, Britain and beyond.

This essay collection is a wide-ranging exploration of Vikings, the television series that has successfully summoned the historical world of the Norse people for modern audiences to enjoy. From a range of critical viewpoints, these all fresh essays explore the ways in which past and present representations of the Vikings converge in the show's richly textured dramatization of the rise and fall of Ragnar Loobrok--and the exploits of his heirs--creating what many viewers label a "true" representation of the age. From the show's sources in both saga literature and Victorian revival, to its engagement with contemporary concerns regarding gender, race and identity, via setting, sex, society and more, this first book-length study of the History Channel series appeals to fans of the show, Viking enthusiasts, and anyone with an interest in medievalist representation in the 21st century.

In the 1880s two Edinburgh architects began to survey, measure and sketch the castles of Scotland, travelling the length and breadth of the country on trains, bicycles and on foot. Together they produced the five magnificent volumes of The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland, an unrivalled work of research that surveys more than 700 of Scotland's castellated buildings, ranging from great medieval fortresses to small lairds' houses with pepper-pot turrets, and is illustrated with thousands of sketches and plans. The first part of A Passion for Castles tells the life stories of David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross and their work as Edinburgh architects before they embarked on their magisterial survey, revealing interesting and previously unknown details about the two men. The second part of the book sets their enormously ambitious castles project in its historical context, and describes how MacGibbon and Ross managed to achieve their pioneering, systematic and comprehensive survey. The final part of the book provides a regional overview of the current status of all the castles surveyed by MacGibbon and Ross, followed by a thematic exploration of those that have been lost, those that have been transformed and those at risk of collapse, before posing questions about what the future holds for the castles of Scotland.

The defeat of the Scots in the Battle of Flodden in 1513 left many of the leaders of Scottish society, including King James IV, lying dead on the battlefield. The long and complex minority of King James V which followed is explored in detail in this book, bringing understanding to the evolving relationships among the Scots, English and French against the background of the wider European context of the early sixteenth century. The competing interests of England and France were personified in two of the Scottish Regents: Queen Margaret Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII, and John, Duke of Albany, James V's nearest male heir, who had been brought up in France and represented the French connection as much as the Scots. The interests of leading Scots' families, the Hamiltons and the Douglases, were also at the heart of the power struggle. The book offers a rare insight into a turbulent period of Scottish politics.