Half Celtic, Half Viking: The Norse-Gaels, the Kingdom of the Isles and the Gallowglass

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Half Celtic, Half Viking: The Norse-Gaels, the Kingdom of the Isles and the Gallowglass
Chapters:
0:00 Norse-Gaels
1:20 The Kingdom of the Isles
3:48 Gallowglass
5:11 Support
Creative Commons Imagery:
© Sémhur / Wikimedia Commons /CC-BY-SA-3.0 (or Free Art License) commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Brianann MacAmhlaidh commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Who were the Norse-Gaels and what impact did they have on history? One of the interesting parts of the history of these islands in the North Atlantic Ocean is the interaction between different peoples over the centuries, fuelled by invasions and migrations.
The Norse Vikings are probably the most famous invading force, and their interactions with the local Gaels produced a people known as the Norse-Gaels or foreigner-Gaels, a people who had mixed Gaelic and Norse ancestry and culture. They emerged in the Viking Age, when Vikings who settled in Ireland and Scotland intermarried with the Gaels. This intermarriage meant that many Norse adopted the Gaelic language as well as many Gaelic customs. Many also left their Norse gods behind and converted to Christianity.
From around the 9th to the 13th century, the Norse-Gaels controlled large parts of the area around the Hebrides and the Irish Sea. The most powerful Norse-Gael dynasty was the House of Ivar. The Norse-Gaels founded numerous kingdoms, including the Kingdom of Dublin, the Lordship of Galloway and briefly in the 10th century they ruled the Kingdom of York. One notable kingdom of the Norse-Gaels was known as the Kingdom of the Isles, which included the territory of the Hebrides, the Isle of Man and the islands of the Clyde (notably Arran and Bute). These collection of islands were known to the Norsemen as the "Southern Isles," distinct from Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland.
Some sources argue that the Kingdom of the Isles was a successor kingdom in a sense to Dal Raida, a Gaelic Kingdom that merged with the Picts in 843 to form the Kingdom of Alba. The exact extent of the kingdom in the early period is not fully clear, although it probably was centred on some of the Hebridean Islands and expanded out from there. We know for instance that Godred Crovan, a Norse-Gael ruler who would go on to rule Dublin as well as the Isles, conquered the Isle of Man with a force of Hebrideans around 1079 AD.
There were often fractures in the kingdom and competing claims over the rightful ruler of the isles. When the Norse-Gael lord Somerled died in 1164, the kingdom spilt into two parts. At various points, Norway took direct control of the isles. In 1266, the Hebrides and the Isle of Man became part of the Kingdom Scotland after the Treaty of Perth was signed, ending hostilities between Magnus VI of Norway and Alexander III of Scotland.
Sources:
Kingdom of the Isles www.oxfordreference.com/displ...
Ted-Ed: The rise and fall of the Kingdom of Man - Andrew McDonald • The rise and fall of t...
Norse-Gaels en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse%E...
Treaty of Perth en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_...
Kingdom of the Isles en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom...
Godred Crovan en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godred_...
#scotland #vikings #history

Пікірлер: 55

@celtichistorydecoded 10 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching! Please let me know your thoughts below...

@jinpingxi6813 10 ай бұрын

Greetings CHD, red-hair traits are often associated to Gaels. But you could find red-haired mummies in the desert of Gobi, in Xinjiang. That could credit your story of Scythian migration that gave the Scots. From northern Russia, red haired ethnics that could interest you. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fr-Cg72Gm9_OYHk.html

@celtichistorydecoded 10 ай бұрын

@@jinpingxi6813 Great, thank you. Much appreciated, I will check that video out and do more research on that topic

@LonersGuide 10 ай бұрын

The Norse-Gaels were some really cool and badass cultural synthesis. The Norse and the Gaels were a convergence of cultures and gentetics which themselves by and large had diverged from common cultural and genetic roots. So were the Norse-Gaels in some sense a throwback to earlier Indo-European/Hunter-Gatherer/Anatolian Farmer, etc., stocks? For certain this has happened many times in human history, but the Norse-Gael are one case that stands out to me. For certain there was warfare and enmity between the two, but at some point they began to accept, appreciate, and even admire each other. Rather than one canceling out the other, they in some sense amplified one another. More Gaelic than the Irish, more Vikingr than the Norwegians.

@jinpingxi6813 10 ай бұрын

Vikings raided the Isles for cattle and women. Men were taken as slaves to be. It happened that some men were pappars and women held their faith despite hybridation or miscegenation. The new breed of Vikings got somehow identity-confused. Christianisation of the Norses is a product of that confusion.

@chriscoburn69 5 ай бұрын

My Mum's family are McGill's from County Down, descended, patrilinealy, from Gall Gael mercenaries that arrived from Galloway in the 14th century. The family identify as Irish, but are very proud of their Scots Gallowglas heritage. Interestingly, my Scots Dad's lowland family are of patrilineal Norse descent. You'd be surprised at how many Norsemen settled in the lowlands and the borders, marrying into the Anglian and Cumbric people that were already there.

@jamesanderson3633 4 ай бұрын

Aye I think most Cumbrians (including me) have some norse ancestory

@lobo3678 6 ай бұрын

Im from the isle of lewis my surname is Macdonald, and I can still speak gaelic, my dna test came back as 85% celtic, 11% norse and the rest was middle Eastern (no idea how that got in there) its fascinating stuff, btw the word gallowglass is a corruption of the old gaelic which when translated just meant young foreigners

@patrickporter1864 3 ай бұрын

The scoti are said to have from that area via north West Spain to Ireland and thence into the kingdom of dalriada in the west of Scotland.

@prioritytarget7157 Ай бұрын

Try to find a copy of the Declaration of Arbroath and read it very carefully.

@DM-fj8wv Ай бұрын

Aussie of N-G ancestry here, thank you for the great video, concise, interesting, to the point, sub'd.

@nikkicalovich6753 8 ай бұрын

Somerled was one of my great grandfathers. The founder of Nova Scotia was too.

@facoulac 10 ай бұрын

As someone with no celtic heritage, these videos are really enlightening!

@celtichistorydecoded 10 ай бұрын

Thank you, much appreciated

@kh22912 8 ай бұрын

I have Norse-Gael ancestry, and it is my earliest recorded ancestry which wasn't too much a surprise to me. But now I know this fact, and when I hear a Scottish accent, I can hear a little bit of Norwegian... an echo of the distant past and this intermingling of cultures

@IIJOSEPHXII 5 ай бұрын

McCafferty here, we get our name from Ihemarc who succeeded Sygtrigg Silkbeard as king of Dublin and the Isles though he's thought to be a nephew or cousin. He lost Dublin and later vassalised the Kingdom of the Isles to King Canute. He was one of three kings who vassalised their kingdoms to Canute along with the much more famous Malcolm II and Macbeth. He then left on a pilgrimage to Rome where he died in 1064. One of the spookiest shocks I got in my life was when I first saw the head of Sygtrigg Silkbeard on a coin from the 11th century. It was the spitting image of my dad.

@violetmoonofthenorth 10 ай бұрын

Interesting thank you! I have Scandinavian & Celtic ancestry but I’m from the northeast of 🇬🇧 booo 😆 Really enjoy your informative videos of the British isles.

@celtichistorydecoded 10 ай бұрын

Thank you

@sirrobinofloxley7156 10 ай бұрын

From my research all names with Mac are Norse-Gael. Also, have a look at "The Viking history of North West England", we're still here :)

@uiimairgrandchildrenofivar5894 10 ай бұрын

Mac/Mc names are all Gaelic, not necessarily Norse-Gael. If the progenitor of the clan is a Viking/Viking descendant then you're correct. But most Mac/Mc names have nothing to do with Vikings. I have MacIver, Morrison(Mac Ghille Mhoire), McCosker, McCaffrey, and MacLaren in my heritage, yet only MacIver and Morrison have ties to the Vikings. Although, McCaffrey comes from a name of Norse origins.

@heathmahaffey2342 10 ай бұрын

My son had his genetic testing done just for fun recently and his mother is Faroese. We were surprised to find that he had nearly 40 percent Norwegian which means his mother must have a very high percentage of Norwegian. I would have assumed more Scottish/Irish and even Danish but most of those he got from my side. Perhaps the Faroese and modern Shetland Islanders have gone separate ways with their Norse ancestry due to their different paths nationally.

@mcno6363 8 ай бұрын

Me too

@davidpaterson2309 3 ай бұрын

A lot of other Scots (assorted British, Gael, Norse, Anglo-Saxon origins in varying degree) moved into Shetland and Orkney in later years and particularly during the “herring boom” - in the late 19th c Scotland had the largest fishing fleet in Europe (many thousands of herring boats) which followed the “silver darlings” as they moved seasonally around the North and East coast of Scotland and east coast of England. And it wasn’t just the boats - herring rot quickly and had to be gutted, salted and packed in barrels as they were landed, so a whole processing industry followed them, including the “fisher lassies” who migrated (in their thousands) every year between Shetland, Aberdeen and other east coast ports as far south as Great Yarmouth in Norfolk.

@heathmahaffey2342 3 ай бұрын

@@davidpaterson2309 wow, that’s very interesting. I have never heard about this. I think the Faroese had ties with Norway for many hundreds of years after they were settled too so it makes sense. I just assumed because the Norse Gaels supposedly settled the Islands that the lineage would have had more Gael from the women for example. Probably just ignorance on my part. I do know that all of the Faroese can trace their lineage back to one man, Clemen Laugesen Follerup, known as Harra Klæmint, is said to have fathered 23 children in the mid to late 17th century. So it does make sense that any of the Gael dna would long be gone after a thousand years with men like him on the islands. Ha ha

@davidpaterson2309 3 ай бұрын

@@heathmahaffey2342 You’re nonetheless right in the broader sense about the connections between Norway, Scotland’s northern and western isles, the Faroes, Iceland, the Isle of Man and northern and eastern Ireland. At various times in history they were a melting pot of mainly Norse and Gaels. The Norse had the unfortunate habit of turning up and either slaughtering or enslaving the men and keeping the women for themselves. Look up the genetic origins of the Icelandic people - the male line is mainly Norse, the female mainly Scottish/Irish Gaels. Worth forgetting entirely about the modern countries and identities - they just didn’t exist back then. Turn a map of NW Europe on its side so that the west is the “top”. Now look at the western Atlantic coast between Norway and Portugal, via Scotland, Ireland, W France and N Spain. That was a route of migration and trade, on the edge of the continent.

@Komotau4691 10 ай бұрын

Good you talk straight to the point.

@celtichistorydecoded 10 ай бұрын

Cheers

@condorone1501 10 ай бұрын

Excellent Video thank you.

@celtichistorydecoded 10 ай бұрын

Thank you

@andrewtully3622 4 ай бұрын

Tremendous video, well done! Would you consider doing a follow up video that explains the settlement of the Isles a little more? Possibly exploring who inhabited the isles prior to the Norse invasion and why the Norsemen settled there (as opposed to richer, southern lands)?

@celtichistorydecoded 4 ай бұрын

Thanks Andrew, good idea

@dennismcdonald256 5 ай бұрын

Good work, Thank You !!!

@celtichistorydecoded 5 ай бұрын

Cheers

@iainmc9859 10 ай бұрын

Yeah, that's my family; there's a rammy going on over there lets get on a boat and join in. I'm directly related to the last Viking king of Dublin, Sitric Silkhair, but the tall, blond or blue eyed bit didn't make it down to me; although my father was a fairly typical pale freckly salt and pepper haired Hebridean type.

@KangaroozADA Ай бұрын

this explains alot of future history....

@saguntum-iberian-greekkons7014 10 ай бұрын

The history of these 2 people, Celtic and Norse is very rich

@correctpolitically4784 10 ай бұрын

Youre getting better at this . Very good video . Well done. Direct , to the point and clear. I also appreciated the example much im sure like most of your viewers .

@celtichistorydecoded 10 ай бұрын

Cheers

@pjumnuss6590 10 ай бұрын

Timely topic! This helps with my DNA backstory research- I'm 45% Celtic (Irish & Scottish), 42% Scandinavian and 13% Basque ( just found out that men are Indo-European- Goth- Swedish & women are Celtic ) U5 haplogroup). This video presented some historical context for Celtic/Scandinavian gene intermingling. Thanks!

@toddjohnson9782 Ай бұрын

Morrison of Lewis,descent from Olaf the black.

@TheRampagingGallowglass75 5 ай бұрын

Fascinating! Though calling the Norse-Gaels half Viking even back then would be a bit of a stretch. For these days the percentage of Norse blood that most living on the Isle of Skye can discern via DNA testing rarely exceeds 10-12 percent, if that. And my friend's uncle, a native of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia & of full Scottish Highland descent, took a DNA test that revealed him to be 82 percent Gaelic-Pictish in his genetic lineage, 14 percent Norse & about 4 percent Anglo-Norman. Even in the Shetlands, the part of Britain where the inhabitants have the highest levels of Scandinavian ancestry, the Norse Viking DNA of the majority of the natives scarcely goes higher than 30 percent, tops. Point is in the Inner & Outer Hebrides the ancient Gaelic-Pictish aspect always outweighed the amount of Norse influence, genetically & biologically speaking. Thus the early Gallowglass mercenaries from the Hebrides leaned more indigenous Celtic than Norse Viking in their bloodlines, the substantial Norse influence in the military, political & seafaring sphere notwithstanding.

@astralchimp 5 ай бұрын

You can throw Scythian into that equation.

@CelticHound357 10 ай бұрын

Now to be clear. I have not seen the documents with my own eyes. But... According to my cousin , who is Scots. From the Glasgow area. I am directly descended from Somerled. Somehow through my Broadway/MacDonald of the Isle's connection. I know. Broadway is Saxon, I'm not quite sure what my Grandmother "Murdock" was thinking. LOL. As an American with limited abilities, computer wise, that is. Where do I even begin to look for this historical connection. And tracing any Gallowglass warriors I may be related to?

@Cailean_MacCoinnich 10 ай бұрын

Every MacDonald is related to Somerled in some way. The MacDonalds were known for their incestuous relationships. That's why all MacDonalds are inbred and look like Ronald.

@joesan3956 2 ай бұрын

I’m a MacNeil. Been reading the ancestors from Barra were Norse Gaels. Can anyone confirm this? Cheers

@edwardoneill9559 Ай бұрын

I'm 50% Irish 30 percent Scottish and the rest is Swedish and Norwegian. According to Ancestry DNA test.

@waynemcauliffe-fv5yf 10 ай бұрын

@crabbit. 6 ай бұрын

Does the surname Murphy come from Viking? It means “sea-warrior” and since the ancient Irish weren’t really know for that, it makes sense to have some Viking origin.

@brucecollins641 4 ай бұрын

@murp5511 murphy probably evolved the the scottish name murry meaning sea settlement from which moray also evolved.

@nothinginterestinghappens3819 8 ай бұрын

If they adopted the culture and Gods of the Gaelic inhabitants then doesn’t it imply that they were not really invaders but rather migrants?

@celtichistorydecoded 8 ай бұрын

Both I would say. It wasn't all peaceful but it wasn't all warfare

@huwzebediahthomas9193 10 ай бұрын

Picts and other Scottish are more Scandinavian rather than like them English Kents from down south - excuse my Danish. 🙃😁👍😎🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 ~ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🐑

@astralchimp 5 ай бұрын

The Scots nearly wiped out the Picts when they returned to the motherland after the fall of Babylon

@epiccrusadr8583 2 ай бұрын

⁠@@astralchimptrue lol

@huwzebediahthomas9193 10 ай бұрын

Long time mindset thinking, generational, is a very powerful mind army. Totally pathetic I know, at the end of any day, but it certainly exists, always.