W.A.Craigie and the lack of Gaelic names in Landnáma

Scandinavian Studies, 2020

2012

The Vikings in Munster - Languages, Myths and Finds Vol. 3

The Languages, Myths and Finds project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, ran in the years 2013-14, coinciding with the British Museum’s international exhibition Vikings: Life and Legend. The aim of the project was to encourage conversations between specialist university academics and advanced research students in Old Norse and Viking Studies, and local communities around Britain and Ireland who were interested in knowing more about their Viking heritage. The communities chosen for the project were Cleveland, Dublin, Isle of Lewis, Isle of Man and Munster. Five small teams of academics and students were chosen to work with each community by developing and researching topics most suited to that locality, as identified in dialogue with the community. These booklets are the products of the research done by those teams together with the local partners, especially during field trips to the localities in the spring of 2014. The full set of five booklets can be viewed on the project website, http://languagesmythsfinds.ac.uk, where there is also further information about the project.

2009

Citation for published version (APA): Jennings, A., & Kruse, A. (2009). One coast three peoples: names and ethnicity in the Scottish west during the early Viking period. In A. Woolf (Ed.), Scandinavian Scotland Twenty Years After: The Proceedings of a Day Conference held on 19 February 2007 (Vol. St John's House Papers No 12, pp. 75-102 ). St Andrews: University of St. Andrews, Committee for Dark Age Studies.

The Northern and Western Isles of Scotland were closely connected during the Norse period. Both were part of the Kingdom of Norway and the Archbishopric of Nidaros, and indeed, for extensive periods, all these islands were ruled by Jarls of Orkney, such as Sigurðr the Stout and Þorfinnr the Mighty. The situation changed with the hand-over of the Hebrides to Scotland in the Treaty of Perth of 1266. The Hebrides were annexed to the Scottish realm, while the Northern Isles remained Norwegian. A cultural and political wedge was driven between the island groups, and connections between the two areas become much harder to identify in the record. However, connections there were, usually, but not always, in the form of violent raids waged against the Northern Isles. The modern folklore of both Orkney and Shetland still contains references to raids by Lewismen. A Lewis Scord (hill pass), where Lewis raiders were slaughtered and buried, can still be identified by locals at Scousburgh in Shetland today. In this paper, I have taken folklore seriously as an historical source. Folklore can be problematical as it is notoriously difficult material. It also raises justified suspicions in the minds of the critically schooled historian. However, there is an ulterior purpose: because in this case elements of folklore can be traced back to actual, recorded events, I wished to show that folklore should not be dismissed out of hand, especially where oral tradition is strong and other sources in short supply. The paper provides a small demonstration of the value of folklore, but it also shows how changes in folklore and errors in the transmission of the story can be traced through time. This paper focuses on the ramifications of a hitherto unremarked marriage between two of the most powerful figures in 16 th -century Orkney and Lewis: Lady Barbara Stewart, widow of James Sinclair of Brecks, and Ruaraidh Mac Leod, Chief of the Sìol Torcail and Baron of Lewis. The reality of Scottish historiography is that scholars of the Northern Isles and the Hebrides have not always been aware of the history of each other's islands. So perhaps it is not surprising that this marriage has effectively slipped under the historians' radar. However, it could provide hitherto unrecognized evidence of intimate elite contact between Northern and Western Isles in the mid-16 th century and a possible attempt to extend MacLeod Lordship to Orkney and Shetland.

in: Mortensen, Andras, ed.: Viking and Norse in the North Atlantic. Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Fourteenth Viking Congress, Tórshavn, 19-30 July 2001, 2005 (:251-63)

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers to "Danes" and to the "Danish tongue", but it is not clear that English writers would have known how to distinguish between Danes and Norwegians, or even that Danes and Norwegians distinguished between themselves. The first record we have of Englishmen differentiating between Scandinavian groups occurs in the continuations of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at 920A. In the Chronicle itself, the first such delineation appears in a poem under the year 942, in which the Danes are contrasted favorably with the Norðmenn. 1 The word Danair does not appear in Irish sources until the 980s, when we suddenly see it used in 986, 987, and 990. 2 This word must have seeped into the Irish language from the Old Norse word dönsk, which actually referred to the language spoken by all Scandinavians. The word

Innes Review, vol.71 (2), pp.270–302, 2020

2014

Languages, Myths and Finds was an AHRC Collaborative Skills Development Programme, which ran from 2013 to 2014. The programme brought together graduate students and full-time researchers from across the UK and Ireland to explore the translation of Norse and Viking cultures into the modern day. Programme participants worked with local partners in five communities with Norse heritage: the Isle of Lewis, Cleveland, the Isle of Man, Dublin, and Munster (Cork and Waterford). The programme also drew on the work of the British Museum, particularly the Museum’s ‘Vikings: Life and Legend‘ exhibition, as part of its engagement with local communities. This chapter, which gives a short introduction to the history of Viking-Age Munster, is taken from a public outreach booklet produced as part of the project by the Munster team. The booklet was distributed for free in museums, tourist information centres and educational areas throughout Munster. The entire booklet on the Vikings in Munster can be accessed online at: https://languagesmythsfinds.wordpress.com/cork/

This paper is derived from the work of my PhD thesis, looks at methodological issues in relation to the analysis of loanwords, and considers 4 semantic fields (sea-birds, deep-sea fishing, and the maritime and non-maritime environments) in which Old Norse loanwords appear in the Gaelic languages, as indicators of social interactions between Gaelic speakers and Norse speakers. The article includes appendices listing the loanwords in these semantic fields, and assesses them for likelihood on phonological and semantic grounds. The complete paper is subject to embargo for 12 months from the date of publication.