A Mighty Fleet and the King's Power E-Book

Tim Clarkson

• Herausgeber: John Donald
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 455

Beschreibung

Situated in the middle of the Irish Sea, the Isle of Man is like a stepping-stone between the lands that surround it. In medieval times, it played an important role in the histories of Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales. This book explores the first part of that turbulent era, tracing the story of the Isle of Man from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries. It looks at the ways in which various peoples – Britons, Scots, Irish, English and Scandinavians – influenced events in Man over a period of more than 800 years. A large portion of the book is concerned with the Vikings, a group whose legacy – in place names, old burial mounds and finely carved stones – is such a vivid element in the Manx landscape today.

Leseprobe

First published in Great Britain in 2023 by

John Donald, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

ISBN: 978 1 788855 32 7

Copyright © Tim Clarkson 2023

The right of Tim Clarkson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

Typeset by Initial Typesetting Services, Edinburgh

Printed and bound in Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

CONTENTS

List of Plates

List of Maps

Genealogical Tables

  1 Introduction

  2 Manannán’s Isle

  3 Gaels and Britons

  4 Northumbrian Connections

  5 Bishops, Monks and Kings

  6 The Early Viking Period

  7 Rí Innse Gall

  8 The Founding of the Crovan Dynasty

  9 ‘Fealty and Oath’

10 ‘West Across the Sea’

11 Epilogue and Legacy

Notes

Bibliography

Index

LIST OF PLATES

  1. Chapel Hill, Balladoole: a small chapel or ‘keeill’

  2. Jurby Church: stained-glass window showing St Maughold’s conversion by St Patrick

  3. Lonan Old Church (St Adamnan’s), dedicated to Adomnán, abbot of Iona (679–704)

  4. St Patrick’s Isle: the curtain wall of Peel Castle and the Round Tower

  5. Kirk Maughold: Crux Guriat, ‘Guriat’s Cross’ (early ninth century)

  6. The Crux Guriat inscription, with a sketch by P.M.C. Kermode

  7. Balladoole: the Viking ship-burial on Chapel Hill

  8. Kirk Andreas: detail of a rider on the tenth-century Sandulf ’s Cross

  9. Kirk Andreas: Scandinavian runic inscription alongside a cross-shaft

10. Kirk Michael: cross-slab with runic inscription ‘Gaut carved this and all in Man’

11. Kirk Bride: the tenth-century Thor’s Cross with its carved figures

12. Kirk Maughold: the surviving portion of a Viking-Age monument

13. Lonan Old Church: wheel-headed cross in the churchyard

14. Lonan Old Church: detail from a late nineteenth-century window in the north wall

15. Castletown: the fourteenth-century south tower of Castle Rushen

16. Durham Cathedral: the tomb of Bishop Antony Bek (died 1311)

17. Tynwald Hill: the traditional site of Manx law-making and justice

18. Kirk Maughold: the cross house

LIST OF MAPS

  1. Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man

  2. The Isle of Man: sheadings and parishes

  3. The Isle of Man: physical geography and prehistoric settlement

  4. Ireland and Northern Britain in the sixth and seventh centuries

  5. Early Christianity on Man

  6. Vikings in the Irish Sea, c.790 to c.950

  7. Vikings in the Isle of Man: a selection of key sites

  8. The Irish Sea region, c.950 to c.1060

  9. Man and the Isles in the era of the Crovan dynasty

10. The Isle of Man, 1079 to 1265

11. The Norwegian expeditions of 1230 and 1263

GENEALOGICAL TABLES

The Crovan dynasty, c.1079 to 1265

The ancestry of Merfyn Frych and Rhodri Mawr

1

INTRODUCTION

This book is about a small island in the Irish Sea that has its own identity, its own language and its own remarkable story. Ellan Vannin, the Isle of Man, is best known to the inhabitants of the larger countries that surround it as a holiday destination, accessible by aeroplane or ferry from Britain and Ireland or from other, more distant countries. Few people outside Man are likely to know much of its history, although a larger number are no doubt aware of the Tourist Trophy or ‘TT’ motorcycle races for which it is rightly famed. Many will recognise the distinctive Three Legs emblem that appears on the Manx flag and in various contexts around the island. Anyone who has visited as holidaymaker or motorcycle enthusiast will know that Man has its own government and, while being British in many ways, is not part of the United Kingdom. Indeed, at one time it had its own kings and was the chief centre of power in an extensive maritime kingdom stretching northward to the Hebrides. The last of those kings died nearly eight centuries ago. The dynasty to which he belonged had ruled for some 200 years, having been founded by a Viking warlord called Godred Crovan in the last quarter of the eleventh century. Godred’s fame has long since turned him into a mighty figure of legend, an ancestral hero who will one day return to protect the Manx people. He is one of many individuals who have played significant roles in the story of the Isle of Man since it first appeared in historical records 2,000 years ago. This book aims to tell one of the early parts of that story, from the fift h century to the thirteenth.

Objectives and scope

The written history of Britian and Ireland in medieval times, in so far as it has been preserved in contemporary texts, is essentially a tale of kings and kingdoms. There is, of course, much more to any region’s history than the recorded deeds of its rulers, but these are the people whom medieval writers in Britain and Ireland tended to focus upon. Other high-status groups, such as the landowning nobility and senior clergy, likewise received similar attention because of their close connection with royalty. Groups at the opposite end of the social hierarchy are glimpsed only rarely, their stories largely left untold unless modern archaeology reveals something of how they lived. From the contemporary texts we thus glean little about the folk who were landless, poor or unfree. This book, being primarily a study of political history, necessarily concentrates on people of royal or noble stock. It looks at the various ways in which they interacted with one another in both the secular and ecclesiastical spheres. In so doing, it strives to reconstruct a narrative history of the Isle of Man in a period for which contemporary information is lacking. The dearth of source material means that the account is often fragmented, with many large gaps that only a measure of informed speculation by the modern historian can repair.

This book is a study of history, not of archaeology. Some archaeological information is utilised, especially in those instances where it sheds light on the historical narrative, but there is here no detailed account of sites and artefacts. Manx archaeology is a big subject with an ever-growing specialist literature and an enthusiastic community of experts, students and interested observers. Archaeological finds from around the island can be encountered at first hand in places such as the Manx Museum in Douglas, or – in the case of early medieval Christian sculpture – at local churches and churchyards. References to the relevant archaeological literature can be found in the chapter endnotes at the end of this book, which serve as signposts to the bibliography.

Chronology and terminology

The main narrative of this book encompasses a period of roughly 850 years, from the end of Roman rule in Britain around AD 410 to the death of the last king of the Crovan dynasty in 1265. To this timespan is added a short prologue at the beginning and an epilogue at the end. In broad chronological terms, the book’s main focus is the early medieval period or Early Middle Ages – an era commonly seen as encompassing the period 400 to 1100 – together with a further 160 years to accommodate the Manx royal dynasty founded by Godred Crovan. The narrative therefore includes much of the period known as the Central Middle Ages, spanning four centuries from 900 to 1300.1 A substantial portion of the book inevitably deals with the Viking Age, the chronological limits of which – in Britain, at least – are usually defined by two significant events: the Norse raid on Lindisfarne in 793 and the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. Historians nevertheless recognise that many of the characteristics of ‘Viking-type’ activity continued well beyond the eleventh century in the Irish Sea region and in the maritime zones lying off the northern and western coasts of Scotland. Moreover, in all of these areas – which include the Isle of Man together with the archipelagos of Orkney, Shetland and the Hebrides – political connections with Scandinavia were maintained well into the 1200s. Here, unlike in the rest of Britain, the Viking Age lingered on, long after the conventional landmark date of 1066. Some historians of medieval Scotland, seeking a chronological label for this extended timeframe, speak of the ‘Long Viking Age’. Others, including many archaeologists, prefer ‘Late Norse’, and this is the term adopted in the following chapters.2

The main geographical focus of this book is the Isle of Man (or Mann). Of these two spellings the first is here preferred, for no particular reason beyond the author’s personal choice. The ways in which some other names of places or peoples are used in the narrative may, however, require explanation, especially for readers who are unfamiliar with early medieval history. The term ‘Britons’, for example, had a much more specific meaning a thousand years ago than it does today. To writers of the period after c.400 and before c.1200 it denoted a specific group of people: the ‘native’ inhabitants of Britain in areas south of what is now the Central Belt of Scotland between the firths of Forth and Clyde. The term did not encompass more recent arrivals, such as the English, nor the people living north of the Forth–Clyde line despite their being no less indigenous than their southern neighbours. These northerners, whose lands included the far island groups of Orkney and Shetland, were known in Late Roman texts as Picti, ‘Picts’, despite having been regarded by earlier classical writers as Britanni, ‘Britons’. Another group, the Scots, originated in what are now the coastlands and islands of Argyll and the Hebridean region. According to their own foundation legends, their ancestors were immigrants from Ireland. Their name, recorded by Roman writers in the Latin form Scotti, perhaps originally meant something like ‘Gaelic speakers’.3 This brings us onto the subject of languages and to the ones spoken in the period and area under study here. Gaelic is a Celtic language spoken today in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. Each of these countries uses its own variant of what was once a single Gaelic or ‘Goidelic’ language. A different Celtic language, known to modern scholars as Brittonic or Brythonic, was spoken by the Britons. It, too, survives today in three regional forms: Welsh, Cornish and Breton. A form of Brittonic was also spoken by the Picts before their adoption of Gaelic c.900, their replacing of one language for another having probably begun in the eighth century. Linguistic change in Pictland went hand in hand with political developments that saw Picts and Scots eventually merge together as one people ruled by a single royal dynasty and inhabiting a new, unified kingdom. The latter, known as Alba, was the precursor of the great medieval kingdom of Scotland. Alba’s birth coincided with the emergence of a unified kingdom of England from a number of smaller kingdoms ruled by early English (‘Anglo-Saxon’) dynasties. The English spoke a Germanic language that had been brought to parts of eastern and southern Britain in Late Roman and Post-Roman times by migrants from Germany, Denmark and adjacent North Sea coastlands. More is said of the early English in the third and fourth chapters of this book. Their early kingdoms in Britain were mostly founded in the sixth century and were already well established when another Germanic-speaking group appeared at the end of the eighth century. This new wave of incomers is known collectively as ‘Vikings’. The origin and meaning of this term are matters of debate but in a broad sense it refers to people of Scandinavian heritage who engaged in seafaring activity – raiding, trading or colonising – in foreign lands. The Vikings who sailed to Britain and Ireland originated mostly in Norway and Denmark, although some doubtless came from Sweden and from other lands around the Baltic and North Seas. Many of the early raids can be attributed to Norwegians, a people who in a medieval context are often referred to as ‘Norse’. Raids by Norsemen began in the 790s and continued with increasing frequency into the early 800s. By the middle of the ninth century, the range of their activity had broadened from raiding to include trade and colonisation. Their language – Old Norse – was spoken in many parts of Ireland and Britain after they eventually settled down to become farmers, merchants and landowners. Among the various Viking groups in the seaways between Britain and Ireland were a number of individuals whose stories are closely connected with Manx history. These figures take key roles in this book’s unfolding narrative.

The chronological structure of this book means that there are no chapters dealing with particular themes. The main narrative simply moves forward through time, from the last phase of Roman rule in Britain to the end of the Late Norse period. It begins in the second chapter where, after a preamble describing the Manx landscape and summarising the history of human settlement on the island, it moves through the Iron Age to consider the question of whether the Romans ever set foot on Man. Chapter 3 marks the beginning of the early medieval period, around the time when Roman rule in Britain effectively ceased. It looks at the founding of kingdoms on both sides of the Irish Sea and at the role of Man as a contested territory between ambitious warrior-kings in Ireland and Britain. This chapter also considers the beginnings of Manx Christianity in the fifth and sixth centuries, looking at traditions surrounding the island’s early saints. In the fourth chapter, the narrative moves into the seventh century and to the heyday of Northumbria, the most northerly kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons or early English. Northumbrian contacts with Man are noted, as is Northumbria’s influence on Manx culture. The chapter ends in the middle of the eighth century, not long before the Northumbrians first began to experience Viking raids. Chapter 5 takes the narrative into the ninth century, shifting the focus to the Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd. Our spotlight falls on a royal dynasty that ruled Gwynedd from the early 800s and which is regarded by some historians as having Manx origins. To what extent this is the correct interpretation of the data is one of the questions examined here.

The Vikings make their presence felt in Chapter 6, which discusses the first phase of their attacks on Britain and Ireland, the period of colonisation that followed and the political upheavals that accompanied it. We here see Man as one of a number of areas colonised in the final quarter of the ninth century, a generation or so later than Ireland or the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland. Indeed, the main phase of Viking settlement on Man appears to have been a secondary colonisation by people from older Norse settlements in Ireland and elsewhere. The book’s seventh chapter then takes us from the late tenth century to the late eleventh, a period in which Man was caught up in a long-running contest for mastery of the Irish Sea region. The main protagonists were warlords of mixed Norse-Gaelic heritage together with ambitious kings from various Irish, Scottish, English and Scandinavian lands. In Chapter 8 we come face to face with the renowned Godred Crovan, founder of a royal dynasty that would rule Man for the next 200 years. We then follow the story of Godred’s heirs and descendants into the twelfth century, as far as c.1150. It was around this time that the mighty Hebridean warlord Somerled began to emerge and, in Chapter 9, we see him in conflict with fellow Norse-Gaels in ‘The Isles’ (Man and the Hebrides). The same chapter and the next continue to tell the story of the Crovan kings of Man, with Chapter 10 bringing us to the last of them. His passing in 1265 paved the way for the Treaty of Perth, drawn up in the following year, which ended the period of Scandinavian authority in Man. The final chapter serves as both epilogue and overview, giving first a summary of Manx history from 1266 onwards before considering what the period c.400 to 1265 has bequeathed to the island as well as the ways in which this legacy is presented today.

A note on names

Many personal names used in the medieval period can be written in different ways, often with alternative spellings that make the variant forms of a particular name seem barely similar. Modern authors are faced with a choice as to which form of a name they wish to adopt in their writings. Many prefer spellings that reflect the name’s origin in a medieval language such as Old Norse or Old Irish. Others instead prefer a modernised form of the name, usually coined in the author’s own language. In this book, I have tended to use a mixture of modern and medieval spellings based on my own preferences.

Here are some examples of my preferred name forms, with variants shown in square brackets:

Godred/Guthfrith (English) [Gofraid (Irish Gaelic); Guðrøðr (Old Norse)]

Olaf (English) [Amlaib (Irish Gaelic); Olafr (Old Norse)]

Rognvald (Old Norse) [Ragnall (Irish Gaelic); Reginald (English)]

Sihtric (English) [Sitriuc (Irish Gaelic); Sigtryggr (Old Norse)]

Máel Coluim (Scottish Gaelic) [Malcolm (English); Melkolmr (Old Norse)]4

The sources

Information on early Manx history is patchy and often unreliable. The various fragments of data do not provide sufficient material for a coherent, continuous, detailed narrative. Any attempt at reconstructing such a narrative for the period covered by this book is therefore a daunting task. Some observers might regard it as a fruitless endeavour. Others might recommend starting the exercise in the mid-eleventh century, when information does at least begin to become more plentiful, while acknowledging by way of a disclaimer that the preceding 600 years are largely blank. I myself feel that an attempt to include these earlier centuries is worth making, not least to put the spotlight on a place that is all too often seen as playing a peripheral role in the pre-Viking history of Britain and Ireland. Moreover, when the sources are examined closely, the story of Man from c.400 to c.1000 does begin to look less peripheral, less like a tale from the outer margins. In the following chapters we will see that Man was indeed connected to important political events throughout the entire early medieval period and that its rulers played active roles in international affairs. This will come as no surprise to readers who already know something of the island’s Viking Age history, or to those who have heard of Godred Crovan and the royal dynasty that he founded in the late eleventh century. What may be less widely recognised is that Man’s significance pre-dates the era of the Crovan kings and can be traced as far back as the 500s.

What, then, are the sources of information for pre-Viking Man? As far as the period from AD 400 to 1000 is concerned, it is certainly true that we have no documents of Manx origin and must rely instead on texts from elsewhere. These were produced by writers whose main focus was on happenings in their own lands and to whom Man was one among several offshore territories in the seaways between Britain and Ireland. One important group of sources is a collection of chronicles known collectively as the Irish annals. These take the form of year-by-year entries recording events of significance to contemporary observers, especially to religious communities at major monasteries in Ireland or in other parts of the Gaelic-speaking world. The annalists, being members of such communities, reflected in their writings the concerns and interests of abbots and bishops whom they served. Two chronicles in particular have supplied useful information for this book, namely the Annals of Tigernach (hereafter AT) and the Annals of Ulster (hereafter AU). Although preserved in fairly late manuscripts, respectively of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, they incorporate much material that is considerably older. Both are generally regarded as reliable sources, with the important caveat that their testimony should not be accepted as historical fact without some degree of scrutiny. Similarities in many of their year entries show that their respective compilers drew information from a similar set of source texts. One of these was a chronicle written on Iona, the tiny Hebridean island where the Irish saint Columba had founded a monastery in the middle of the sixth century. The original ‘Iona Chronicle’ has not survived, but it appears to have provided AT and AU with plenty of data relating to northern Britain in the period up to c.750. Other Irish chronicles, such as the Annals of Clonmacnoise and the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland – both of which survive in manuscripts no older than the seventeenth century – tend to be treated with more caution and scepticism.5 Had the Iona Chronicle survived, it would have been one of the most important relics of early medieval Scotland. Its absence means that our main Scottish source for events in the first millennium AD is the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, compiled in the tenth to twelfth centuries and now preserved in a manuscript of the fourteenth. This provides useful background material on northern Britain but sheds little light on Manx history. Other Scottish chronicles, such as one produced at Melrose Abbey in the thirteenth century, likewise give useful information on the early medieval period in general. So, too, do the Scottish historians John of Fordun and Walter Bower, respectively writing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.6

Turning south, our survey of the primary literature reaches Wales and the chronicle known as Annales Cambriae or ‘Welsh Annals’ (hereafter AC). The oldest copy is a tenth-century compilation transcribed into a twelfth-century manuscript, while continuations in other manuscripts take the sequence of year entries as far as the thirteenth century. Despite proximity to, and intervisibility with, the North Welsh island of Anglesey, the Isle of Man receives only two mentions in AC, the first relating to a battle in 584, the second to an earthquake 100 years later.7 From England comes a far more substantial set of year entries: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (hereafter ASC). This was begun in the late 800s in Wessex, the kingdom of the West Saxons, by scribes attached to the royal court at Winchester. Unlike the Welsh Annals and most of the Irish chronicles, ASC was written in a vernacular language – Old English – rather than in Latin. During the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Winchester scribes continued to update their text with new entries. Copies were made of the original chronicle and these were distributed to English monasteries to be separately maintained and updated, resulting in the different versions of ASC that survive today.8 Although the chronological sequence of year entries in ASC was retrospectively pushed back through the centuries to pre-Roman times, Manx history makes no appearance until AD 1000. ASC is nevertheless a useful source for our present purpose, providing data for a broad historical backdrop from which significant individuals with Manx connections occasionally emerge. The same can be said of a number of later English chronicles written in Latin during the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Their authors were contemporary with developments in the volatile political relationships between England, Ireland, Scotland and Norway that frequently affected the Isle of Man.9

For the earlier period covered by this book, the most reliable English source is Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’), hereafter HE. Bede, who died in 735, was a Northumbrian monk and an author of various works on historical and religious subjects. Although his writings were guided by a belief that the course of human history represented the unending revelation of God’s Will, Bede recognised the value of citing and verifying his sources. This brings him closer than many of his peers to our modern idea of what a historian should be. Yet, like all medieval writers, he worked to a personal agenda based on his own social, cultural and religious affiliations and cannot always be trusted to give a balanced account.10

One of the genres in which Bede wrote was hagiography, essentially biographical information on saints. The typical hagiographical text in Western Europe during the medieval period was the vita or ‘life’, usually written in Latin. This told the story of a particular holy man or woman, recounting various miraculous events that confirmed the individual’s eligibility for sainthood. All such texts were based on early vitae of the fourth and fifth centuries, mostly of Continental origin, that essentially provided templates for later hagiographers. Bede himself wrote two vitae of the seventh-century Northumbrian saint Cuthbert, one of them in verse format. Other well-known vitae from Britain and Ireland include those of St Patrick, St Brigid and St Columba. A larger number of similar works are less well known, often because they deal with saints who today seem very obscure. In some cases, these saints are almost unheard of beyond the districts around the churches dedicated to them. One saint whose present-day fame is confined to a fairly limited area is Machutus or Maughold, patron of Kirk Maughold on the east coast of Man. Outside the island few people are likely to be aware of him. He is said to have lived in the fifth century, but little is known of him beyond what we are told in an Irish vita of St Patrick written in the late seventh century. Another early saint associated with Man is a certain Germanus who, according to a twelfth-century hagiographer, established a bishopric at Peel on the site of the present-day St German’s Cathedral. I discuss Germanus and Machutus in more detail in Chapter 3. Here it is sufficient to note that neither of them is attested in any reliable source. Indeed, hagiographical works are notoriously unreliable as sources of authentic historical data. This is largely because they were not meant to be regarded as factual biographies. Their purpose was rather to demonstrate the sanctity of their subjects and to show why these individuals were deserving of sainthood. The usual form of demonstration was a series of episodes describing miracles performed by, or attributable to, the saint in question. Miracles did not even require the saint to be alive and could be attributed to him or her posthumously. A dead saint could be called upon to answer a prayer, or might appear as a spectre foretelling a particular outcome such as the result of a major battle. As well as describing various miracles, a vita was commonly used as a vehicle for reinforcing claims to land or status by the principal centres of a saint’s ‘cult’. Rivalry between different cults, or a clash of their ambitions, can sometimes be seen quite clearly in hagiographical writings. An example is the long-running contest between Armagh and Iona, the former being the centre of St Patrick’s cult while the latter performed a similar role within the cult of St Columba. Both centres claimed ecclesiastical authority over the whole of Ireland and each produced hagiography to publicise and justify its claim. Armed with an understanding of the medieval hagiographer’s modus operandi, the modern historian is well equipped to identify nuggets of genuine history among the various miraculous episodes. These nuggets need not even relate to the era in which the saint actually lived but might instead say something useful about the hagiographer’s own time.11

The sagas

Looking beyond the ‘Insular’ sources – those written in Britain and Ireland – we turn to texts of Scandinavian origin. Of these, the most problematic yet potentially the most useful are the Norse sagas, a group of texts composed in Iceland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries but depicting people and events of the Viking Age. They present historical information not in a series of yearby-year notices and summaries, as in the chronicles mentioned above, but as a storyline. Many of them contain dramatic episodes that would not seem out of place in fictional tales. Such elements have created scepticism among historians, some of whom are wary of using the sagas as sources for Viking-Age history. Others take a different view, preferring to see the saga writers as weaving their narratives around a core of authentic historical data.12 Although produced in Iceland, many of the sagas describe events that took place in other areas colonised by Vikings. Hence, the settlements and seaways around the coasts of Ireland and northern Britain inevitably receive a great deal of attention. This is the case with sagas that focus on the kings of Norway such as those in the collection known as Heimskringla, and even with a work such as Landnámabók (‘Book of Settlements’), which is primarily concerned with Iceland itself. It is, of course, especially true in the case of Orkneyinga saga (also known as Jarls’ saga), an account of the powerful earls of Orkney. Moreover, a number of sagas specifically mention the Isle of Man and the ‘Kingdom of the Isles’, a polity in which Man held special status as a seat of royal power. Orkneyinga saga is one example. Another is Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar which describes the long and eventful reign of the thirteenth-century Norwegian king Hakon Hakonarson.13 While all of these texts do contain embellished and possibly fictionalised episodes, it seems overly sceptical to dismiss them outright from serious historical study. A more objective approach is to treat them with appropriate caution by refusing to accept everything they say at face value while seeking to identify and discard the storytelling elements.14 We should also keep in mind that similar caveats are no less applicable to those sources that we might otherwise consider reliable and authentic, such as Bede and the Irish chronicles. Indeed, it would be hard to deny that the sagas offer a rich vein of historical information that is worth extracting. In many instances, the information may have been passed more or less intact through several generations of Norse-speaking families in various parts of the Viking world. Today, thanks to the efforts of specialist scholars, we are able to use the sagas alongside other medieval texts as unique and valuable source-materials.

The Manx Chronicle

A medieval manuscript now held in the British Library contains the only chronicle for which a Manx origin seems certain. The manuscript itself is small – measuring only 30cm by 20cm – and contains thirteen separate texts bound together as a single volume. It was once part of a large collection of works assembled by the English antiquary Sir Robert Cotton (1571–1631) and is one of the fortunate survivors of a devastating fire that destroyed or damaged part of the collection in 1731. Among the thirteen texts is the one known today as Chronica Regum Manniae et Insularum (‘Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles’), commonly cited by historians as the Manx Chronicle.15 Appended to this is a list of the bishops of Man and the Isles from c.1060 to 1376 and a description of the boundaries of Rushen Abbey, the principal Manx monastery in the Late Norse period. The Cotton copy of the Manx Chronicle was written in the thirteenth century by five scribes who are distinguishable from one another by their handwriting. We can probably assume that they were members of a religious order and that they were monks rather than nuns. One of them, almost certainly a monk at Rushen Abbey, wrote the majority of the year entries.16 The other four added a few entries at the end. At the beginning, a preliminary series of entries runs from 1016 to 1063 and has little direct relevance for Manx history, dealing instead with events in England, Scotland, Norway and Denmark. The earliest piece of information with specific relevance to Man appears in the entry for 1066 and refers to Godred Crovan’s involvement in the Battle of Stamford Bridge. The entry in question is misplaced at 1047, a type of error that occurs elsewhere in the Chronicle until it reaches the middle of the twelfth century. The final entry refers to 1316 and represents the sole contribution of the fifth scribe. Historians think that the original version of the Chronicle may have been written for Magnus Olafsson, the last king of Man, who reigned from 1254 to 1265, and that Magnus himself may have commissioned it.17 We should note that the title Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles does not appear in the original manuscript but is a modern borrowing from the opening phrase or ‘rubric’, which reads ‘Here begin the Chronicles of the kings of Man and the Isles, of their bishops, and of some of the kings of England, Scotland and Norway’. On the question of reliability, the consensus of opinion tends towards the positive, with present-day historians accepting that the Manx Chronicle is a useful source, notwithstanding the usual caveats that apply to any medieval text.18

It is also generally accepted that the Chronicle was not the only document produced on Man in the Middle Ages, even if most of the others are now lost. The monastic archive at Rushen Abbey, for instance, must at one time have possessed texts relating to the Crovan kings who were its secular patrons. These kings usually resided on Man and some of them were buried at Rushen. The abbey surely possessed copies, if not the original texts, of royal documents such as charters, especially those recording gifts of land to the abbot. Around twenty charters associated with the Manx kings are identifiable today, whether complete or incomplete or known only as brief summaries. Some survive as copies in cartularies compiled at monasteries in England. A cartulary is a volume containing transcriptions of charters that usually relate to the rights, privileges and landholdings of a religious house. Medieval charters preserved in their original form rather than as copies are, of course, quite rare. From the Isle of Man only one original charter has survived from the period up to 1265 – a document relating to tolls on ships, issued by the last of the Norse kings.19 Another type of secular source, one that might have provided data for the Manx Chronicle, is the royal saga. Indeed, it is possible or even likely that at least one of the kings of Man was the subject of a work similar to the aforementioned Hákonar saga, composed in honour of King Hakon of Norway.20If such a text existed, it would surely have been known to the Rushen monks and would have been one of the Manx Chronicle’s source texts. A document that was certainly used in this way was the Chronicle of Melrose, a Scottish work whose input has been detected in its Manx counterpart via information relating to events outside Man.21

The main scribe of the Manx Chronicle was no different from his peers in other lands by letting his own personal interests, opinions and allegiances colour his writing. He seems to have held an unfavourable view of the Norman takeover of England, remarking that Duke William of Normandy, otherwise known as William the Conqueror, ‘kept the English to perpetual subjection’. His opinion of Edward the Confessor, whose death paved the way for William’s invasion in 1066, was rather more positive. So, too, was his treatment of one particular branch of the royal house of Man over another, both branches being engaged in a ferocious contest for kingship in the thirteenth century.22

A number of editions, translations and facsimile reproductions of the Manx Chronicle are available today, in printed and electronic formats. Modern technology has made this important document widely accessible via online versions such as the one at the Manx Note Book website. This reproduces an edition by the Norwegian historian Peter Andreas Munch (1810–63), originally published in 1860 and revised fourteen years later by the Manx clergyman Alexander Goss who also added an English translation. The Munch/Goss edition was the standard text for more than a hundred years, until George Broderick published his own edition and translation in 1973.23

‘A Mighty Fleet and the King’s Power’

The title of this book combines two major themes that run through the narrative: naval resources and royal authority. It also reflects my own longstanding interest in the military aspects of medieval kingship. The wording is not mine but comes from a single line of verse in the Manx Traditionary Ballad, a poem composed c.1500 in the Manx Gaelic language. Otherwise known as the Manannan Ballad, the poem tells the story of the Isle of Man from ancient times, highlighting famous figures such as the legendary hero Manannán mac Lir and the renowned ‘King Gorree’ (Godred Crovan). One verse tells of Gorree’s arrival on Manx shores, locating his landing place at the mouth of the Lhen River on the northern coast:

Lesh e Lhuingys hrean as Pooar y Ree

As ghow eh Thalloo ee y Laane

Shen y chied er ec row rieau ee

Dy ve ny Ree er yn Ellan.

With a mighty fleet and the king’s power

He landed at the Lhen.

He was the first whose fate it ever was

To be a king in the Island.24

Modern scholarship

Manx history from the fifth to thirteenth centuries is not a subject with which many people outside the island can claim to be familiar. It is, in fact, a neglected topic within medieval studies, an oft-ignored appendage to the much larger histories of medieval Britain and Ireland.25 There are, perhaps, logical reasons as to why this is the case. One is the simple matter of geography. Thus, while Man occupies a central position between Britain and Ireland, it yet remains oddly peripheral to both. It is at once a place easily visible from their shores yet also a separate entity, a land unto itself. Another reason is one that we have already encountered: the lack of contemporary sources. Early Manx history is easily overlooked when, even at first glance, we see its many gaps. These are most apparent in the fifth to ninth centuries, a period stretching from the end of Roman rule in Britain to the beginning of Scandinavian settlement. In our modern era, some writers dealing with Manx history from ancient times to the present day choose to skip over the period 400 to 800, using a sentence or two to acknowledge the lack of information before moving swiftly on to the comparatively better-documented Viking Age. Yet even the story of the Vikings on Man is itself incomplete. It incorporates plenty of archaeological evidence but lacks a coherent narrative until the second half of the eleventh century. By then, the Viking Age in much of the rest of Europe was almost over. Little wonder, then, that Manx history has traditionally been seen as commencing in 1079 with Godred Crovan’s arrival on the island. This pivotal figure, the renowned King Gorree or ‘Orry’ of Manx legend, founded a royal dynasty that would rule for the next 200 years. On the history of Godred and his descendants we have fairly reliable, detailed information, chiefly via the Manx Chronicle but also from other more or less contemporary texts of Irish, Scottish, English and Scandinavian origin. Unfortunately, the sequence of year entries in the Chronicle does not reach backwards into the first millennium. If we seek insights into what was happening before Godred’s time, we must rummage patiently for small fragments of data that may shed a little light. Not all historians regard this kind of endeavour as worthwhile, yet some do. The following brief survey will show how the early and pre-Viking periods on Man have been addressed by a selection of writers in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Arthur William Moore (1853–1909), the foremost Manx historian of the Victorian era, dealt with the time before the Crovan dynasty in the first volume of his History of the Isle of Man (published in 1900). He covered the fifth to eighth centuries in a chapter entitled ‘The Celtic Period’, saying much about the transition from paganism to Christianity and the activities of saints such as Patrick and Maughold. He had less to say about the island’s secular history during this period, describing it as ‘an absolute blank’.26 In Moore’s opinion, there exists ‘no trustworthy record of any event whatever before the incursions of the Northmen’. In a single paragraph of nineteen lines and an accompanying footnote of similar length, he moved swiftly through the alleged Manx connections of one sixth-century Irish king and two seventh-century English kings, soon reaching the end of his ‘Celtic Period’ chapter. He then turned his attention to the Vikings, discussing what he called the ‘First Scandinavian Period’ which he defined as the years 798 to 1079. Here, he stepped onto slightly firmer ground, finding several allusions to Man in the Icelandic sagas and thus building up a picture of Viking raids and settlements on the island in the ninth and tenth centuries. For his next chapter, under the heading ‘The Second Scandinavian Period’, he was treading a much more solid path, telling his readers about Godred Crovan and drawing on the Manx Chronicle. This chapter brought his narrative down to 1266 and to the reign of Magnus Olafsson, last king of the Crovan dynasty. Moore’s scholarly reputation, richly deserved, makes the first volume of his magnum opus an essential starting point for anyone wishing to delve into early Manx history.

The high quality of Moore’s work means that his predecessors in Manx historical studies cannot, in fairness, be compared to him. Their contributions were nevertheless important in their own time and are part of a long tradition of scholarly writing that led ultimately to Moore. We can therefore view William Sacheverell’s An Account of the Isle of Man and George Waldron’s The History and Description of the Isle of Man, respectively published in 1702 and 1726, in the context of eighteenth-century antiquarianism rather than for their value as textbooks. More akin to Moore, in terms of quality of research, was Joseph Train whose Historical and Statistical Account of Man was published in Douglas in 1845. While Moore was a Manxman by birth and ancestry, Train (1779–1852) was a Scotsman, born in Ayrshire. From humble beginnings as a weaver’s apprentice and with almost no education he became an excise officer, a self-taught antiquary and a respected author. His writings on the folklore and antiquities of Scotland attracted the attention of Sir Walter Scott who consulted Train on these subjects while gathering material for his own novels. In 1817, after learning that Train was interested in acquiring a copy of Waldron’s Description of Man, Scott suggested that Train himself should write a new history of the island. Train agreed to take on the project but was unable to get down to it until the late 1820s. Living in Scotland meant that he had to rely on information supplied by contacts on Man, although he did manage to visit the island in 1836. Inspired by a series of ‘statistical accounts’ that effectively recorded the geography, antiquities and economy of different parts of Scotland, Train applied a similar approach to his study of Man.27 His reconstruction of the island’s early history is commendable, although he had a tendency to use sources that would not now be considered reliable. One of these was Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, published in the late sixteenth century. Although this had provided William Shakespeare with plenty of exciting material for King Lear and other plays, it unfortunately contains large amounts of imaginative pseudo-history that add little to knowledge of past events. The second chapter of Train’s book, covering the sixth to early tenth centuries ad, is peppered with material invented by Holinshed and thus offers a fictionalised historical narrative. Moore, by contrast, was happy to accept that reliable source material simply did not exist and that the entire pre-Norse period of Manx history should be dealt with briefly and swiftly. Train’s view of Godred Crovan was also not the one adopted by Moore. While the latter correctly equated Godred with the renowned King Gorree of Manx legend, Train instead saw them as separate individuals.28

Moore’s History of the Isle of Man appeared at the dawn of the twentieth century and set a high standard for everything that has been published since. It has remained an important work on the subject for more than a hundred years and will, no doubt, continue to retain iconic status for a long time to come. The twentieth century bore witness to a number of other monographs on Manx history, each with its own way of dealing with the Late Norse era but essentially adopting Moore’s minimalist approach to the preceding period. In a short book aimed at younger readers and published in 1949, the prolific educational author Clement Wallace Airne described the time from c.450 to c.800 on Man as ‘apparently devoid of history’.29 By this, he meant the secular aspect of history relating to kings and kingdoms, for he was able to write several pages on early Manx Christianity. In 1975, in the third edition of his excellent history of the Isle of Man, Robert Kinvig was of the opinion that ‘although there is a great lack of ordinary records for the period between 450 and 800 it is clear that much of importance was taking place’.30 Like Airne, Kinvig was here alluding to the dearth of information on secular history, having already found enough material on Early Christian archaeology to fill a twelve-page chapter. He thus presented the pre-Norse period on Man through the lens of religious history, concentrating on early ecclesiastical sites, carved stone monuments and traditions of missionary saints. Moving forward into the 800s and the Viking Age, both Airne and Kinvig were able to say a little more about secular affairs up to the arrival of Godred Crovan in 1079. With Godred, as we have seen, the historical data starts to become more plentiful. Neither Airne nor Kinvig, like Moore before them, saw much to be gained by hunting for scraps in the faint hope of reconstructing a coherent narrative of the time before the Vikings.

In the twenty-first century we find that Moore’s History is being superseded by a new, multi-volume work. This comprises a series of edited volumes, each a collection of papers, all issued under the umbrella title ‘A New History of the Isle of Man’. Published by Liverpool University Press, the series has so far (as at Summer 2022) seen three of its five scheduled volumes appear, namely the first, third and fifth.31 Of these, the third deals with the period 1000 to 1406 and thus overlaps with the second half of this book. The fifth volume, the last, deals with the modern era from 1830 onwards, while the first introduces the natural landscape of Man. Still to be published are volumes 2 and 4, the former dealing with the prehistoric and early medieval periods up to the end of the first millennium ad, the latter with the period 1405 to 1830. The quality of scholarship in the New History is impressive. In the third volume, an essential resource for the medieval period on Man, papers by specialists in disciplines such as archaeology, philology and numismatics sit alongside others written by historians. Although essentially a collection of academic essays, it is intended for both the general and the academic reader. Its preface states that its authors have used ‘the critical approaches to sources required by twenty-first century scholarship’ and this is certainly true, yet the contents nevertheless appear more accessible to a broader audience than the hefty weight of the paperback edition suggests.32 The first six chapters of Volume 3 cover the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, overlapping not only with the second half of this book but also with R. Andrew McDonald’s The Sea Kings: The Late Norse Kingdoms of Man and the Isles, c.1066–1275. Published in 2019, McDonald’s book runs to some 400 pages and includes a comprehensive study of the Crovan dynasty from foundation to demise. Again, the thickness of the tome should not discourage the general reader from delving into it, especially as the story of the Crovan kings is at times reminiscent of a swashbuckling saga of piracy and intrigue. The as-yet-unpublished second volume of the New History will include coverage of the main part of the Viking Age, from the end of the eighth century to the start of the eleventh. This period of roughly 300 years is, as far as Man is concerned, poorly documented in the contemporary sources. A comprehensive modern study of this frequently neglected topic will therefore be welcomed.

Moving away from literary sources, the archaeological data relating to Man in the early medieval and Late Norse periods is substantial. Much of it relates to the Vikings and has been analysed by specialist scholars. A number of key sites have been excavated, the finds being described in detailed reports such as those produced by the Manx Archaeological Survey in the twentieth century. Analysis of the data has been distilled for presentation to a wider audience via illustrated booklets and online commentaries. The focus varies from island-wide to local, an example of the latter being Sandra Kerrison’s concise guide to the Viking-Age archaeology of Jurby.33 Anyone who accesses the archaeological data soon discovers that Man possesses an internationally renowned collection of Early Christian and Viking-Age sculptured stones. Of these, a large percentage are shaped slabs carved with crosses, oft en accompanied by inscriptions and finely worked designs. Information on these monuments is easy to access in various formats and – at certain churchyards around the island – on display boards erected alongside local sculptural collections. As far as printed information on the sculpture is concerned, the pioneering work is Philip Kermode’s Manx Crosses, published in 1907, comprising a descriptive catalogue of the monuments. This was re-issued, with a new introduction, in 1994. More recently, a separate study with the same title has been written by Sir David Wilson, discussing the different phases and styles of sculpture from modern archaeological and art-historical perspectives.34 Another recent work is a short booklet by Sara Goodwins, with colour photographs of selected monuments, providing a concise introduction to the subject. Publications on local collections of sculpture are also available, a fine example being Mike Clague’s guide to the Kirk Michael stones. Comprehensive ‘biographies’ of individual monuments, such as Dirk Steinforth’s study of Thorvald’s Cross at Kirk Andreas, get to the heart of questions about what these unique relics are trying to tell us.35

Modern administrative divisions

In this book I oft en refer to places on the Isle of Man in association with the parishes to which they belong. The parish is an important element in the island’s hierarchy of administrative divisions, sitting immediately beneath the ‘sheading’ but above the ‘treen’ and the ‘quarterland’. There are six sheadings, five of which contain three parishes each while the sixth contains only two. The sheadings are listed below, with their constituent parishes in brackets.

Glenfaba (Patrick, German, Marown)

Michael (Jurby, Michael, Ballaugh)

Ayre (Bride, Andreas, Lezayre)

Garff (Maughold, Lonan)

Middle (Onchan, Braddan, Santan)

Rushen (Malew, Rushen, Arbory)

2

MANANNÁN’S ISLE

The Isle of Man lies in the middle of the Irish Sea. It is longer than it is wide, slightly tilted on a north-east to south-west axis and has a shape that has been described as a ‘lozenge’. From its highest point on the summit of Snaefell the coasts of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales are all visible in fair weather. Likewise, Man’s distinctive outline can be seen from the surrounding lands. Viewed from a distance, it has the appearance of a single mountain rising from the sea. It is not particularly large, being some 45 km (33 miles) long and no more than 16 km (12 miles) wide, with an area of 571 km2 (220 square miles). Nevertheless, its location has long made it a place of significance, especially in the context of maritime communication. Not without reason did a poet in medieval Wales refer to the Irish Sea as Môr Manaw, ‘The Sea of Man’.1 A glance at a map clearly shows Man’s central position in the seaways but does not really indicate just how close the island lies to the neighbouring larger land masses. This proximity is best appreciated by standing on the summit of Snaefell on a clear day and gazing around in all directions. To the north, the coast of Scotland lies a mere 29 km (18 miles) away, with Burrow Head on the southern tip of the Machars peninsula in Galloway the nearest visible point. Looking west, the distinctive profile of the Mountains of Mourne reminds us that Ireland is only 60 km (37 miles) from Manx shores. The distance eastward to England is slightly less, with St Bees Head on the Cumbrian coast being the closest point. On the southern horizon lies the Welsh island of Anglesey, separated from Man by barely 80 km (50 miles) of water, and beyond Anglesey in the far distance the high peaks of Snowdonia can be discerned. Travellers journeying by ship from Manx ports to places in Britain or Ireland lose sight of land only for a short time if the weather stays fair. Vessels from Man seeking to exit the Irish Sea southward eventually pass through the narrows of St George’s Channel between south-east Ireland and south-west Wales. Closer to Man is the Irish Sea’s northern exit, the North Channel, giving access to the Hebridean Isles. Although generally quite shallow, the Irish Sea is prone to strong currents and frequent bouts of inclement weather. Around Man the tides and currents are particularly strong, as experienced sailors know only too well. Fierce storms rage across the island in winter. Even in summer, the coastline can quickly vanish from sight beneath a dense shroud of fog.