AS you might imagine, I’m descended from Somerled. You probably are too. I think I read somewhere that loads of folk in Scotland are. Maybe it was loads of folk in the world. Or was that Genghis Khan?
At any rate, I think they’re the two chaps from the olden days with the most progeny stoatin’ aboot the globe. It’s hard to fathom until you remember there was hardly anybody about in the old days. Important battles in history were fought by two armies barely bigger than gangs of football casuals.
You’re told about castles that were the headquarters of clan chiefs ruling vast parts of the land, and find the crumbling edifices were barely bigger than a snooker hall or even your ain hoose. My ain alleged descent from Somerled is conjured in a distinctly suspect family tree, via Donald “Mòr” MacDonald (Big Donald MacDonald), who fought at Culloden against Hanoverian casuals.
I’m assuming you know who Somerled is. Come on: first Lord of the Isles; Hammer of the Vikings. Oh, you knew that? But you want me to state it here for the record? Fair enough. Here goes.
First, though, we better deal with his stupid name. The historian Timothy Venning says it’s Norse for “summer voyager”, that is to say a pirate who robbed innocent, unarmed villagers and, according to popular and seemingly approbated fantasy today, raped the women. Still, what’s in a name? “Robert” means “fame, bright”, and I’m a dull nobody.
Although many Hebrideans may be of some Norse descent, they don’t go on and on about it like these suspiciously Celtic-looking role-players in the Northern Isles. Indeed, seeking to minimise the embarrassing Nordic association, they claim Somerled’s moniker is actually Gaelic, meaning “champion on the grassy slope”. This is supposedly a reference to his first blootering of Scandinavian pirates on an Argyllshire hillside, implying he must have had another name before that. Humphrey or something.
Recent DNA studies, usually well dodgy, claim Nordic not Celtic origins, which is odd as his dad’s name was Irish (Gillebride, “servant of St Brigit”). There’s a suggestion that “inconvenient” Gaelic or Irish bloodlines are omitted. It’s also odd that a Norseman would campaign against the Norse – though not unknown in itself – to establish a Gaelic kingdom. But then he gave his sons Norse names. It’s right confusing. Who knows? Who knows who we are? I look in the mirror of a morning and shriek: “Who the hell is that old clown?”
Somerled, so the story goes, was relaxing somewhere in Argyll with a bit of fishing, when a deputation asked him to lead a rebellion against the Vikings. One cynic, called Ruadhri, said the salmon would jump out of the river before Humphrey, sorry Somerled, would be a leader. And, lo, a salmon did just that. Aye, right. I think that’s what’s called a leap of the imagination.
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Since his grandfather had been driven off his Argyll lands by the Norse, Somerled was pretty pumped for a pagger but, at his first action in Morvern, found himself vastly outnumbered. Using a ruse involving disguises to give the impression he’d a larger force, he managed to give the Norse the willies, and ultimately drove them northwards whence they fled out to sea or were hunted down and killed.
He went on to drive them out of Lochaber, Ardgour and north Argyll. Clearly, this was a figure to be reckoned with, so what did he look like?Author Kathleen MacPhee says: “[C]lan tradition describes him as being of middle height, good-looking with pleasant but piercing eyes, good-tempered and very intelligent.” Not Scottish at all then. Mind you, clan tradition would hardly describe him as “a wee skelly-eyed eejit covered in plooks”.
Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, then, since some time around 1140 he was evidently suitably equipped to marry Ragnhild, daughter of Olaf. The latter was an admittedly much admired Norse King of Man. His son, Godred, was a prize prat however and ended up in a war with Somerled. Soon, Godred sued for peace, and a division of the kingdom ensued, with our man becoming lord of the Hebrides south of Skye. Later, he drove Godred out altogether and became Lord of all the isles, all Vikings conquered, and everything getting all Gaelic again.
Having bested the Norwegians, though, he thought he’d try his hand against the Big Boys and invaded the mainland in what Islay historian Domhnall MacEacharna describes as “a pointless raid”. This was characterised by an eyewitness – William, a clerk of Glasgow – as one that “menaced the meek” and was “foul with treachery”. Must have been his Norse side coming out. That said, it was unusual for Vikings to take on proper armies and, in Scotland, they confined themselves to the margins, well away from anyone fully armed and organised.
Somerled was killed in 1164 at the Battle of Renfrew against an army led by Herbert, Bishop of Glasgow, and Baldwin of Biggar, Sheriff of Lanark. All that paggering of Vikings before getting handed his helmet near Glesga by a right Herbert and his pal, Baldie.
So, what did Somerled leave behind? Well, us obviously, but also a “vigorous line of sea-kings” (R. Andrew McDonald) and also, reputedly, the Hebridean galley, the “Birlinn”, which was able to out-manoeuvre the typically over-rated Norse longships.
Kathleen MacPhee says he was “the most important leader of Gaelic Scotland after Kenneth MacAlpin”. As for progeny, there’s some suggestion of polygamy or concubine-keeping being practised by these louche island types at the time (the aforementioned Olaf was said, in a Manx chronicle, to have “indulged too much in the domestic vice of kings”).
As for the Vikings, despite their “disgusting barbarities” (MacEacharna), including – according to MacPhee – castration, blinding and the sport of killing children with spears, scarcely a week goes by in Scotland without news of some new, ersatz Viking festival celebrating them. This country: it’s one big nutterfest. I don’t think we got that from Somerled. Must have been that Genghis Khan.
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