Early Sources of Scottish History: A.D. 500 to 1286

By Alan Orr Anderson

Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

Bibliographical Notes

Calendar Notes

Orthographical Notes

Tables of the Succession of Kings, in Northumbria, Dalriata, Pictland, Scotland, and England

Introduction

I-Establishment of the Kingdoms of Dalriata and Northumbria

II-Christianization of the Picts. Life of Columba

III-Affairs before and after the Council of Druimm-Ceta

IV-Death of Columba

V-Zenith and Decline of Dalriata

VI-Zenith and Decline of Northumbria

VII-Domination of the Picts over Dalriata

VIII-Recovery of Dalriata. Norwegian Invasions. Union of the Kingdoms of the Scots and the Picts

IX-Scandinavian Settlements

X-Harold Fairhair. Orkney and the Hebrides

XI-Iceland and the Hebrides

XII-Ketil Flatnose establishes Scandinavian Rule in the Hebrides

XIII-Thorstein the Red becomes master of Caithness and Sutherland. Turf-Einar in the Orkneys

XIV-Harold Fairhair's Invasion. Reign of Constantine II

XV-Battle of Vin-heath

XVI-End of Constantine's Reign. Reign of Malcolm

XVII-Eric's Sons

XVIII-Reigns of Indulf, Dub, and Culen

XIX-Reign of Kenneth II

XX-Reigns of Constantine III and Kenneth III

XXI-Reign of Malcolm II; and the Danish Conquest

XXII-Reigns of Duncan, Macbeth, and Lulach. History of Northumbria

Preface

The chronicles tell of events; but they show also the successive influences that were at work upon Scotland - Irish, Scandinavian, English, and Norman.

From the time of the Norman Conquest, foreign influences prevailed at the Scottish court. The kings were partly of English blood; the queens were English or French; the nobles were imported from northern France. French manners were cultivated. There was little national spirit, as opposed to tribal or local patriotism, until after the events that followed the competition for the crown. Then the experience of true feudal inferiority galled the people, and diverse native and foreign elements combined to throw off the yoke. Thence- forward the common desire to remain independent was a generally unifying influence among the Scottish peoples; and national spirit arose.

The sphere of the present work is the period of foreign settlements, foreign encroachments, foreign influence, and intermittent submissions to a foreign power: the period also of assimilation of peoples, centralization of government, and, in the end, unification of territory, by which the way to complete independence was prepared. It is not the period of Scotland's greatest...

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