Caldwell, David H

English

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Caldwell, David H. (2009) The break up of the kingdom of the Isles.  West Highland 
Notes and Queries. Series 3, no. 14.  pp.7-12. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Deposited on: 27 July 2010  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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West Highland Notes & Queries Dec 2009 series 3, no 14, 7-12 
 
 
The break up of the kingdom of the Isles 
[p.7] 
 
For the history of the Isles in the 12th and 13th centuries historians are very 
dependent on the Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles, written from a Manx 
perspective, perhaps mostly in 1257.1 With few or no other sources to provide 
corroboration for many events, there has, perhaps, been a tendency to accept the 
Chronicles’ version of events uncritically. An example of this is the division of the 
Kingdom of the Isles in 1156 between the Manx king, Godred Olafsson, and a local 
strongman, Somerled. This is understood to have created a situation where Godred 
and other kings based in Man controlled that island as well as Lewis and Skye, while 
Somerled and his descendants (the MacSorleys) took the Uists and Barra, the Mull 
and Islay groups of islands, and also Arran. There is a tacit understanding that the 
Manx kings continued to hold Lewis and Skye until Man and the Isles became part of 
the kingdom of Scotland as a result of the Treaty of Perth in 1266.2 
 
What the Chronicles actually say (in the translation by George Broderick) is: 
 
 In the year 1156 a naval battle was fought on the night of the Epiphany  
 between Godred and Somerled and there was much slaughter on both sides.  
 When day dawned they made peace and divided the kingdom of the Isles  
 between them. The kingdom has existed in two parts from that day up until the  
 present time, and this was the cause of the break-up of the kingdom from the  
 time the sons of Somerled got possession of it.3  
 
It should be noted that the location of the battle is not given. Wherever in the seas 
around Britain, however, a battle fought at sea in January seems rather unlikely, never 
mind one that took place in the dark. Neither of the late MacDonald histories (in the 
Book of Clanranald and by Hugh MacDonald),4 so often used by historians in the 
want of anything more reliable, refer to this battle although it offered plenty of 
potential to put their hero ancestor in a good light. We are therefore left with 
accepting the Manx Chronicles’ account at face value. 
 
What did the division of the kingdom actually mean? Was there an agreement, even if 
not written down, that had the same binding force as a treaty between two 
independent powers? Did Somerled, in return for recognition of his control over much 
of the kingdom, have to acknowledge that he owed allegiance to Godred? Or, did a 
battle ending in stalemate merely produce a respite in a civil war? These are three of 
many possible interpretations of what underlay the account in the Chronicles. Two 
years later Somerled is said to have gone to Man and defeated Godred, who fled into 
exile in Norway until after the death (in 1164) of Somerled.5 Whatever the nature of 
any agreement or understanding made between Godred and Somerled in 1156, these 
events surely overturned it. Somerled is described in an Irish source, ‘Tigernach’s 
Continuator’, as ‘king of the Hebrides and Kintyre’.6 He had added the kingship of 
the Isles to his kingdom or lordship of Kintyre. 
 
[p.8] 
 1
 
Godred re-established himself as king in 1165, after a brief attempt by his brother 
Rognvald to usurp his place. Godred reigned until 1187 and was buried at Iona. There 
is no mention between his restoration and demise of any of Somerled’s progeny.  
 
There is also no mention of which islands were taken or retained by Olaf and 
Somerled in 1156, and the entry in the Chronicles appears to roll two episodes 
together – firstly the partition consequent on the battle of 1156, and secondly the 
break-up of the kingdom by the sons of Somerled. ‘Sons’ (filii) need not be taken 
literally but might have been intended to mean descendants. Broderick has used 
‘break-up’ to translate ruine in the original Latin although it might have been 
rendered into English as ‘ruin’, perhaps more appropriately given that the sense of the 
preceding statement is that there was still only one kingdom, albeit in two parts. 
Writing in the mid 13th century, however, the chronicler may here have been 
reminiscing about events in his own life time rather than ones a hundred years 
previously. We will suggest below that the break up, as distinct from the division of 
the Isles, may only date to the second quarter of the 13th century.  
 
The Manx Chronicles record another division of the kingdom in 1224. In that year the 
partition was made by Rognvald and Olaf, the former being given Man in addition to 
his share, along with the title of king.7 Rognvald and Olaf were brothers, and there 
was no acknowledgement here of any claim by the MacSorleys. We do know that 
Ranald son of Somerled, on the evidence of an undated charter issued to Saddell 
Abbey, took the title King of the Isles and Lord of Kintyre and Argyll at some stage in 
his career.8 This would seem to indicate that he had achieved recognition as the head 
of the MacSorleys, but early sources are mute on his relationship with the Manx 
kings. Indeed, a major problem in interpreting events of his time is that he may have 
been confused with Rognvald of Man (both names being rendered into Latin as 
Reginaldus).9  
 
The Manx Chronicles have little to say about the MacSorleys. To what extent they 
were viewed from Man as subjects, often over mighty and rebellious, or as denizens 
of a separate, breakaway state, cannot be determined. Perhaps in favour of the former 
view is a story in the Chronicles set in Man in 1249 concerning a chieftain called 
Donald.  If, as Alex Woolf has suggested, he was Donald the son of Ranald and 
eponym of Clan Donald, then it is surely significant that King Harold Olafsson of 
Man regarded him as more worthy than any other nobles.10 
 
The picture is confused yet further by the status held by some MacSorleys as major 
landholders in Scotland, and by the adoption by the most prominent amongst them of 
regal titles. Two sons of Dugald son of Somerled - Dugald Screech and Duncan - 
were described in Norwegian sources as ‘kings in the Hebrides’ in 1228.11 This form 
of words may have been used to indicate, at least in Norwegian eyes, that their 
kingship was not over any of the Isles but mainland parts of Scotland, as presumably 
the case for the MacSorley killed at the battle of Ballyshannon in Ireland in 1247. He 
was identified in Irish sources as King of Argyll.12  
 
[p.9] 
 
 2
While the Manx kings, backed by the Kings of Norway, may have held to the 
principle, despite any agreement with Somerled, that their kingdom included all the 
Hebrides, the reality of their power was considerably more circumscribed. Islay and 
Mull, and the islands around them, are not mentioned at all in the Manx Chronicles 
between 1156 and 1230, but as noted above, they are assumed to have been under the 
control of MacSorleys. Lewis and Skye are featured, but in contexts which cast doubt 
over the ability of Manx kings to keep their kingdom in order. 
 
King Rognvald of Man (1186-1226) is said to have given Lewis to his brother Olaf. 
Olaf found that island was unable to sustain himself and his army and he therefore 
came to his brother who was then in the Isles and asked him for some better portion of 
lands. Rognvald, after promising to take counsel with his own men, had Olaf bound in 
chains and handed him over to be imprisoned by William King of Scotland. 
Immediately prior to his death seven years later (in 1214), William ordered the release 
of all his prisoners, including Olaf. Olaf returned to his brother Rognvald in Man and 
shortly afterwards went with a retinue of nobles to visit the shrine of St James (at 
Compostella). On his return Rognvald had Olaf marry Lauon, his own wife’s sister. 
He granted him Lewis and the newly married pair went off to settle there.13 The 
Chronicles offer no clues as to why the king of Scots should have wished to imprison 
Olaf or, perhaps a related matter, why Olaf sought the intercession of St James for his 
sins. 
 
On the basis of this entry Alex Woolf has hypothesised that Olaf was in Lewis as a 
sub-king or viceroy.14 Andrew McDonald has suggested that the provision of Lewis 
to Olaf was in recompense for him having been passed over for the kingship.15 
Whether or not either or both of these interpretations is correct there is another strand 
that might be teased out of the chronicle account. That is that Olaf went to Lewis with
an army and Rognvald was also in the Isles at that time. Is there a clue here that the 
two brothers were actually engaged in military campaigns to regain Lewis and ot
islands? If so, their main protagonist may have been Angus son of Somerled who 
might have inherited Skye and the Uists from his father.
 
her 
16 The Manx Chronicles 
record how Angus had defeated his brother Ranald in 1192, thus perhaps 
consolidating his power in these islands and Lewis as well.17 Seventeen years later, in 
1209, the sons of Ranald fought a battle against the men of Skye and slaughtered them 
there.18 This may have been revenge for 1192, representing another attempt by this 
branch of the MacSorleys at taking over Skye, and possibly Lewis. Angus and his 
three sons were killed in 1210, but the context in which these deaths are recorded in 
the Chronicles might suggest that they happened in Ireland.19 
 
Olaf was obliged to flee Lewis in 1223 by his nephew, Godred, son of Rognvald, who 
was apparently based in Skye. There too there was a sheriff (sysselman?), Paul, the 
son of Balki, suggesting Manx control of Skye at that time. Although Olaf forced his 
brother King Rognvald to split his kingdom with him in the following year, and two 
years later succeeded him as king, continuous peaceable control of Skye and Lewis 
may have eluded him. In 1230 he divided his kingdom with his nephew Godred. Olaf 
kept Man while Godred got the  
 
[p.10] 
Isles (unspecified, although the Chronicle of Lanercost says excepting those that 
Somerled’s sons held).20 That Lewis and Skye were then in enemy – MacSorley? - 
 3
hands is suggested by two events, possibly separate, of 1230-31. One was the killing 
in Lewis of Godred and the other the landing in both islands, with hostile intent, of an 
expeditionary force from Norway which had been sent to the Hebrides by King 
Hakon. The expedition was led by one Uspak ‘the Hebridean’, who was given the title 
of king by King Hakon. With him he took King Olaf of Man who had turned up in 
Bergen prior to his departure looking for military assistance. Skye was Uspak’s first 
target, and there he fought and killed Torquil the son of Tormod (an ancestor of the 
MacLeods). He then went on to meet some of the leading MacSorleys in the Sound of 
Islay, including the brothers (King) Duncan Screech and (King) Dugald. Dugald was 
taken prisoner but Uspak allowed Duncan to escape. Uspak then went on to Bute 
where he besieged and captured Rothesay Castle, but died soon afterwards, perhaps as 
the result of an injury sustained at the siege. This provided the opportunity for Olaf to 
take over leadership of the army. It wintered in Man and left in the following spring, 
first of all plundering Kintyre and fighting a battle there. It then went on to Lewis.21 
 
There is doubt not only as to who Uspak was, but also where in the Hebrides he was 
to exercise his kingship. Perhaps he was meant to rule all the kingdom of the Isles, 
including Man.22 He was in a strong position to do so since he sailed from Bergen 
with Olaf in a subordinate position and had detained Dugald Screech, probably as a 
hostage. Perhaps the meeting at which this took place involved some accommodation 
with the MacSorleys, even a recognition by them of Uspak’s overlordship over them. 
Was it because he had so quickly and easily achieved recognition of his kingship over 
all the Isles that Uspak felt able to go on and attack Bute? His objective was 
presumably to punish the Steward and discourage any further Scottish interference in 
the Isles. 
 
Uspak’s death allowed Olaf to subvert the Norwegian army for his own ends. Its raid 
on Kintyre would have hit his MacSorley rivals and he may have been relying on it to 
install Godred in Lewis and Skye. If Godred met his death in Lewis while 
campaigning with the Norwegians we must doubt that these islands reverted at this 
time to peaceable control by Olaf. 
 
Events some 18 years later also indicate MacSorley possession of Lewis, if not Skye. 
In 1249 King Hakon recognised Ewen (MacDougall), the son of that Duncan who 
Uspak had dealt with, as king over the northern part of the Hebrides. This may have 
marked the first real recognition of the kingly status of MacSorley leaders by the 
Norwegian king. It also acknowledged that there was no longer a unitary kingdom of 
the Isles and that the kings based in Man were unable to control other islands. Ewen’s 
territory is not defined, and may only have included Skye and Lewis, though he would 
already have held the Mull group of islands by inheritance. As Ewen was a subject of 
the king of Scots for mainland territories he immediately came under pressure from 
King Alexander II to give up his Norwegian allegiance. He was forced to flee to 
Lewis and his position as king of the Isles was assumed by his main MacSorley rival, 
Dugald  
 
[p.11] 
(MacRuari), a grandson of Ranald son of Somerled. Dugald was still the main power 
in the Hebrides, from a Norwegian perspective, in the invasion year of 1263.23 
 
 4
On this basis 1249 was the crucial date in terms of the break up of the Kingdom of the 
Isles. It was a state which was ungovernable by kings based in the Isle of Man, one 
that was severely weakened by internal problems, never mind by the external 
pressures from the kings of Scots.24 One might well ask what King Hakon of Norway 
hoped to achieve when he sailed west in 1263. Yes, he wanted to stop Scottish 
expansionism into a Norwegian sphere of interest, but Norwegian sources provide no 
evidence for any long term solution for recreating a strong, stable, kingdom of the 
Isles out of what was a failed state. There was no obvious strongman to whom Hakon 
seemed prepared to entrust the task of reconstruction. King Magnus joined his 
expedition but received no recognition or reward. King Dugald was given the 
dominion that King Ewen had held (meaning Mull and neighbouring islands?), and 
thus the break up of the kingdom was perpetuated.25 The Treaty of Perth in 1266 
transferred the allegiance owed by kings in Man and the Isles to the King of Scots. 
The ascendancy of the MacSorleys in the region thereafter was aided by the death of 
Magnus, the last king of the Manx line, in 1265, and the savage suppression by King 
Alexander III in 1275 of a Manx uprising led by Godred, Magnus’ illegitimate son.26 
 
David H Caldwell 
 
NOTES 
                                                 
1 G Broderick (ed), Cronica Regum Mannie et Insularum. Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles 
(Douglas, Isle of Man, 1996), p xv (Chron Man). 
2 For example P G B McNeill and H L MacQueen (eds), Atlas of Scottish History to 1707 (Edinburgh, 
1996), 441 (map and data by W D H Sellar); R A McDonald, Manx Kingship in its Irish Sea Setting 
1187-1229 (Dublin, 2007), 92. A A M Duncan and A L Brown, ‘Argyll and the Isles in the earlier 
middle ages’, Proc Soc Antiq Scot 90 (1959), 192-220, accept that Lewis and Skye were Manx in 1230 
but appear to be cautious about projecting the territorial divisions discernible in the Isles in the 13th 
century back to 1156 (pp 198, 205).   
3 Chron Man, fol 37v. 
4 ‘The Book of Clanranald’ in A Cameron, Reliquiae Celticae (Inverness 1892-4) vol 2, 138-309; Hugh 
MacDonald’s ‘History of the MacDonalds’, Highland Papers, vol 1, 6-72. 
5 Chron Man, fols 37v, 39v. 
6  A O Anderson, Early Sources of Scottish History A.D. 500 to 1286 (Stamford 1990), vol 2, 254. 
7 Chron Man, fol 43r. See McDonald, Manx Kingship, 91-96 for a discussion on dividing the kingdom. 
8 Registrum de Passelet, 125. 
9 A point first made by W D H Sellar, ‘Hebridean Sea Kings: The Successors of Somerled, 1164-1316’, 
in E Cowan and R A McDonald (eds), Alba. Celtic Scotland in the Medieval Era (East Linton, 2000), 
196-7. 
10 A Woolf, ‘A dead man at Ballyshannon’, in S Duffy (ed), The World of the Galloglass (Dublin 
2007), 78; Chron Man, fol 47v.  
11 Anderson, Early Sources, vol 2, 465. 
12 There is no certainty as to his identity. See, most recently on this subject, Woolf, ‘A dead man at 
Ballyshannon’, 77-85. 
13 Chron Man, fol 41v-42r. 
14 Woolf, ‘A dead man at Ballyshannon’, 81.  
15 McDonald, Manx Kingship, 94. 
16 R A McDonald, The Kingdom of the Isles (East Linton, 1997), 70. 
17 Chron Man, fol 40v. 
18 Anderson, Early Sources, vol 2, 378. 
19 Chron Man, fol 41r. 
20 Chron Man, fols 42v, 43r, 44v; Anderson, Early Sources, vol 2, 472. For Skye see G W S Barrow, 
‘Skye from Somerled to A.D. 1500’ in A Kruse (ed), Barra and Skye: Two Hebridean Perspectives 
(Edinburgh: The Scottish Society for Northern Studies 2006), 140-54. 
21 Chron Man, fol 44v; Anderson, Early Sources, vol 2, 471-8. 
 5
                                                                                                                                            
22 This is contrary to the view expounded by Duncan and Brown, ‘Argyll and the Isles’, 202. They 
make the case that Uspak was to be king only of the islands held by the MacSorleys. 
23 Anderson, Early Sources, vol 2, 548-9, 554-6 , 577, 611, 617. 
24 Compare E J Cowan, ‘Norwegian Sunset – Scottish Dawn: Hakon IV and Alexander III’ in N H Reid 
(ed), Scotland in the Reign of Alexander III 1249-1286 (Edinburgh, 1990), 125. Cowan suggests that 
there may have been a golden age in the Isles in the first half of the 13th century. 
25 Anderson, Early Sources, vol 2, 635. 
26 Anderson, Early Sources, vol 2, 672-3; A O Anderson, Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers 
(London, 1908), 382-3. 
 6


The break up of the kingdom of the Isles

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