Everything about Somerled totally explained
Somerled (
Old Norse Sumarliði,
Scottish Gaelic Somhairle, commonly Anglicized from Gaelic as
Sorley) was a military and political leader of the Scottish Isles in the 12th century who was known in Gaelic as
ri Innse Gall ("King of the
Hebrides"). His father was Gillebride of Clan Angus who had been exiled to Ireland and married a daughter of
Sigurd I of Norway. The name, a common one amongst the
Vikings, means
summer traveller.
Somerled first appears in historical chronicles in the year
1140 as the regulus, or
King, of
Kintyre (Cinn Tìre) when he marries Raghnailt the daughter of
Olaf (or Amhlaibh),
King of Mann and the Isles. The year
1153 saw the deaths of two kings:
David I of Scotland and Olaf of Mann. There was much confusion and discord as a result and Somerled took his chance - making offensive moves against both
Scotland and Mann and the Isles, the latter having been inherited from Olaf by Somerled's brother-in-law,
Goraidh mac Amhlaibh.
A summoning was sent to Somerled Dougal - Somerled's own son by his wife, the daughter of the Manx king - to move so he might be "King over the Isles". In
1156 Goraidh was defeated in battle against 80 ships of Somerled's fleet and the two enemies partitioned the isles between them. Goraidh kept the islands north of
Ardnamurchan with Somerled gaining the rest. However, two years following this Somerled returned to the
Isle of Man with 53 warships. He defeated Goraidh again and this time forced him to flee to
Norway. Somerled's kingdom now stretched from the Isle of Man to the
Butt of Lewis.
Thus both
Viking and
Scot formed one people under a single lord and came to share a single culture, one way of life - they were to become a powerful and noted race known as the
Gall-Gaidheal, literally meaning 'Foreign-Gaels'. It was upon the seas their power was situated under the rule of the Kings of the Isles yet new enemies arose in the
east. The
Stewarts made inroads in the west coast and eventually Somerled assembled a sizeable army to repel them. He advanced to the centre of the Stewarts' own territory, to
Renfrew, where a great battle was fought in
1164. Much confusion surrounds the manner of the battle, and indeed whether a battle occurred at all, but what is certain is that Somerled was assassinated, after which his army retreated from the area.
Following the death of Somerled several powerful lords emerged from within his kingdom. The lordship was contested by two main families; that of Somerled and his descendants and that of the descendants of Goraidh mac Amhlaibh. During the
12th and
13th centuries the
Scandinavian world saw much change in methods of rule and administration which ultimately resulted in more strongly centralized, unified kingdoms such as
Denmark and
Norway. However, this didn't happen in the Kingdom of the Isles, which was instead absorbed into the greater
Kingdom of Scotland, albeit its place in that state and the loyalty of its inhabitants to the King of Scots would remain peripheral and temperamental for centuries to come.
In 2005 a study by Professor of
Human Genetics Bryan Sykes of
Oxford led to the conclusion that Somerled has possibly 500,000 living descendants - making him the second most common currently-known ancestor after
Genghis Khan.
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