History - The Rough Guide to Scottish Highlands and Islands - page 405

the united kingdom of Alba , later known as Scotia , was part of a process of integration
rather than outright conquest, though it was the Scots' religion, Columba's Christianity
and their language (Gaelic) that were to dominate the merger, allowing many aspects
of Pictish life, including their language, to fall forgotten and untraceable into the
depths of history. Kenneth and his successors gradually extended the frontiers of their
kingdom by marriage and force of arms until, by 1034, almost all of what we now call
Scotland - on the mainland, at least - was under their rule.

The Middle Ages
By the time of his death in 1034, Malcolm II was recognized as the king of Scotia. He
was not, though, a national king in the sense that we understand the term, as under the
Gaelic system kings were elected from the derbfine, , a group made up of those whose
great-grandfathers had been kings. The chosen successor, supposedly the fittest to rule,
was known as the tanist ( tànaiste ). By the eleventh century, however, Scottish kings had
become familiar with the principle of heredity, and were often tempted to bend the
rules of tanistry. Thus, Malcolm secured the succession of his grandson Duncan by
murdering a potential rival tanist. Duncan, in turn, was killed by Macbeth near Elgin
in 1040. Macbeth was not, therefore, the villain of Shakespeare's imagination, but
simply an ambitious Scot of royal blood acting in a relatively conventional way.

The Canmores
The victory of Malcolm III , known as Canmore (Bighead), over Macbeth in 1057 marked
the beginning of a period of fundamental change in Scottish society. Having avenged his
father Duncan, Malcolm III, who had spent the previous seventeen years at the English
court, sought to apply to Scotland a range of ideas he had brought back with him. He
and his heirs established a secure dynasty based on succession through the male line and
introduced feudalism into Scotland, a system that was diametrically opposed to the
Gaelic system, which rested on blood ties: the followers of a Gaelic king were his kindred,
whereas the followers of a feudal king were vassals bought with land. The Canmores
successfully feudalized much of southern and eastern Scotland by making grants to
their Norman, Breton and Flemish followers; they preferred to make their capital in
Edinburgh, and in these regions, Scots - a northern version of Anglo-Saxon - pushed out
Gaelic as the lingua franca. They also began to reform the Church , a development started
with the efforts of Margaret, Malcolm III's second wife, who, though English, had been
brought up in Hungary, and brought Scottish religious practices into line with those of
the rest of Europe, for which she was eventually canonized.
The policies of the Canmores laid the basis for a cultural rift in Scotland between the
Highland and Lowland communities. Factionalism between various chiefs tended to
distract the Highland tribes from their widening differences with the rulers to the
south, while the ever-present Viking threat also served to keep many of the clans
looking to the west and north rather than the south.

Norwegian rule over the islands
In 1098, a treaty between Edgar, King of Scots, and Magnus Bareleg, King of
Norway, ceded sovereignty of all the islands to the Norwegians - Magnus even

872 1040 1156 1266

Orkney and
Shetland come
under Viking rule

Macbeth
crowned King
of Scotland

Somerled seizes
the Kingdom of
the Isles

The Treaty of Perth hands the
Hebrides back to Scotland
from the Norwegians