The Viking and Norse impact on the beginning of Scotland - Prof Dauvit Broun

Free, public seminar with Prof Dauvit Broun, Professor of Scottish History at the University of Glasgow. What role did the Norse and their medieval kings have on the beginning of Scotland as a kingdom and a sovereign state? This lecture will explore this theme by examining three key stages in Scottish history in the mid-ninth, mid-thirteenth and mid-fifteenth centuries, and how the legacy of earlier ideas of kingdoms and ultimate secular authority at each stage influenced the outcome as far as the Western and Northern Isles were concerned. The Norse have long been regarded as playing a pivotal role in the beginnings of the Scottish kingdom in the ninth century. This will be revisited in the light of recent work placing the heartland of the Pictish kingdom around the Moray Forth. The idea of an independent territorial kingdom did not fully emerge until the thirteenth century, and again, the Norse played a crucial part in crystalising this idea with the succession of the kingdom of Man and the Isles. Finally, a fully modern notion of national sovereignty is not found until around 1470, coinciding with the beginning of Scottish rule over the Northern Isles. The legacy of early ideas of a territorial kingdom, however, limited the extent to which the Northern Isles could be seen as indelibly part of a sovereign Scottish kingdom. Dauvit Broun (English: David Brown) (born 1961) is a Scottish historian, Professor of Scottish History at the University of Glasgow. A specialist in medieval Scottish and Celtic studies, he concentrates primarily on early medieval Scotland, and has written abundantly on the topic of early Scottish king-lists, as well as on literacy, charter-writing, national identity, and on the text known as de Situ Albanie.