The Impact of the Norse on Scottish Culture

Walk the harbor at Lerwick in Shetland and the street names are Norse. Sail into Kirkwall and the cathedral is dedicated to a Viking earl. The Vikings in Scotland came first as raiders and stayed as settlers, and for six hundred years the Northern Isles were part of the Norse world. Today the impact of the Norse on Scottish culture is still written on the map, in the language, and in the festivals.

The Viking Age lasted from the late 8th to the mid-11th century, and in that time Norse people from Scandinavia reached the Middle East in one direction and North America in the other. Scotland was closer, and the relationship lasted longer. Come along as we look at the raids, settlements, words, silver, and treaties that bound the two together. We will finish with the Highland Games, where Alaskans celebrate Scotland today.

Did the Vikings Invade Scotland?

Norse raids on Scotland began in the 790s; the monastery of Iona was first attacked in 795, two years after the famous raid on Lindisfarne in Northumbria. Raids continued through the 800s, but the lasting story is settlement. Norse families farmed Orkney, Shetland, Caithness, and the Hebrides, and ruled the Northern Isles for some six centuries.

Orkney became the seat of a Norse earldom whose story is told in the Orkneyinga saga, written in Iceland around 1200. Its earls were kings in all but name. Sigurd the Stout died at the Battle of Clontarf in Ireland in 1014, and later Thorfinn the Mighty ruled from Caithness to the Hebrides in the 1030s and 1040s. In the 1150s a party of Norse crusaders broke into the Stone Age tomb of Maeshowe in Orkney. They left more than thirty runic inscriptions on its walls, which is one of the largest collections of runes outside Scandinavia.

How the Vikings in Scotland Shaped Its Language

Norse settlers left their mark on the language most of all. Orkney and Shetland spoke Norn, a Norse language, into the 1700s. Place names across the north and west still carry Norse endings: -wick (vík, ‘bay’), -dale (dalr, “valley”), -ay (ey, “island”), and -bost, and -bister (‘farm’). Scottish Gaelic borrowed Norse words too, especially for the sea, such as sgeir (‘skerry’) and geodha (‘cove’).

Norn survived longest in Shetland, where fragments of it were still being recited in the 1770s. Even now, hundreds of Norn words live on in the Shetland and Orkney dialects for weather, birds, boats, and farm work. The Lewis chess pieces, found on a beach in the Outer Hebrides in 1831, tell the same story in ivory. They were carved somewhere in the Norse world around 1150–1200, probably in Trondheim, for a Norse-speaking Hebridean elite. The berserker rooks, biting their shields, are the most famous chessmen in the world.

Trade and Diplomacy

The Norse were traders as well as raiders. Hoards like the Skaill hoard from Orkney, buried around 950, mix Norse silver arm-rings with Arabic coins that traveled thousands of miles along Viking trade routes. At more than 18 pounds (8 kg) of silver it is one of the largest Viking hoards ever found in Scotland. Marriages also bound Norse and Scottish ruling families together; the earls of Orkney married into Scottish royalty more than once. Thorfinn the Mighty’s mother, for example, was a daughter of the Scottish king Malcolm II.

Conflicts and Resolutions

Tension never fully went away. Scottish kings wanted the western isles, and in 1263 King Haakon IV of Norway sailed a fleet to defend them. After the inconclusive Battle of Largs, Norway handed the Hebrides and the Isle of Man to Scotland in the Treaty of Perth (1266). Orkney and Shetland stayed Norwegian for two more centuries, until they were pledged to Scotland in 1468–69 as part of a royal wedding dowry that was never paid.

The Treaty of Perth was a sale as much as a surrender. Scotland agreed to pay Norway 4,000 marks and then 100 marks a year for the islands. However, the Scots soon stopped paying this “annual of Norway.” The 1468 pledge of Orkney, and Shetland the next year, was security for the dowry of Margaret of Denmark when she married James III of Scotland. The money never arrived and the islands never went back, so Norse rule in Scotland ended not with a battle but with an unpaid bill.

The Legacy of the Vikings in Scotland Today

Today, Scotland celebrates its Norse past with gusto. Shetland’s Up Helly Aa, a Victorian-era festival first held in its current form in the 1880s, ends with hundreds of torch-bearers setting a replica longship ablaze. The Largs Viking Festival marks the 1263 battle with a Viking village, reenactments, and fireworks. Kirkwall’s St Magnus Cathedral, begun in 1137 for the martyred Earl Magnus, is still a working parish church. Even Shetland’s flag carries the Nordic cross.

Alaska Scottish Highland Games

Alaska keeps both traditions alive. Each summer the Alaska Scottish Club hosts the Alaska Scottish Highland Games at the Alaska State Fairgrounds in Palmer. It offers two days of bagpipes, heavy athletics, Celtic dance, drumming, a kilted mile, a tea tent, Highland cattle, tug-of-war, historical demonstrations, axe throwing, and children’s events. The games are a celebration of Scottish culture and tradition, and they give Alaskans a chance to experience a part of Scotland in their own backyard. If you want to go, the club posts each year’s dates on its website.

Vikings in Scotland: Questions and Answers

About Asgard Alaska

At Asgard Alaska we’re working to bring the Norse world to life right here in Alaska. The museum is not open yet; we are raising the Land Fund to buy the site, Phase 1 of our Roadmap. Curious what the Norse would have called you? Try our Viking name generator.

Sign up below for Axe and Anchor, Asgard Alaska’s Newsletter, to follow our work toward a living Viking settlement in Alaska.