Scotland in The High Middle Ages - Historiography

Historiography

Scotland in the High Middle Ages is a relatively well-studied topic and Scottish medievalists have produced a wide variety of publications. Some, such as David Dumville, Thomas Owen Clancy and Dauvit Broun, are primarily interested in the native cultures of the country, and often have linguistic training in the Celtic languages. Normanists are concerned with the French and Anglo-French cultures as they were introduced to Scotland after the eleventh century. Amongst such scholars is G.W.S. Barrow. For much of the twentieth century, historians tended to stress the cultural change that took place in Scotland during this time. However, scholars such as Cynthia Neville and Richard Oram, while not ignoring cultural changes, argue that continuity with the Gaelic past was just as, if not more, important.

Since the publication of Scandinavian Scotland by Barbara E. Crawford in 1987 there has been a growing volume of work dedicated to an understanding of Norse influence in this period. However from 849 on, when Columba's relics were removed from Iona in the face of Viking incursions, written evidence from local sources in the areas under Scandinavian influence all but vanishes for three hundred years. The sources for information about the Hebrides and indeed much of northern Scotland from the eighth to the eleventh century are thus almost exclusively Irish, English or Norse. The main Norse texts were written in the early thirteenth century and should be treated with care. The English and Irish sources are more contemporary, but according to historian Alex Woolf may have "led to a southern bias in the story", especially as much of the Hebridean archipelago became Norse-speaking during this period.

There are various traditional clan histories dating from the nineteenth century such as the "monumental" The Clan Donald and a significant corpus of material from the Gaelic oral tradition that relates to this period, although their value is questionable.