Mid-Argyll Theme
- 10
International Connections
The modern visitor to Argyll, ancient Dál
Riata, and to the area around Kilmartin, is often
drawn by a feeling of remoteness. Those of us who
are used to city life value the tranquility of this
rural setting - wild hills, farmland, peat bogs.
People like to enjoy a temporary sense of
detachment from the hurly-burly of their hectic
lives.
But we should beware of projecting our sense of
tranquility into Dál Riata's past. Remember
that sea is the connecting tissue between peoples,
a highway from one place to another. Being situated
on the north-western rim of Europe did not make
Dál Riata remote. It brought it countless
connections with many other countries.
In the first place it was connected to Ireland
where folk spoke the same language, Gaelic. The
people of Argyll also shared a common political and
legal culture with the Irish, as well as a common
religion. They were to all intents and purposes a
single people.
The Gaels were also connected by water to other
parts of Britain - the Britons in the south, the
Picts further north and east, and ultimately the
Angles. Contacts with these people include trading
journeys, slave-raiding, war-parties and the
gradual expansion of monasticism - as far north as
Orkney in the sixth century. People from other
parts of Britain also came to live here: we know
that as early as the sixth century the monastery of
Iona included
both English and British monks, and in the early
seventh century a future English king of
Northumbria spent years of exile in Dál
Riata - where he became a Christian, and eventually
a saint: Oswald. Anglo-Saxon art-work was also
found at Dál Riata: a piece of bronze sheet,
stamped with the image of an animal.
But Dál Riata's sea-going contacts were
vastly more extended even than this. When Dunadd
was excavated, the finds included 'E-ware' pottery
which was imported from what is now western France,
probably in the sixth or seventh century. It was
probably not imported for its own sake, but was
used to carry the real objects of import - spices,
dyes and perhaps wine. Dál Riata's contacts
with Gaul are confirmed by Adomnán. He tells
us that Columba met Gaulish sailors at the 'capital
of the country' - which may well be a reference to
Dunadd. Adomnán himself met a Gaulish bishop
in the late seventh century, who had been
shipwrecked in Britain on the way back from the
eastern Mediterranean - thus connecting Dál
Riata with an even wider world.
This wider world is also represented by a glass
tessera inlaid with gold leaf found at Dunadd in a
seventh century context, an object probably of
Byzantine origin. It may have arrived here directly
from the Mediterranean, but it may also have been
brought here by traders from nearer home. We know
for example that quantities of this Byzantine
material were being re-worked in Scandinavia on an
industrial scale. If the Dunadd tessera was brought
from Scandinavia, it suggests that long before the
Norse began their Viking attacks on Dál
Riata there were already trading links.
Other exotic goods found at Dunadd include a
fragment of orpiment. This mineral was commonly
used in the illumination of manuscripts, and its
name, from Latin auri pigmentum, 'golden
pigment', indicates the kind of rich colouring for
which it was used.
Another pigment - one implying the most exotic
trading links of all - links us to underground
mines far to the east. Lapiz Lazuli was used in the
book of Kells to create rich blue pigment. The Book
of Kells was probably produced on Iona, and the
lapis lazuli was mined in Afghanistan!
But Dál Riata's connections with distant
places were not only mediated by trade. Scholarship
is also an international activity, and Iona's
library contained a rich array of books from all
over Christendom. To give a few examples:
Athanasius of Egypt, Jerome of Bethlehem, Augustine
of North Africa, Sulpicius Severus and John Cassian
of Gaul, Isidore of Spain and Gregory the Great,
bishop of Rome, the great centre of international
Christian culture.
Far from being marginal, Dál Riata was a
lively participant in an international culture of
trade, politics and intellectual life. Some of
these contacts must have been somewhat inhibited
after the onset of the Viking
raids, as sea-trading became more hazardous. But
connections continued - and some perhaps increased.
There is evidence that the Vikings of the Irish Sea
area did a roaring trade selling Irish and Scottish
slaves to Islamic dealers in the Mediterranean!
Key
references
- Lane and Campbell (2000)
- Clancy and Márkus (1995)
- Crawford (1987)
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This
project has been supported by the EU as part of the Culture
2000 programme.