Somerled

Somerled was a twelfth-century Norse-Gaelic ruler who built a powerful lordship across Argyll and the Hebrides. Through warfare, alliance and marriage he challenged both the kings of Scots and the Norse rulers of the Isles.

He was killed during an invasion of the Clyde in 1164, but his descendants founded major branches of Clan Donald and other western kindreds. Later tradition regarded him as a foundational figure in the Lordship of the Isles.

In Nigel Tranter’s Lord of the Isles, In twelfth-century Argyll, Somerled inherits little more than a broken claim and the memory of lands lost to Norse power. In Antonia Senior’s The Winter Isles, In twelfth-century western Scotland, Somerled grows from the son of an ageing chieftain into a warrior capable of challenging the Norse-Gaelic rulers of the Isles.