The Lewis Chessmen Read Free Page A

archbishops were given power over the bishops of the Isles, who had authority over all the churches in the kingdom of the Isles. The Hebrides only reverted to Scottish rule by the treaty of Perth in 1266, but the archbishops of Nidaros continued to exercise their power there for some time afterwards.
    The authority of the kings descended from Godred Crovan was by no means unchallenged, especially from the mid-twelfth century by a local prince, Somerled, and his descendants, including the MacRuaris, the MacDougalls and the MacDonalds. Somerled defeated King Godred Olafsson in a sea-battle in 1156 and soon afterwards claimed kingship over the Isles. Although Godred reclaimed his kingdom after the death of Somerled in 1164, he and his successors were to find the MacSorleys (Somerled’s descendants) troublesome subjects or rivals. In 1249 it appears that King Hakon of Norway was obliged to recognise Ewen (MacDougall) as king over the northern part of the Hebrides. This was an acknowledgement that there was no longer a unitary kingdom of the Isles and that the kings based in the Isle of Man were unable to control other islands. Ewen’s territory is not defined and may only have included Skye and Lewis, although he would already have held the Mull group ofislands by inheritance. As Ewen was a subject of the King of Scots for mainland territories, he immediately came under pressure from King Alexander II to give up his Norwegian allegiance. He was forced to flee to Lewis, and his position as King of the Isles was assumed by his main MacSorley rival, Dugald (MacRuari), who remained the main power in the Hebrides, from a Norwegian perspective, until the 1260s.
    There is little information on Lewis itself in this period. The Viking activities of the Orkney nobleman Sveinn Asleifarson, in the middle of the twelfth century, suggest that Lewis, where he had a friend called Ljotolf, was a good base for himself and his brother Gunni when the latter was forced into exile by Earl Harald of Orkney. Perhaps at that time Lewis was neither under the firm hand of Godred Olafsson nor Sveinn’s friend Somerled.
    Godred Olafsson appointed his son Olaf as his successor, but since he was only a boy at the time of Godred’s death in 1187 the Manx people chose his elder half-brother Rognvald as king. Rognvald gave Lewis to Olaf. Olaf found that the island was unable to sustain himself and his army and he therefore came to his brother, who was then in the Isles, and asked him for some better portion of lands. Rognvald, after promising to take counsel with his own men, had Olaf bound in chains and handed him over to be imprisoned by William King of Scotland. Immediately prior to his death seven years later (in 1214), William ordered the release of all his prisoners, including Olaf. Olaf returned to his brother Rognvald in Man and shortly afterwards went with a retinue of nobles to visit the shrine of St James (at Compostella). On his return, Rognvald had Olaf marry Lauon, his own wife’s sister. He granted him Lewis and the newly married pair went off to settle there. There are no clues as to why the King of Scots should have wished to imprison Olaf or, perhaps a related matter, why Olaf sought the intercession of St James for his sins.
    Perhaps Lewis was in the sway of the MacSorleys and Olaf was intended to bring it back to the allegiance of his brother. Hence the need for an army, and, it should be noted, Rognvaldwas also in the Isles at that time, very probably also campaigning to regain territory. But if Lewis was peaceful on Olaf’s return to it, his own life there was to be drastically upset a few days later on the arrival of his uncle, Bishop Rognvald of the Isles, to undertake a visitation of the island’s churches. The bishop refused to join Olaf in the great banquet prepared in his honour, on the grounds that Olaf’s marriage to Lauon was illicit in the eyes of the Church. This was because Olaf had previously kept