Royalty and Ritual: The landscape of power in early medieval Scotland and Europe

Medieval kingship and the rituals that define it illuminate Scotland’s early medieval landscape and its European context.

Medieval kings and kingship, and the rituals that define them, continue to captivate both scholars and the wider public. This interdisciplinary volume offers a Europe-wide perspective on early medieval kingship, with a particular focus on Scotland.
What types of royal sites existed in the early medieval period in Scotland, and how did they vary regionally? Can we trace these sites in placenames? What rituals and other activities were associated with these sites, and what purposes did they serve? These and other questions are explored in the papers gathered together in this interdisciplinary volume.

Drawing together experts in archaeology, history, placenames, folklore, poetry, and art history, the volume unpacks the story of early medieval kingship in Scotland against a European backdrop and across multiple scales, from multi-site regions and the mobile exercise of kingship, to single-site landscapes, analysis of significant objects, and the memorialisation of stories through tradition.

Framed by recent archaeological excavations in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, England, and Scandinavia, this book presents a rich and innovative approach to the study of kingship in the early medieval period.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Mark A. Hall, Alexandra Sanmark, Jane Geddes and Oisín Plumb

I: Scotland from pagan rulers to Christian kings

Powerful Place(s): elite power and the central place complexes of early medieval northern Britain
Gordon Noble

Identifying the development of local power centres in Pictland and Alba
Nick Evans

Lords of The Dance: materialising sacral leadership in early medieval Scotland
Mark A. Hall

The St Andrews Sarcophagus: shrine for an anointed king?
Jane Geddes

Characterising early medieval Royal Sites: Scotland in an Insular context
Ewan Campbell

Kings’ feet or the marks of angels? Footprints in stone revisited
Thomas Owen Clancy

Memories of Pictish secular power in places of Christian ritual
Oisín Plumb

II: Aspects of kingship in Scotland’s Insular and European neighbours

Fæsted-Harreby-Sønder Hygum: a power centre in southern Jutland
Lars Grundvad

Kings’ Seats or Royal Residences? Thoughts about Scandinavian ‘central places’
Jan-Henrik Fallgren

Local communities and the rise of polities in the Tyne-Forth region (c 400–850 AD)
Celia Orsini

The visual prominence and accessibility of the early medieval great hall complex at Yeavering, Northumberland, England
Brian Buchanan, Sarah Semple, Tudor Skinner

Royal nunneries as centres of power: a comparison of Anglo-Saxon and Pictish evidence
Barbara Yorke

The importance of St Michael’s Workington within the 10th-century Hiberno-Scandinavian polity
Caroline Paterson

Kings on the move: the case of the Viking Great Army
Shane McLeod

Origins of the Tøglag metre and the royal power rituals at the court of Knútr inn Ríki
Jakub Morawiec

Royal uses of ‘Sites of Memory’ in the Viking Age and modern Norway
Karl Christian Alvestad and Anne Irene Riisøy

The Stone of Scone
David H. Caldwell

Royal power and folklore in early medieval Wales and the microcosm of Llangorse
Mark Redknap

Dr Mark A Hall is an archaeologist and museum curator based at Perth Museum (Culture Perth & Kinross), Perth, Scotland. He has recently been the lead researcher for the new Perth Museum project, which opened in March 2024. His research interests principally span the medieval centuries from the Late Antique to the 16th century, with a focus on medieval material culture, including board and dice games, the cult of saints and supernatural engagement, cultural biography and re-imagining the Middle Ages. He has published widely and internationally in journals and books.

He is co-editor of and contributing author to: The Lewis Chessmen Unmasked (2010), Pictish Progress (2011), Perth High Street Archaeological Excavations 1975-77 (2012), The Lewis Chessmen: New Perspectives (2014) and Royal Forteviot: Excavations at a Pictish Power Centre in Eastern Scotland – SERF Mon 2 (2020).



Oisín Plumb is a lecturer at the Institute for Northern Studies, University of the Highlands and Islands. His research focuses on Early medieval Northern Britain and Ireland. Particular issues of interest include the formation of local and national identities in the early medieval period as well as maps and the understanding of the earth’s lands in the Early Middle Ages.

Key publications include Picts and Britons in the Early Medieval Irish Church: Travels west over the storm-swelled sea (Brepols 2020) and ‘Where were the Orcades? Early medieval engagement with the islands at the edge of the Earth in texts and maps’, Innes Review (2024).