Constantine thereupon removed its clergy to Dunkeld,
"and there set up in his own kingdom an ecclesiastical capital for
Scots and Picts alike,"[1] as a step towards the political union
of his realm, which Norse sea-power had completely severed from the
original home of the Scots in Ulster.
The Northmen now began the systematic maritime invasions of our
eastern and northern and western coasts and islands, which history has
recorded. North Scotland was attacked almost exclusively by Norsemen,
and Norsemen and Danes invaded Ireland. The Danes seized the south of
Scotland, and the north of England, of which latter country, early in
the eleventh century in the time of King Knut, they were destined to
dominate two-thirds, while Old Norse became the _lingua franca_ of
his English kingdom, and enriched its language with hundreds of Norse
words, and gave us many new place and personal names.
In 844, Kenneth, king of the Scots, the small North Irish sept which,
as stated above, had crossed over from Erin and held the Dalriadic
kingdom of Argyll with its capital at Dunadd near the modern Crinan
Canal, succeeded in making good his title, on his mother's side, to
the Pictish crown by a successful attack from the west on the southern
Picts[2] at the same time as their territory was being invaded from
the east coast by the Danes.
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