Rosemarkie, Iona, Orcades and the Importance of the North

In the medieval worldview, the Highlands and Islands inhabited a place which was both peripheral and central: They marked the edge of the known world, reflected in the frequent use of ‘Orcades’ to represent the boundary of civilisation in the minds of scholars throughout Europe. However, this very peripherality gave the Highlands and Islands a crucial centrality in the medieval Christian view of the world: The activities of Rosemarkie, Iona and other northern establishments marked the fulfilment of Christ’s instructions to bring his message to the ‘uttermost part of the earth’. This talk will look at how texts and maps up to the 12th century juggled this contradiction- representing Rosemarkie, Iona and the Orcades places of both geographical peripherality and cosmological centrality.

Dr Oisin Plumb, Institute for Northern Studies, UHI
Dr Oisín Plumb is a lecturer at the Institute for Northern Studies, UHI based at the UHI Perth campus. Originally from Edinburgh, he joined INS in 2017 following completion of his PhD at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on early medieval Northern Britain, with particular interests in the Church, the development of local and national identities, and maps and the understanding of the earth’s lands and its place in the cosmos the early middle ages.