AD
800
-
Vikings
invade
the Udal
Perhaps
the
biggest
disruption
in
the Hebrides was the advent of the Vikings. But what
remained of them and what trace did they leave in the archaeological
record?
The most remarkable discovery was what appeared to be a Viking fort.
Medieval
longhouse
excavated
in
1966,
at the beginning of the excavation Note the central baulk, and the
opposed
doorways.
How
should
we
study
a
landscape? We need to begin with total familiarity with every available
source.
We then need to find the opportunity for a major excavation with
maximum depth,
and then strip it painstakingly layer by layer - Research with a
Capital R -
not mere rescue. An outstanding example of this has been Iain
Crawford’s
work in North Uist, and particularly at the Udal. Iain Crawford read
first
history and then archaeology at Cambridge in the 1950s. When he was
appointed
to the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh, he resolved to study
the
Western Isles. He started by reading Celtic, assessing the documents
and
place-names, and using this background to carry out field survey for
settlement
survivals.
Excavating
the
Viking
settlement
The
Mount has been entirely removed, leaving only the surrounding footings.
The
recorded
history
of
North
Uist begins in 1469 when James II of Scotland gave a charter
to the
MacDonalds of Sleat granting them possession of North Uist, from which
the Udal
can be identified. The Udal was abandoned following the sandblows of
the 1690s,
but when the sand was removed, the village abandoned in 1690’s that was
revealed. A coin of Charles II, a turner or twopence issued in 1663-8
marks the
end of the habitation. The Udal was a more important village than most,
for it
was a tacksman’s township, the township where the tacksman lived. The
tacksman
was the squire of the social structure in the Western Isles in the
Middle Ages:
he was the person who collected the rents, typically controlling around
10
townships and himself paying an often nominal rent to the chief, the
ultimate
owner.
Vikings
Perhaps
the
biggest
disruption
in
the Western Isles was the advent of the Vikings. But what
remained of them and what trace did they leave in the archaeological
record?
The most remarkable discovery was what appeared to be a Viking fort.
A
Bone
comb
of
the Viking age
At
the
North-Eastern
end
of
the site there was a higher portion known to the excavators as
the
Mount. There is no building inside in the Viking enclosure, but it
appears to
have been the first thing built by the Vikings when they arrived. The
Viking
buildings outside the fort were mainly constructed of turf. This is a
technique
brought from home, but it is entirely unsuitable for the machair as it
degrades
very rapidly to a very distinctive colour, a purple mauve, and whenever
the
team found this colour, they knew they were in the Viking levels.
A
'Jellybaby'
or
figure-of-eight
house.
The inner room forming the head is in the foreground, possibly a
sleeping area
The
Gaels
The
central
wheelhouse,
here
fully
excavated. Note the entrance at the top.
Beneath
the
Vikings
was
a
settlement of ‘Jelly baby houses’. This at any rate is how
archaeologists
have been chatting about them, though the official form appears to be
‘figure
of eight’ or ‘ventral’ houses. The outline is just like jelly baby
sweeties,
that is an oval body with a head at the top, and a wide splayed
entrance
looking just like jelly baby legs. This is a very pop image of what was
a
dramatically new style of architecture when first discovered near
Buckquoy in
Orkney slightly earlier. It consists of an oval shaped house, a
prominent wide
entrance, a small head on the opposite side, a rectangular central
hearth, and
two platforms - possibly beds - on either side. The floor was a black
mass of
organic material and peat ash, but the platforms were cleaner,
suggesting that
they had been covered, perhaps for beds. The type runs through from AD
300/400
down to the coming of the Vikings in around AD 800. Five houses in all
were
located, stratified below the Viking settlement.
The
Udal
Prehistory:
The
South Tell
The
great
tide
on
8th January 1974
nearly destroyed the site. Here the Bronze Age barrow has been nearly
fully
excavated, though the cist still survives at the centre.
With
the
excavation
of
the
cemetery, the excavations, which had begun in 1963, finally
reached
virgin ground. However this was by no means the end of the story, for
only 100
yards away was a second mound, the south tell, which took the story
back yet
further. In 1980 work began on this southern tell. The excavations have
revealed three wheelhouses, the major structures of the Iron Age in the
Western
Isles; though as none of them has a hearth, the excavator does just
wonder
whether they were not dwellings, but more like temples. Wheel- houses
come in
two sizes - 11 piered and 8 piered, and this was one of the larger
type, and
the central one of the three. Opposite the central pier is a jet black
slim
vertical stone orthostat of notably phallic aspect. If the wheelhouse
is to be
interpreted as a temple, then this satellite building is either a
secondary
chapel or perhaps even the holy of holies.
Neolithic
and
Bronze
Age
In
1974
the
planned
excavation
programme was interrupted when a freak perihelion tide
played havoc
in the Western Isles; on January 8th the tide came right over the
machairs and
into the townships. The Udal was flooded, and a mound down by the shore
was
partially scoured away by the retreating water, revealing a deep
archaeological
stratification. At the top, phase A was 19th and 20th century. A deep
long
trench went right across the tell, cutting through all earlier levels.
This was
a sawpit for sawing up boat wrecks - a common activity in the late 19th
and
early 20th century. It was dated by a collar stud found in the bottom.
Following this industrial archaeology, phase B is a Bronze Age cairn
with a
central cist. The cist contained a very fine skeleton (being alkaline
the
machair preserves bone very well) but no grave goods
Between
the
Neolithic
and
the
Bronze ages came one of the most momentous events in the
landscape
history of the Western Isles, the development of the shell based sand
known as
the machair. What is machair? It is Gaelic for plain - but it has come
to mean
in English the shell sand shore plains of the Western isles.It is
formed from
ground up sea shells which, being calcium rich makes it highly fertile.
The
formation of machair is controversial, but it is surprisingly recent -
it
appears to have originated at the end of the last glaciation, and it
has been
moving eastwards (inland) and uphill ever since in response to rising
sea
levels. At the Udal, the Beaker phase is the first horizon to have been
formed
on the machair. Below this was the Neolithic, on a black earth that is
pre- or
proto-machair. This neolithic phase (D) consists of houses of the Skara
Brae
type. The Udal is a magic place, today totally isolated, sitting on its
peninsula far from any road or track, approached only by walking over
miles of
the springy machair, saturated with buttercups and daisies. It is only
the
excavator’s encampment, hidden in the dunes, that marks the site of the
settlement. But over the last 33 years, Iain Crawford has followed
through his
remarkable research design, and produced a long history of change and
adaption
that is unique in the Western Isles, - and perhaps anywhere else in the
world.
This
is
based
on
a fuller account in Current Archaeology 147