Eighty years after the first Viking raid on Iona, Ketil Flatnose,
cousin of King Harald Fairhair of Norway, declared himself Lord of
the Isles and set in place a Gaelic Norwegian kingdom allied to a
Norwegian High King, that was to rule the western seaboard of
Scotland for the next four centuries as the Sudreys (southern
isles). By the mid 13th century Alexander II of Scotland, in
response to renewed expansion by the Earl's of Orkney, and the
wooing of the Lords of the isles by Henry III of England, began a
gradual reclaiming of the western and northern fringes of his
Kingdom, but fell ill and died near Oban in 1249 while on campaign.
His son Alexander III first tried the diplomatic route
opening negotiations with King Håkon IV of Norway in 1261,
but when Håkon learned from Dugald the brother of Angus Mor, Lord
of the Isles, that Alexander had attacked Skye he set sail with his
battle fleet in July 1263.
Joining forces with the Lord of the Isles and the Ostmen from
eastern Ireland, Håkon reimposed Norse rule over the western
fringes of his kingdom of the Sudreys. On 8 September 1263 the
Norwegian fleet anchored in Lamlash Bay, 160 fighting ships and
20000 men. For the next four weeks Håkon's envoys and those of the
Scots parlayed while Norwegian over lordship was reestablished in
Bute and Kintyre. Progress was made but Alexander refused to
recognise Norwegian over lordship of Arran Bute. While on Arran
many Vikings took time to leave their mark in runes on the soft
sandstone around St Molios Cave (remember Norway was a Christian
nation) and these can still be seen today. Messages such as
Vigleikr the Marshal
carved, Onundr carved
runes and Nikolas from
Haen carved. All seemed to be going well, a detachment of
sixty ships made way by Loch Long and overland to Loch Lomond to
raid central Scotland, and by the end of the month the main
body of Norwegians lay at anchor off Great Cumbrae. However
disaster lay ahead for on the 1 October a storm drove some ships
ashore near Largs and in the ensuing disaster the outnumbered Scots
effected the withdrawal of Håkon who died on Orkney on 15 November
1263 on his way back to Norway.
There are no genuine runic inscriptions that make use of a
numeral system (the Pentimal Numerals) prior to the 19th century
although sophisticated use of the golden numbers 1 to 19 was made
in Runic Calendars which date back to the time of King Håkon; an
additional three runes were used to represent 17, 18 & 19.
Mostly numbers were spelt out, sometimes Roman numerals were used
and sometimes the spellings were greatly abbreviated. Strangely a
numerical code was used for Cryptic Runes where the position of a
secret rune within the three groups or aettir were coded using
marks on the staff of plain runes in the text, so that an
inscription could say one thing but also contain a hidden
message.