Rosemarkie, Iona, Orcades, and the importance of the North

Rosemarkie, Iona, Orcades, and the importance of the North.  An online talk given by  Dr Oisin Plumb of The Institute for Northern Studies, University of the Highlands and Islands.

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.