The excellent map department of the National Library of Scotland have recently finished a collaboration project of creating a database of all the text entries on the Ordnance Series 6” Second Series maps of the UK. The database is searchable and creates maps of the result of those searches. The map to the left above are places containing the text ‘Kirk’ and the second is all the places containing the text ‘kirk’
The Vikings raided Scotland from the end of the 8th century and by the end of the 9th century, Norse settlers were well established in the West and North of Scotland. Although initially pagan, elements of Christianity were taken into their beliefs before the official conversion to Christianty.
An early ‘king’ of Norway was Hákon Aðalsteinsfostri who ruled from about 935 to 960.and had been baptized and established much of the initial ecclesiastical infrastructure in Norway. The king at the end of the 10th century was Olaf Tryggvason, who had been a leader of Viking raids in England. The English King Ethelred offered Olaf a cash bribe for a promise to never return to raid England again. He accepted Ethelred’s offer and to seal the deal and to impart spiritual force to it, Ethelred baptized Olaf. This is thought to be when Christianity took a real hold over the Norse.
So by the start of the 11th century the Norse were both Christian and the ruling class in the West and North of Scotland. The Hebrides were ceded to the Scottish Crown in 1266 and the Orkneys and Shetlands in the middle of the 15th century, although it is thought their impact remained for a period thereafter.
The majority of the place-names in the Outer Hebrides are Norse. How then, after almost three hundred years of Christian rule, are there so few kirkja place-names in the Hebrides, especially when compared to the rest of Scotland?
There are effectively two possible answers to the question. Either the Norse did name their churches using kirkja but these were replaced in the Hebridean (re-?)Gaelicization process that started in 1266 or they used an alternative word for a chapel in that area.
The empty areas on the maps equate well with the Gaelic speaking area of today and the majority of the chapel names now are based on ScG cill. The linguistic cleansing of ON kirkja from place-names, if that is what it is, is much more complete than one would expect by comparison to other names. To have only six names with ON kirkja as the specific and none whatsoever as the generic left in the whole of the Hebridean chain to my mind militates against their existence at all, let alone before being Gaelicized.
We are left then with the need to find another word the Norse used for their chapels.
The root of ScG cill comes from Latin cella = a small room, a hut, storeroom; a barn, granary; the part of a temple where the image of a god stood; altar, sanctuary, shrine, pantry. This became the Old Gaelic cell = chapel and from that there are several other descendants : Irish cill and Manx keeill as well as ScG: cill. All three words are broadly anglicized the same way as keel. English itself has taken the same Latin root cella and made it into E cell with the meaning of a monastic cell.
The Norse did use this same Latin root is ON kjallari = cellar but ON kirkja had a different root:
ON kirkja < OE cirice < N Sea Germanic kirikǣ < Ancient Greek κυριακόν = the Lord’s House
Nicolaisen argues ScG cill was "the second earliest Gaelic place-name generic isolated so far" and pre-Norse although others have disputed this. Professor Clancy's on-going Early Christianity in Uist project , intriguingly writes: “This suggests that although Scandinavians converted to Christianity, Gaelic remained the professional language of the church. There is evidence from the wider context to suggest that the Christianity of Hebridean Norse-speakers was largely serviced by Gaels, and evolved under Gaelic influence “
He continues: "The importance of this for understanding early Christianity in Uist is that, if the church was one area which remained Gaelic-speaking even during the period of Scandinavian settlement, the names of churches may be one of the few types of Gaelic names to have persisted through from the earlier medieval period. This may be doubly the case if, as is possible, Gaelic was not the language of most of the population of Uist in any case before the Viking Age.
And so, having stripped back other types of evidence, we are left with a series of place-names and sites which could be explained in different ways. Some of these names and dedications, for instance the two sites previously called Cill Choinnich (see *Kilchainie and Beinn Ruigh Choinnich), or Cille Donnain in South Uist, may be easier to explain as having been coined in the earlier medieval period, even if we have no firmer evidence for pre-Viking activity at these sites. A consideration of these sites, place-names, and the saints contained in some of them are our best hope for gaining further insight into early Christianity in Uist."
Effectively then he is arguing then that some OG cell / ScG cill names predated the arrival of the Norse but persisted through the Norse period. Presumably then the Norse were aware of these places including the OG cell / ScG cill component and these words were the ones maintained by the putatively Gaelic speaking church establishment.
Commenting on this, Dr John Holliday wrote “It is very much my belief, too, that some Early Christian Gaelic chapel names on Tiree survived Norse occupation, although I think that Tiree probably became an exclusively Norse-speaking island for several centuries. I had never heard anyone agree with me on that, so it interesting to read Professor Clancy's remarks.”
Effectively then the argument is that some OG cell / ScG cill names predated the arrival of the Norse but persisted through the Norse period before reappearing in the post-Norse period.
Would the Norse have recognised the word OG cell / ScG cill other than through hearing it spoken in Gaelic?
The early church had much symbolism associated with ships. The term nave is from Latin navis = ship, an early Christian symbol of the Church as a whole. This term may also have been suggested by the keel shape of the vaulting of a church. In many Scandinavian and Baltic countries a model ship is commonly found hanging in the nave of a church, and in some languages the same word means both nave and ship, as for instance Norwegian skip Danish skib, Swedish skepp or Spanish nave. Early Christianity had a clear nautical theme.
The earliest chapels in Ireland spread into Scotland from the 6th century bringing the same architectural style. The best preserved example we have is Gallarus Oratory, County Kerry, an area the Norse were familiar with. As can be seen, the boat symbolism here is very strong with the building representing an upturned boat.
kjal is here clearly taken to mean keel, possibly coming from the genitive of ON kjǫlr,: ON kjalar = ‘of the keel’ and with ON kj often sounding as the E ce, we would end with a pronunciation of ceal, very similar to the keel of above
Therefore one can imagine the Christian Norse in the Hebrides being imbued in the maritime aspects of that Christianity, hear the Gaelic Christians use OG cell / ScG cill and can easily equate it with their ON kjal, a word with Christian connerctions and hence effectively take the word into their language as a loan-word. There is a precedence for the Norse taking on a religious loan-word from Gaelic and it has been well-explored by the Papar Project. The root-word here was thought to be Old Gaelic pápa = pope which became both ON papi = pope and ON papar = priest. |
Plentiful ScG cill names exist, nearly all with ScG cill as the generic. Nicolaisen’s map above here shows their distribution and as can be seen, they form very much the inverse of the ON kirkja maps. In areas with a bewtter historical record, it is interesting to note that there are examples where cill has changed to kirk and vice versa.
Are there others names coming from ON kjal?
This takes us back to the start and the two Calligeo place on Uist. What initially alerted me to these was that both are geo names very close to sites with early ecclesiatical connections. Both then colud come from the Norse loan-word ON kjal + gjá = gully or cove of the cell, which works well topographically and historically.
There are other sites in Scotland (twelve?) mainly in the W coast area beginning with Call-., and three beginning with Kall-. Places beginning with kjal abound in Iceland whilst in Norway kjel is the common starting point - Kirkja or its equivalent however remains the common word for church in both these countries.
Dr John Holliday's list of Tiree place-names includes Callraig. I wonder if this could derive from ON kjal+ hryggr= ridge of the cell. There is an old holy well site here and presumably a good possibility of a cell there too once.
Iain Taylor has Kallin (now Gaelicized to Ceallan) as ScG ceallan = cells, although I am not sure there are not problems with the plural here. I did ponder if it was ON kjal + in = the cell.
There are several Keallasay names in Loch nam Madadh, principally two islands, along with an equivalent Cealasaidh off Little Bernera, Lewis. Both have decent early ecclesiastical credentials. Whilst we don’t know the grammar of the putative ON kjal, the equivalent Danish køl and Swedish köl both use an ‘s’ to create the genitive and so both these island names might come from ON kjals + ey = island of the cells.
One last site on Uist that fits the pattern of being adjacent to an old ecclesiastical sites is Culla on Benbecula, often called Culla Bay nowadays. I worry however that the ‘u’ sound is too far away for it to have the same root. However it is one of the few places here with a historical record - Blaeu recorded it as Loch Kalla so perhaps it is another ON kjal site after all!
Speculatively and finally there are two interesting adjacent place-names on Lewis, just south of Dun Othail, a site with a possible early chapel. The three geo names on the OS 1st series going south of Dun Othail are Geodha Dhuin Othail, Geodh a' Ghille and Callaige. All are within 200m of the dun. ScG gille has been confused with ScG cill at other sites (e.g. the Bottle Imp) and so this could be ScG Geodha a' chill = gully of the chapel whilst Callaige could be ON kjal + gjá = cove of the cell, the same name in ON rather than ScG!
All musings but hopefully some grains of truth here, some of which might help understand the early Christian history of the Hebrides.