Dumbarton Rock
With the rock being visable from every other house in Port Glasgow and after Mr Bryceland took the time to send me these photographs I thought we would stray slightly out of town with this page.
The Britons' warband would have feasted in Dunbarton's royal hall. They would have taken their drink on the king's mead benches, and listened to tales of Arthur and Merlin. It was at Dumbarton that Scotland's earliest poetry, 'The Gododdin', by the Welsh bard Aneirin, was first written down. It tells the tale of a disastrous raid by the warband of the Britons of Edinburgh on the Angles, revelling in their deeds and mourning the loss of so many fine warriors.
(possible use of Dinogad's coat or In praise of Urien, poem)
Early Britonnic kings, such as Rhydderch Hael (c580-612 AD), helped to secure Christianity in Scotland by supporting St Kentigern (aka. St Mungo), the founder of Glasgow.
For most of the 9th century Dumbarton seems to have avoided the worst of the Viking attacks which ravaged Scotland, that is until 866 AD, when Olaf the White, the Norse King of Dublin, brought a raiding army to plunder Scotland. Olaf was married to Aud the Deep-minded, whose family controlled the Hebrides, and it seems likely that many Hebridean Vikings joined Olaf's army. For three years Olaf's army reeked havoc, plundering and extorting money from Picts and Britons alike.
Olaf and his brother Ivarr laid siege to the formidable rock fortress of Dumbarton. For four months the starving Britons held out, until the true death blow - the fortress's well dried up. At that point the Vikings broke in, plundering the kingdom of its treasures and taking a 'great host' of Britons to Ireland as slaves on a fleet of 200 ships. The taking of Dumbarton was a terrific achievement: Olaf was famed in Icelandic Sagas as the 'greatest warrior-king in the Western Sea'. As was normal in the dark Ages, Olaf's luck didn't hold. Within a year he was dead, probably killed at the hands of Constantine I, King of Pictland.
It was the end of the road for the Kingdom of Dumbarton but not for the Britons as a people. A new kingdom, further up the river, 'Strathclyde', would soon emerge.
'In this year the kings of the Scandinavians besieged Strathclyde, in Britain. They were for four months besieging it; and at last, after reducing the people who were inside by hunger and thirst (after a well in their midst had dried up miraculously), they broke in upon them afterwards. And firstly, all the riches that were in it were taken; and also a great host was taken out of it into captivity.'
Duald Mac-Firbis's account of the storming of the Briton's fortress of Dumbarton in 870 AD
Dumbarton Rock enters history in the mid 5th century with a letter of complaint from St Patrick to Coroticus, King of the Britons, telling him to stop kidnapping Christians and selling them into slavery.
This page last modified on Monday, March 10, 2003
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