Norse-Gael

The Norse-Gaels, called Gall-Ghàidheal or “foreigner Gaels” in their Gaelic speech, were a people of mixed Norse and Gaelic descent formed from the Viking settlements of Ireland and Scotland.

From the ninth to the twelfth century they dominated the Irish Sea and the Hebridean seas, founding the Kingdom of Dublin, the Kingdom of the Isles with its seat on Mann, and the Lordship of Galloway, which bears their name; the Uí Ímair of Dublin held the English kingdom of York between 939 and 944.

Converted to Christianity and increasingly Gaelicised, they lost their kingdoms to Norman and Scottish expansion, and by the fourteenth century survived chiefly as the heritage of Galloway, Mann and the Hebrides. Their clans, among them the MacDonalds, MacDougalls and MacLeods, gave Ireland its heavily armed gallowglass mercenaries, while Norse-derived place names remained on Mann and the Outer Hebrides.