ABSTRACT
TO SAY THAT SCOTLAND was a monarchy in the eleventh century is to stress the personal element that held together its varied cultures. Kingship was a fact: to call yourself a king you had to be of the royal house, accepted, enthroned, and ruling. That as king you might, or might not, acknowledge a superior, was not particularly important. If there had been no English overlordship of Scotland there might well have been a Norse one, for Norse power was reviving. Magnus Bareleg, King of Norway, had conquered and reclaimed the Norse earldoms. By agreement in 1098 his part of Scotland included all the islands and Kintyre, which is almost an island. The Scottish kings had lost their ancient burial site of Iona, but the kings of Margaret and Malcolm’s line, turning their backs on the Celtic past, were buried in their new Benedictine abbey in Dunfermline. Kingship gave wide scope for personal influence, and where, as in their case, this was linked with Margaret’s reputation not just for piety but for saintliness, the sphere of the monarchy could expand.
