Kenneth I.

Kenneth MacAlpin is a redirect to this article. For the British racing driver of the same name, see Kenneth McAlpine .

King Kenneth I. Detail in the frieze of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Kenneth I. MacAlpin ( Cinead mac Alpin (Old Gaelic ), Coinneach MacAilpein (new); * around 810, † 858 ) was the first Scottish king . In 841 he succeeded his father Alpin II as King of Dalriada . In 843 he was crowned joint king of the Picts and Scots on the Stone of Scone . The newly formed kingdom was known by the Gaelic name of Alba . Kenneth founded Haus Alpin .

In the 9th century there were four independent kingdoms in the far north of the British Isles: In the northeast, the Picts, the oldest tribe in this region, settled in a very large area. In the southeast was the empire of Bernicia, the relatively late-immigrant fishing community . To the southwest was the Strathclyde Empire , whose population consisted essentially of Romanized British . Finally, in the north-west, in the empire Dalriada , lived the Scottish migrants from Ireland . These four empires experienced phases of peace with one another, but also frequent armed conflicts. What they had in common was the Christian faith , a late legacy of the Roman occupying power , which was intensively disseminated by the early Christianized Irish.

In 839 the Picts defeated their Scotic neighbors from Dalriada and killed their king Eoganan . At the same time, however , the Vikings coming from Scandinavia were increasingly devastating the east coast of the Pictish Empire on their raids. The recently victorious Piktenkönig Uen was killed. Alpin's son Cinead (Kenneth MacAlpin) seized the opportunity and conquered the country without rulers.

Interestingly enough, he justified his claim to the throne with the maternal line of succession accepted by the Picts. From this it can be concluded that his mother was a Pictin and that the different peoples in the north apparently increasingly mixed. After the victory over the Picts, Kenneth MacAlpin united his homeland Dalriada with the reconquest to form the kingdom of Alba and stood up to the pagan Vikings with strength . Although the Vikings eventually settled in both Ireland and Britain and the British of Strathclyde also became a powerful force, Alba established itself permanently in the north and later took advantage of the opportunity to expand south.

Kenneth I, whose newly established empire was referred to as the " Pictish Empire" in the relatively reliable Irish historiography until around the year 900, moved the main town from the Scottish Dunadd to Dalriada in the Pictish Scone , which was also the seat of the ruler before, and settled crown there. It is also known that he had the relics of St. Columban transported from the island of Iona to Dunkeld .

The kingdom of Alba, founded by the Scot Kenneth from the MacAlpins clan, was the nucleus of what would later become Scotland, and he himself became the progenitor of the MacAlpin royal family, which only ended with King Lulach in 1058 . Kenneth was buried on the island of Iona. His brother Donald I. succeeded him to the throne, according to the old tanistry -Brauch.

See also

• Family tree of the Kings of Scotland

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Stewart Ross: Monarchs of Scotland. Lochar Publishing Ltd, 1990, ISBN 0-948403-38-1 , p. 20

Web links

• Personal data on www.fmg.ac (English)

predecessor	Office	successor
Alpine II.	King of Dalriada 841–843	––
––	King of Scotland 843–859	Donald I.