the Sudreys (Hebrides)

The Hebrides — the Sudreys, the 'southern isles' — are the long chain of islands off western Scotland that were, for centuries, a Norse world unto themselves: Norse-speaking, Norse-ruled, a crossroads of the viking sea-roads between Norway, Ireland, Man, and the British coasts. Through them the corpus's voyagers raid, trade, and pass; over them Magnus Barefoot swept on his great western expedition, claiming by treaty every island a ship could sail around and even dragging his vessel across Kintyre to count the peninsula among them. Holy Iona lies among them, the ancient heart of Celtic Christianity that even the viking Magnus paused to spare. The Hebrides are the saga world's image of the far-flung western diaspora — Norse islands a long sail from any homeland, where the Gaelic and Norse worlds met and mingled, and where the kings of Norway reached out across the sea to claim what they could hold.