Northumbria and the Gaelic World

A Century of Literary Contacts and Interactions (AD 635–735)

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Extent: 395 pages

Publisher: Wiley-VCH

Subjects: Cultural Studies

Series: Studies in the Early Middle Ages

Language: English

Hardback (Forthcoming)

(January 2027)

ISBN: 9782503622323

Price: $157.00

Explores the political, ecclesiastical, and cultural interactions between the Gaelic world and Northumbria between 635 and 735, drawing on both English and Gaelic sources.


The century in question (AD 635–735) marks a period of unusually close interactions between Northumbria and the Gaelic world, conducted on several fronts, notably political, ecclesiastical, and cultural. While scholars tacitly acknowledge the Gaelic role in Northumbria’s emergence during this period as the dominant Christian kingdom of early medieval England, they have not directly, much less systematically, studied the written sources relevant to that process. The absence of a study of this kind may reflect a certain reluctance to engage with unfamiliar (and often linguistically inaccessible) Gaelic sources and perhaps also an innate caution about the limitations of the surviving evidence. The present study attempts to fill this gap by exploring identifiable areas of literary interaction between the two cultures.