Skye | Scotland's Isle of Mist and Celtic Legends

through memories [Music] hello my name is Jacob todson and welcome back to the wisdom of Odin today I'm going to be sharing with you the mythology and folklore around one of Scotland's most popular destinations the Isle of sky [Music] but before we cover the mythology let's talk a little bit about the history of this mysterious place the ancient Vikings called this place the Isle of mist or the Isle of clouds hopefully you can see why they would call this place home as it looks very similar to their native land of Norway with towering mountains fjords and locks cold seas and black Cliffs the imprint of the Viking immigrants that raided here stayed here and intermingled with the native Scots last even in the namesake of this island over 60 percent of the place names here in the Isle of Sky come from Scandinavian Origins including the name we call it today Sky the Vikings were not the first people to set their eyes on this beautiful island on the west end of Scotland long before they arrived at around the 10th Century several different Native groups called this place home going all the way back to the prehistoric times as evidence of Flint arrowheads have been found here showing that this place has been inhabited at least by the hunter-gatherers going back thousands of years even further into history we do have some remnants of Iron Age and Bronze Age hillforts and Neolithic sites if you actually look at a map of the prehistoric sites here in the Isle of Skye you'll see that many of them are Hill forts on the western Shores this is actually something that persists into the later eras as many castles have been built along the shores of the Isle of Skye because this area has not always had roads in the ancient past the only way to get to this island and trade along the western locks and fjords of Scotland was by boat and so the Isles of Scotland particularly the Isle of Skye was a really important Trade Network Hub where many people would travel up and down the rivers and locks waging Wars on one another to maintain control of this beautiful area as high tide is beginning I will also say the picks made their way here as well I saw an ancient picked a standing Stone on the northern part of the Isles that has left here since the 7th or 8th century when it was carved by the picks escaping the gods as they moved across the land now the picks being the original natives of Scotland as far as we know were removed by the Gaelic Scots moving in from Ireland as they escape they move further west and the Isle of Skye may be the one of the last few places that the pigs truly survive culturally and maybe even religiously now while the Viking did stay here for several hundred years intermarrying with the guy like Scots that lived here little is Left Behind as far as archaeological evidence in the last 20 years or so there has been one piece of evidence found in the southern part of the ILO sky and the form of a Viking age Canal that was around a port city that they would have had in the ancient past sadly I was not able to show you this in this video because it's surrounded a four-hour hike to get to and it's on the southernmost part of the aisle now besides the naming and the archaeological evidence there is some remainder of the Norse society that used to live here one of my favorite terms I learned recently in the museum here in the Isle of Skye is the term gal Gale I believe it's how it's pronounced which is a term used for people who Blended Norse culture and the native Celtic culture the Scottish culture and this is something I think we see in this modern era as many people blend the two face in the modern Pagan practices of Norse paganism and Celtic paganism and we'll see that even later when we discuss the clans of Scotland most notably the clan of McDonald this is the third time I've had to move the camera as high died continues to move further along hopefully from this beautiful view you can see why the Vikings call this the Isle of mist an Isle of cloud it's strikely beautiful dark and haunting much like the mythology of the ancient Viking peoples this blended with the cultures of the Scots created a very unique identity for the people that lived here in the Isle of Skye and would eventually become the Lords of the Isles now we will speak of the legends of how the kukalan mountains were both made and named long ago only the Giants called Sky home the witch known as the kaliak vood lived among them and ensured that spring would never come to the aisle it was she who made Scotland with a rock and a piece of peat that she brought from the great North and had dropped into the sea the god of spring hated her for hoarding the Isle of all to herself so he appealed to the Sun to help him chase away the Celiac from the land the sun listened to his request and threw a spirit towards sky that ruptured the Earth where it fell where the spear struck spewed flames and fire across the aisle the sudden heat would chase away the kaliak to hide within the roots of the holly plant and from this rupture in the earth came the mountains that would be named The Goo Collins the origin of their name comes from the time when Humanity was young and the warrior coupling journeyed North from Ireland to learn from a great teacher of War this teacher was one of the few to call Sky home in the early days and she lived in an impressive Fortress called Dune scath The Fortress of Shadows and her name was scothic the shadowy one [Music] and I must say this segment of the video is the one I've been looking forward to the most to share with you because behind me here is the castle of Dune scuff it was at this Castle she would teach Warriors from all around the world in the ways of martial arts gukolin was young and proud and thought himself a legend around the world but when he arrived in scoffix Hall he was treated as a lowly boy which brought a fire in his chest he then proceeded to challenge every warrior in the Fortress to combat whom he then quickly defeated after defeating all the Warriors in scothic's Hall scothic then gave permission to cook Colin to fight her only daughter in single combat they fought day and night and eventually Colin called himself Victorious this left only scothic and KU Cullen who took their fight to the mountains that lasted days and nights and into weeks neither seeming to give up both seeking Victory scothic's daughter searched for a solution to this endless fighting and gathered wise hazelnut for both of them to eat and seek wisdom from when they both took in the nourishing hazelnuts they both saw visions of a draw between the two and that both were equally matched in the ways of combat thus both laid down their arms and respect of one another's skills before kukalan left scothic gave him the mighty spear fearborg which was forged in the mountains by the little people in an age long past she then named the mountains kukalan in honor of their great battle that took place there kukalan then went South back to Ireland to live the life of a demigod hero while scothic stayed in her Fortress of Shadows until the day that she faded away from time and memory [Music] so in my personal opinions Gothic is a demigod being and I say that out of experience now because being here this is a very otherworldly place this Castle has a presence to it now I should specify that the castle that stands here now was built after the story of kukalan and scothic however there was supposedly a sight here already that was built on top of and considering the large amount of Iron Age hilforts that exist on this area I would say that is more than likely true that there was something here before this current Castle was built now that could mean that someone read this story or heard the story at some point and named this Castle uh John Scott rather than actually it being that name originally but that's just no fun now is it uh but truly this presence up here is really interesting I mean you have a war goddess essentially she's teaching kukullen an already great warrior how to fight uh martial arts and so she is a warrior being perhaps a warrior goddess I do think there's some people that venerate her as a goddess and I'm actually going to go over here and give an offering to her to kind of reach out because that's again where this channel kind of differs I believe uh than some of the other history mythology channels is I am a practicing Pagan and so I do want to come to places like this do the research experience them and then try to connect with them further uh to get more information to to see if I can build that relationship and connection with these ancient places since many of you will more than likely never get to visit here I hope you do it's a very beautiful location but some observations here we do have a well over here again this could have been added much later however it is interesting because that's where I'm being called to give an offering here in a minute uh also the predominant plant on this uh old castle here is nettle stinging nettle and so absolutely everywhere is covered in this stuff uh which feels very fitting for a place of War a place of you know combat of a harsh plant that stings you when you touch it so it's not very welcoming despite its beauty I mean there's little flowers absolutely everywhere uh the fact that the castles falling apart in a way that makes it kind of a challenge to get in I also really like I mean you have the beautiful view of the mountains here uh the calm of the sea but I can imagine it's very Fierce here during a storm so there's a fierceness to this location that I think attaches it to this this idea of the shadowy one and as we discussed the Isle of Skye the Isle of mist and clouds this place is very spooky at times I'm very lucky to be here on a nice day uh and this is a crazy out there Theory and I can't prove this uh my evidence for this is we have possibly a goddess up here a war goddess and a land of beauty that was controlled at one point or at least visited by the picks this could be a pictus goddess I could be 100 wrong on this but considering we know next to nothing about the pictus deities uh you know saying like hey this could be a pictus deity scothic could be some form or variant of a pictures God let me know what you think down below this is just my thoughts running through my head I'm not saying I'm going to necessarily venerate her as a pictus being I don't know if I'm 100 on that but it's something that feels like a connection that could exist [Music] now of course we have to talk about Clans when it comes to talking about Scotland mythology and folklore and here at the Iowa sky that is no different clans were very big at one point in its history the biggest clan that had a presence here was Clan McDonald which of course had many Clans under its name I think it was over three or four hundred different Clans that are all tied to McDonald now what makes clan McDonald's so famous is the fact that they were one of the biggest Clans to stand up to the English Rule and the removal of Highland culture now sadly this of course led to their final downfall at the Jacobite rebellion and then further the end of Highland culture at least for a small period uh where the clan Heritage and tartans and all this was actually outlawed under English Rule and after the failure of the Jacobite rebellion this is also when we see a lot of Scots move away from Scotland their Homeland to the United States and other places around the world for example here on the Isle of Skye over 20 000 people lived here right before the Jacobi Uprising and then after it failed only 9 000 people lived here a few years later because of removal of Highland culture and the removal of Highland people and many of these people fled to the United States namely North Carolina weirdly and this is where I have to admit that going here was part of my own ancestral research because my family has always said that we came from North Carolina around the same time of this removal of the Highland Clan culture when I came here this place has a very spiritual connection to me I mean just looking around it's absolutely gorgeous I feel something here deep down uh I was walking through the museum and I saw a portrait and it looks just like me when I didn't have a beard and then I saw several portraits in there that looked like family members I have and so I definitely feel like there's a part of my ancestry that came from the McDonald's uh overarching Clan title and so there's definitely something to my Heritage here and I can feel that and of course that's not the only thing that connects us to spirituality but it is an important component and seeking down one's ancestry is a really powerful experience and I'm definitely feeling that here now as I stand here in the Isle of sky one of the last things I want to mention here is that McDonald's themselves actually have legends that go all the way back to this hero named summerled whose name translates to Summer Hunter and the old Norse what's so fascinating about this is something we already discussed is that combination of Celtic garlic culture with the Norse culture while the Vikings were settling here now summer lead's name may be Norse but what he actually did was remove a lot of the Norse Invaders uh and send them back to Norway so to speak and so that's where he got a lot of his Fame is by standing up to the Norse influence here and taking back the Isle of Skye and establishing this lordship over the Isles and so the McDonald's themselves traced their ancestry their lineage back to this hero of summerlit and of course we see this within Golic Celtic and Norse culture of the veneration of Heroes to the point of making them Legends or almost deifying them and you definitely see this uh within the legends of summerled as he is almost deified because of how important he is to the McDonald Heritage and the clan title another prominent clan of sky was the mcloids who called The Castle done vegan home in the west of the aisle sadly I was not able to visit this castle for myself but the Legends contained within this family are ones that are worth knowing first is the legend of the fairy flag the most sacred of objects to the family which is still on display today in the castle Legend tells us that the mcloyd chief Malcolm the fat and Good married a fairy wife whom he had a son with his fairy life would then request to return to the fairy world to be with her people and leave both her husband and son behind the chief agreed and escorted her to the ferry bridge she called home with no mother to watch their son he began to cry often and on one particular evening the party below was growing so loud none could hear his cries later in the evening a Norse was walking by his room when she heard singing coming from within what was inside was the fairy mother holding her son whom she had wrapped in a cloth while singing a fairy song the mother disappeared into the thin air as the nurse came into the room the nurse then carried the baby in The Fairy cloth down to Malcolm the fat and good upon holding his son in the cloth he could hear the voice of the fairies sing once more everyone in the hall gathered to hear this magical song this song is still remembered today within many people in the mcloid clan and is still sung very often to newborn babies protect them and give them the strength of the fairies within this song and this flag was also a promise that should the mcloyd family ever need help that all they have to do is raise the fairy flag High and the fairies would answer assisting them no matter what this fairy fly can still be seen today within the dunvegan castle and has been tested several times by Scholars and historians and its Origins are still quite mysterious while it is badly damaged now and has been cared for for hundreds of years by a series of standard bearers whose job was protection of this Most Holy object there are several other other objects kept within dunvegan castle that bear just as interesting stories there are also several legends about fairies and their interactions with the various people that have lived in this castle and it's over 700 years I sadly do not have time to read all of them to you so I highly recommend picking up the book by Otis wire so that you can read them for yourself taking a brief pause in the middle of this video if you're enjoying it please make sure you like And subscribe and all that good YouTuber stuff even a comment goes very far these days but if you enjoy the work I'm doing here capturing the Legends and myths of the ancient world all across northern Europe please think about supporting this channel on patreon this video was not easy to make and was filmed over several days so please go down below and check out the benefits I have for you is there as well and truly all of this helps the channel out so very much to all my patreon subscribers thank you the reason I walk these massive mountains in the Mist in the rain in Scotland is all because of your wonderful donations and patronage so thank you truly so very much the Legends around fairies all over Sky come in various forms and not all of them Pleasant there are many stories about cattle and livestock going mad while eating in fairy Fields Legends of people disappearing and being killed by the fairies out in the wild the legends of the fairies can also be found within the names of various places across the aisle including ferry bridge the fairy pools and the fairy Glen it's a really interesting location because it's probably the most popular attraction next to the fairy pools is the fairy Glen and there's so many Instagram pictures of this place uh and as you can tell it's a very popular location uh the two hours I've been here it's been this crowded uh basically the whole time there's usually at least a dozen people around the the main site here and hopefully you can see why from the footage that I'm showing you now it is very beautiful however of all the sites I've shown you today it is the one that most likely is the most modern because we really don't know who built the spiral in the center here from my research it seems like there has been no dating that I can actually tell when this spiral was made we just know it was first mentioned in around the 1800s early 1900s and the most predominant theory is that someone during the Victorian era built the spiral because this is when the interest in druidry Celtic paganism and mythology was becoming more popular once again but my Counterpoint to that theory is the location of this is very rural and not somewhere that I believe a Victorian era archaeologist would come or someone interested in this time period would come here and make something like this in the countryside now this place is naturally beautiful undeniably but we're pretty far away from civilization the nearest town is probably less than a couple thousand people and so I really don't see any of the local farmers doing this unless they were just trying to build tourism which also wouldn't make sense because I don't think they're very fond of the tourists in the countryside at least around here especially now with how popular this site has become with thousands and millions of people probably visiting the site every single year now with that there is a lot of modern folklore around this site and I really want to emphasize the modern part here because a lot of the stories you'll hear about the fairy Glen come from at least the last 50 years when tours became more popular I do have a theory of why these stories exist and it's very similar to why we have folk tales in general the main rules given to People by the tour guides when visiting fairy Glenn are don't whistle don't tell the Fey your name don't go into the spiral don't take anything from the Glen and don't accept any offerings from the FAE and you should destroy any gifts that the Fey leave you now there's definitely a part of this that is just simply mythology and folklore around Fae and elves and little people in general is that they're very mischievous and I think the mischievousness came from the Christian era for sure but we definitely see the little people the spirits have existed all around the world particularly in Northern and Central Europe and we even see some of these rules apply to Native American traditions as well when it comes to Spirits particularly with not whistling this is something that we teach people in the states with the fellowship of Northern Traditions is that whistling in the woods is actually bad now this changes a little bit depending on where you are because I know I think in the Scandinavian tradition uh waking up the spirits is a thing like knocking wood uh is a way to awaken the spirits and not necessarily seen as a bad thing but the entire subject around Fae and Spirits is something I've kind of talked about on various videos on this channel highly recommend my house Spirit video if you haven't checked it already and I've made an elves video as well but I will be talking a little bit more specifically about the FAE here very soon but the final thing I want to mention about this site I mean yes it's modern but my experience here has definitely been Fey Spirit e even though I'm not really big on some of the uh the modern additions to this I can't deny that this site one is beautiful is absolutely stunning to just be standing in because it's very unique it's one of the oldest Earthen structures in the world created by probably an ancient volcano uh just very very windy uh and just overall has a presence to it but also the site is very mischievous as I have witnessed here in my brief time being here on my way up here I walked by a woman who actually had broken her ankle I assisted a little bit in getting her down the hill a little ways and we called an ambulance uh I believe she's fine now I saw the ambulance come uh and then I've seen several people slip and fall here I've had to stop people a few times there were some people right in the center of the Glen taking some either uh really bad selfies and or Tick Tock videos of them doing stupid poses and they were kicking around the rocks and stuff and so I had to get out my dad voice and stop them from doing that luckily they did but when I actually climbed up the rock here another group came by and they started picking up the stones and moving them around and I had to yell at them and so I think my retirement plan now is to come dressed as an old Druid Gandalf figure so stand upon the rock and yell at people when they disrespect the site and that's my ultimate theory around why these rules of the FAE existed here as they were created by the tour guides to kind of create this hey don't touch that and I hopefully it becomes more effective because it definitely seems like the site does get disrespected I wish there was some signage here telling people not to do this as well even in the fun way around the story of the FAE just remember don't take anything from the fairy Glenn and respect your ancient sites when I first visited the Isle of Skye I was overwhelmed by its beauty its presence and its spirit and after reading the work by Otis wire my heart is full of an immense love and appreciation for the sacred and mysterious place while many people visit this aisle to see the fairy Glens in the fairy pools very few people will experience the mythology and folklore that gives these places their names I hope this video has given you an in-depth look at this amazing location and given you a piece of the spiritual presence that is the Isle of sky [Music] oh [Music]

Channel: Jacob Toddson

Views: 63,499

Keywords: pagan, Paganism, Norse Paganism, Norse, Norse myth, Norse mythology, asatru, Viking, Vikings, heathen, heathenry, books, list, Odin, Thor, Freya, gods, old gods, religion, wicca, Wiccan, shaman, shamanism, Nordic, yule, pagan holidays, yuletide, winter, pagan christmas, holidays, yggrasil, offering, sacrifice, heilung, ritual, Asatru for beginners, Asatru ritual, Asatru explained, Asatru religion, Norse paganism for beginners, norse pagan ritual, Norse Pagan Religion, norse pagan, the wisdom of odin

Id: 3bz_308K8Rw

Length: 21min 58sec (1318 seconds)

Published: Wed May 17 2023