PhD Research

A Pilgrims Progress within the Irish Sea Corridor: Medieval Maritime Myth or Maxim?

Overview

This ongoing research concentrates on maritime pilgrimage routes within the Irish Sea Corridor. These include case studies from the east coast of Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man, Cumbria, Anglesey and the Rhins and Machars of Galloway. It develops and tests the viability of new approaches to the identification of maritime pilgrimage routes which springboard from the work of Gibbon (2006) and previous research I’ve completed on Landscapes of Pilgrimage (2020). (Gibbon and Moore, 2019). In establishing these routes and identifying landscape and seascape characteristics the impact of maritime pilgrimage on the early Christian Irish Sea area can be assessed in terms of medieval ecclesiastical and secular power, and settlement and cultural exchange.

The Irish Sea corridor of the medieval period acted as a highway to the surrounding land, giving access for pilgrims to holy sites, allowing links to settlements and economic opportunity on local, national and international platforms. Traversing the sea as a pilgrim facilitated social and cultural contact by bringing valuable produce, evinced through material remains, and by acting as a conduit linking disparate communities of the early medieval period. Identifying maritime pilgrimage routes and landing places therefore represents an opportunity to study interactive medieval cultural boundaries, landscapes and places that transcended political borders, thus linking archaeological sites through a multidisciplinary approach. This research seeks to establish whether early medieval maritime pilgrimage is a myth or maxim.

Aims and Objectives

Aims:

To understand seaboard pilgrimage routes throughout the Irish Sea Corridor
To identify the cultural exchange that medieval pilgrimage facilitated

Objectives:

Identify and interpret possible medieval pilgrimage routes using written sources, placenames, landscape features, and hydrographic information, material remains and experimental archaeological techniques
Undertake comparative studies with existing research into the medieval Irish seaboard for example on the east coast of Ireland

Methodology

The methodology is multi-disciplinary which includes an immersive and landscape-based archaeological approach with emphasis placed on mapping the Christian landscape using a combination of archaeological, onomastic and written sources, for example historical cartography, charters, and the Annals of Ulster.

The methodology was derived from master’s dissertation which was based on defining a methodology focused on landscape study of the Rhins in early medieval Galloway and testing its viability to lead to identification of maritime pilgrimage routes using a single case study. The latter has been extended in this current research by analysing multiple case studies across the Rhins and the Machars and developing the methodology to incorporate experimental archaeology techniques. This multifaceted approach proved successful and now the intention is to expand the research area to include the Irish Sea Corridor more fully.

The research will include an analysis of cartography, relevant secondary studies, place-name etymology, and site visits to each area. Through these methods, the delineation of land and sea pilgrimage routes and how they articulate with ecclesiastical and secular sites will be examined.

Challenges to Research

Careful analysis of multi-disciplinary data can be problematic; however, creating, defining, and applying a unique methodology through MLitt and MRes study has resulted in balance across the diverse range of research sources. The proposed approach includes the incorporation of modern methods of immersive archaeological research to increase the evidential dataset.

However, this is not without challenge. Establishing maritime pilgrimage routes and landing sites within the coastal zones outlined requires careful analysis. For example, the impact of coastal erosion has been analysed to cognize early medieval use. This is achieved through historical modelling of the coastline using hydrographic research combined with place name evaluation.

Many modern-day place names are surviving forms of their medieval predecessors and although a valuable source of evidence cannot be relied on as being evidence of actual use of place. Although this problem can be addressed through fieldwork and observational recording; place names cannot give exact use or history of a place or indeed its cultural history in totality; this needs to be learned from other historical information, material evidence, archaeological records and surveys, alongside the coastal erosion modelling; hence a multidisciplinary approach is advocated.

Wider Significance

The relationship between the sea, pilgrimage routes, maritime and terrestrial archaeology with a focus on landing sites and cartography from an early medieval perspective has not been previously studied within the Irish Sea area. Academics have focused on routes, Vikings and saint cults in other parts of interconnected Irish or Scottish seascapes and there has been tentative geographical research, particularly of prehistory (Edmonds 2014; Gibbon and Moore 2019; Harrison 2017; MacQuarrie and Nagy 2019; Steinforth 2018; Waddell 1991). In addition, cultural connections have been identified in sculptured stone studies across the Isle of Man, Cumbria and Ireland (Bekkhaus 2019; Busset 2017; Craig 1991; Davey 2010; Foster and Cross 2005; Forsyth and Driscoll 2009; Foster et.al. 2016; Okasha and Forsyth 2001; Redknapp 2007; Trench-Jellicoe 2002).

From a global pilgrimage perspective, there are only a few archaeological studies of maritime passage in combination with known terrestrial pilgrimage destinations (Bradley 2017; Davidson 2016;Edmonds 2009). Additionally, how the sea and waterways are viewed in medieval times has been advanced through historical literary research (Macdonald 2019; Bowman 2020; Childs 1999; Lechmann 2016). In these strands of research, a void of knowledge relating to the Irish corridor and pilgrimage is apparent.

The study of pilgrimage routes and Christian centres has mainly been focused on traversing the land rather than assessing the impact of maritime pilgrimage routes and connections with terrestrial routes (O Carragain and Turner 2016). The proposed research of pilgrimage in the Irish Sea corridor will allow for comparisons of ecclesiastical power centres and influential secular landscapes in the early medieval period. Thus, it is the lack of discussion surrounding Christian pilgrimage routes and the medieval seascape that this research will fill.

Bibliography

Barrett, J.H. & Gibbon, S.J. (eds) (2015) Maritime Societies of the Viking and Medieval World. Maney Publishing, Leeds

Bekkhus, E. (2019) ‘Men on Pilgrimage – Women Adrift: Thoughts on Gender in Sea Narratives from Early Medieval Ireland’. In Gender in Medieval Places, Spaces and Thresholds.ed.by Blud, V, Heath, D. and Klafter, E. London: University of London Press, 93–106.

Bowman, M. (2020) ‘Rehabilitating” Pilgrimage in Scotland: Heritage, Protestant Pilgrimage, and Caledonian Caminos’. Numen: International Review for the Studies of the History of Religions 67 (5-6), 453-482

Bradley, I. (2017) The Revival of Pilgrimage in Scotland Today: Medieval Echoes or Post Modern Phenomena? Newton Stewart: Friends of Ninian and Whithorn

Busset, AM. (2017) Early Medieval Carved Stones from Ireland, Scotland and Scandinavia: A Comparative Study Through Place, Movement, Memory and Identity. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow

Childs, WR. (1999) ‘The Perils, or Otherwise, of Maritime Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in the Fifteenth Century’. In Pilgrimage Explored. ed. By Stopford, J. Woodbridge: York Medieval, 123-143

Craig, D. (1991) `Pre-Norman Sculpture in Galloway: Some Territorial Implications’. In Galloway: land and lordship. ed. by Oram, R.D and Stell, G.P. Edinburgh: Scottish Society for Northern Studies, 45–62

Edmonds, F. (2014) ‘Saints’ Cults and Gaelic-Scandinavian Influence around the Cumberland Coast and North of the Solway Firth in Celtic-Norse Relationships’. In The Irish Sea in the Middle Ages 800-1200 . ed. by Sigurđsson, J.V. and Bolton, T. (eds.) The Northern World: Brill, 39-63

Forsyth, K. and Driscoll, S.T. (2009) Symbols of Power in Ireland and Scotland, 8th–10th century [Online]. Available from <http://www.unioviedo.es/reunido/index.php/TSP/” http://www.unioviedo.es/reunido/index.php/TSP/ > [20^th August 2021]

Foster, S., Forsyth, K., Buckham, S., Jeffrey, S. (2016) Future Thinking on Carved Stones in Scotland: A Research Framework. Historic Scotland: Edinburgh

Gibbon, SJ. (2006) The Origins and Early Development of the Parochial System in the Orkney Earldom. Unpublished PhD Thesis. UHI/OU

Gibbon, SJ. (2018) ‘With a Good Boat Under Me: St Magnus and the Ladykirk Stone. New Orkney Antiquarian Journal 8, 17-23

Gibbon, SJ. and Moore, J. (2019) ‘Storyways: Visualising Saintly Impact in a North Atlantic Maritime Landscape’ Open Archaeology, 5, 235-262

Harrison, S. (2017) The Vikings in Ireland and Beyond: New Research and New Directions? Studia Hibernica, 43, 127-136

Lechmann, C.N. (2016) Water, Prestige, and Christianity: An Ecocritical Look at Medieval Water, Prestige, and Christianity: An Ecocritical Look at Medieval Literature Literature. Las Vegas: University of Navada

Mcquarrie, C and Nagy, J. (2019) The Medieval Cultures of the Irish Sea and the North Sea: anannán and his Neighbours. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press

McDonald, A. (2019) The Sea Kings. Edinburgh: John Donald

O Carragain, T. and Turner, S. (2016) Making Christian Landscapes in Atlantic Europe. Conversion and Consolidation in the Early Middle Ages, Cork University Press, Cork

Okasha, E. and Forsyth, K. (2001) Early Christian Inscriptions of Munster: A Corpus of the Inscribed Stones. Cork: Cork University Press

Redknap, M. and Lewis, J.M. (2007) A Corpus of Early Inscribed Stones and Stone Sculpture in Wales. Volume I. Cardiff: University of Wales Press

Trench-Jellicoe, R. (2002) ‘Manx Sculptured Monuments and the Early Viking Age’. In Mannin Revisited. Twelve Essays on Manx Culture and Environment. ed.by. Davey, P. Edinburgh: The Scottish Society for Northern Studies, 11–34

Waddell, J. (1991) ‘The Irish Sea in Prehistory’. The Journal of Irish Archaeology, 6. 29–40