30/08/2026
❣️☘️❣️ There is an island off the west coast of Scotland, three miles long, where the kings of a nation were carried to be buried for four hundred years.
Iona. Columba came from Ireland and founded a monastery there in the year five sixty three, and from that small green island Christianity spread through Dal Riata, into Pictland, and eventually across much of northern Britain. The monks of Iona were extraordinary scholars and artists. The Book of Kells, one of the most beautiful objects made anywhere in medieval Europe, is now thought to have been begun on this island before being taken to Ireland ahead of Viking raids.
But the part that catches people is the burial ground. It is called the Reilig Odhrain, and Scottish tradition holds that dozens of early kings of Scotland were brought here and laid down, along with kings of Ireland and of Norway. Whatever the exact count, the fact that it was believed is the point. If you were a king of Scots, you were taken across open water to a tiny Hebridean island to be buried, because that was where the ground was holiest. 🕊️
Alongside them lie the West Highland grave slabs, and these are what stop you in your tracks. Carved between the thirteen and sixteen hundreds, they show warriors in quilted armour with two handed swords, galleys under sail, hunting scenes, and dense interlace running round the borders. They belong to the chiefs and captains of the great Hebridean families, the MacLeans, MacDonalds, MacLeods, MacKinnons, MacQuarries. Generations of them were shipped to Iona to be buried among kings.
The monastery was sacked repeatedly by Norse raiders and eventually dissolved, and the buildings fell. In the twentieth century a Glasgow minister brought unemployed shipyard workers and young ministers to the island and they rebuilt the abbey together by hand, which is about as Scottish a resurrection as you could design.
It is still there, still working, still receiving people who come across the sound for reasons they find hard to explain.
Some ground never stops being ours. 🤍