 In the middle of the 9th century, there occurs an Irish chronicles and poems, a term unknown before the word Leithlin. It appears to denote a place somewhere when fierce Vikings came to Ireland to plunder. Due to a somewhat similar term, which in entries in the 11th and 12th centuries was used for Norway, early scholarship took us for almost for granted that Leithlin was located somewhere in southwest Norway, the original home of the Vikings. Other researchers, however, argued that the term referred to a Viking settlement in the British Isles, well there, specifically in West Scotland. As the evidence is extremely scarce and both interpretations had their respective merits and weaknesses, here the matter rested with two mutually exclusive propositions and without proof either way. The question where those Vikings came from remained unanswered and scholars were left to their own devices, what to believe. There is, however, an avenue yet unexplored. The Viking Ulaver son of the king of Leithlin, according to the annals of Alster, is an important personality in 9th century Irish history and his origins and activities are of great interest. They point, I think, towards a location of Leithlin in West Scotland. I wrote a paper about my ideas and was about to send it to a journal for publication when I heard that another paper had just been published, this one advocating a Norwegian site. So quite suddenly the discussion had got a new lease of life. Today I'm going to sketch out to you the evidence and my argument. There are four instances of the term Leithlin in written sources all dating to the middle of the 9th century. Two entries in the annals of Alster and two short poems. The first tells of Jarl Thorir being killed in battle in 848. The Irish won a battle against the heathens in which fell the Jarl Thorir Tannist that is deputy of the king of Leithlin and 200 about them. The second records the arrival of Ulaver in Dublin in 853. Ulaver, son of the king of Leithlin, came to the island and the foreigners of Ireland submitted to him. Along with his brothers Ivar and Elgiso, he became king of the Viking kingdom in Dublin. Then there is the quadraine in the annals of the Four Masters under the year 866 and it seems fearfully of a keen host from fierce Leithlin come to do battle against the king of the great Eda. And finally the famous lines in the margin of Priton's institution is Grammatike in the Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen. The wind is fierce tonight, it tosses the seas wide main. I do not fear the coursing of a quiet sea by the fierce warriors of Leithlin. It seems clear that Leithlin must be a Viking kingdom from which Norse raiders set out to plunder in Ireland. But neither examples offers any indication where Leithlin might be located other than it must be overseas. The annals of Tigernach it seems offer a starting point. There is an obituary under the year 1103 for Magnus Rie Lochlang which clearly refers to Magnus Berlech's king of Norway. Lochlang and by extension Leithlin too must mean Norway. Taking the term Lochlang literally and translating it as land of the lochs or sea lochs, this identification seems almost too obvious considering the abundance of fjords in West Norway. Egon Varmas says, quote, Leithlin must have been a small but important kingdom in Norway so important that the name Leithlin later became synonymous with Norway itself. The motherland in the east for the colony in the west, end quote. More specifically, arguments have been made to locate Leithlin in Laare in Prandellach or in Westfold under Oslofjord. All these areas are quite rich in Irish objects such as this mount found in Gäuse near Stavanger in Rugell. Scotland's west coast, of course, is characterised by fjords and sea lochs just as much as Norway's so Lochlang might fit here just as well. Unfortunately the argument in favour of a Scottish location is a somewhat laborious one so I won't go into any greater detail here now. The Irish scholar Don Harrocoran maintains that the specific meaning of Norway for Lochlang was adopted only in the 11th century and I'll use that quote for the contemporary that is 9th century analyst Leithlin slash Lochlang meant no more than the Viking settlements in the British Isles and more particularly those in Scotland and the Isle of Man, end quote. In fact there could be a major problem with the equalisation of Leithlin and Lochlang. I am not a linguist so I cannot speak with any kind of authority on this point but Leithlin and Lochlang are not necessarily etymologically related and therefore any conclusions based on this assumption are open to criticism. Nevertheless both approaches were neither proven nor disproven and the question remained unanswered. Then there were not one but two new ideas. On the island of Karmöe in Rugaland the Viking Age settlement and barrier site at Arvausnes is reported to have been the royal seat of King Harald Fairhair in about 870 and other kings afterwards. It was situated in an ideal position on the narrow Karmasyn Strait to control trade and traffic along the way. Referring to this advantageous position Arne Cruiser in 2017 put forward the notion that the term Leithlin or rather Leithlang means the land along the Leith. Leith is Old Norse and means path, route or waterway and is referred to here to the important sheltered passage between the islands and the mainland of south west Norway. Arvausnes would certainly fit the bill as a Viking kingdom that was powerful enough to launch raiding parties against the too far away island. But while this is an interesting and thoroughly plausible thesis there is no compelling evidence that this kingdom was indeed identical with a realm called Leithlin by the Irish chronicles. Perhaps Leithlin was in Scotland after all. To investigate this idea we need to ask two questions. Is there evidence for the Viking King Kingdom in south west Scotland in the earlier or midnight century in the first place and if so, can this kingdom be identified as the Annals Leithlin? For this point the activities of Olafur of Leithlin, King of Dublin provides some interesting information. Looking at his biography according to the chronicles Olafur and Ivar came to Ireland in 853, assumed the throne of the Viking Kingdom of Dublin and spent the next 12 years consolidating their position. There is no evidence that they ever left Ireland during this time. But in 866 Olafur went overseas and plundered among the pigs in Fort Rieu. Some years later Olafur and Ivar joined forces to lay a siege to the stronghold of the Britons on Dumbarton Rock in modern Strathclyde. During this period and recorded in documentary sources the Dublin Vikings also conquered the Isle of Man. And according to the Scottish chronicle which must be taken with a pinch of salt Olafur undertook at least one further voyage to Scotland when he was killed in battle against the pigs sometime between 872 and 874. In 873 Ivar died too. There we are. Now two of these entries, there is an interesting formula in them. Olafur and Ivar are reported to have led the foreigners of Ireland and Scotland. This is not quite right. The foreigners of Ireland and Scotland against the pigs and Ivar in his obituary is styled King of the Norsemen in Ireland and Britain. We cannot know what exactly the chronicles meant by the terms Ivar and Britannia. But this obviously is a place other than Ireland. Two other analytic entries give us a hint. In 839 the annals of Alster record the death and battle against the Vikings of Ayat Macbuanta, the last known king of the kingdom of Dalriata which was situated in the southern isles of the inner Hebrides of Argyre. After this Dalriata is never mentioned again in the chronicles. And then there are the, I'm sorry, then there is the entry in the annals Bertinialli which record years of Norse raids at the conquest of some islands. The Scotty after having been attacked by the Norsemen for many years were made tributary to them. After seizing all the islands in the vicinity without meeting resistance they settled down on them permanently. There are no groups of islands in the vicinity of Ireland that could be referred to here but the description applies well to the Argyle islands just north of Ireland. It can be surmised, as suggested by Clare Downham, that Vikings were securing a foothold in Scotland as, quote, a strategic precondition to support their increasing ambitions in Ireland, end quote. I don't think it is too fanciful to conclude that small Viking Yardens or kingdoms, or at least one of them, have been established in south-west Scotland, probably as early as the 840s, and that Ulafer and Ivar exercised some form of authority over the settlers. Sadly, this claim cannot directly be corroborated by archaeology, though there is a lot of, there are a great number of Viking sites on lower Scotland's coasts. But it is interesting to note that a number of early sites can be found in the islands of Argyle, especially on Columnsie and Orensea, on Ila and on Arran. These burials, it must be admitted, do not really qualify as indicative of a powerful settlement or even kingdom that was rich and strong enough to conquer the islands and then mount raids on Dublin. But there are, in several of the richly furnished graves, objects of Irish production, for example at Carl and Barach on Orensea. They demonstrate that those buried here had some contact with Ireland and possibly engaged in raids on Irish monasteries, DMA. The Panhandila Brooch is of characteristic form of Irish 9th or 8th or 9th centuries, and the other objects are Irish reliquary mounts retrofitted with pins to be used as brooches. So having answered the first question with yes, we turn to question two, was this kingdom the Leithlin mentioned in the Irish texts? I already noted that Scotland held a special appeal for Olaf, as according to Anunzi, never raid anywhere else. But there might be a hint in the scars information we have regarding Olaf's death. The Scottish chronicle mentioned before reports that Olaf was killed by the pigs in Scotland. And there is a notion in the fragmentary annals saying that Olaf was called home to Leithlin, spelled Lachlanir, by his father, the king, to help fight down an insurrection. Both events in Norway and in Scotland may well have taken place consecutively, but what if both entries basically describe the same event, that Olaf was killed by the pigs while fighting for a realm called Leithlin in Scotland. Now this assumption Olaf's special interest in Scotland would be explained. He was campaigning for his father's policies in his homeland against the hostile neighbours, the pigs and the Britons in order to protect his native Leithlin and to enlarge his domains and wealth. Art Claude, the power base of the Strathclyde Britons, would have been next door, so to speak, and its destruction of great importance. Those foreigners of Scotland and the Norsemen of Britain mentioned would have been the residents and subjects of Leithlin over whom Olaf exercised authority and whom he led and battled both in Scotland and in Ireland. And if Anna Kruse's idea is correct that Leithlin was the land on the Leith, controlling this protected waterway and its traffic, then this might apply just as well to the coast of Scotland as it does to Norway. Here there is also a channel which runs between the island and the mainland, from the Isle of Skye or even the Isle of Lewis all the way down to the Irish Sea. The island provides a sheltered route with hardly a spot exposed to the western winds, especially when using the portage across the Isthmus of Kentile. And a Viking realm located in the islands of Argyll would be in an excellent position to monitor and control traffic to and from the Irish Sea in both the protected route and the open sea. As a quick example, this is the view from the Viking burial site at Pyrdonan on the Isle of Ike, looking down over the narrow strait towards the Scottish mainland, with a ship burial at Sodor Bay in Atnamurchan, almost within viewing distance on the other side. To decide whether or not these burials represent a Viking kingdom controlling the waterway between them, more research is going to be needed. So I feel quite confident in claiming that they did indeed exist by the middle of the 9th century, some form of organised Viking presence in a hybridese that could be called, for lack of information, a kingdom. About this extent, the location of its main settlement, its political organisation and its subsequent fate, we know nothing at all. Unless we consider the hypothesis that this was the realm the Irish chroniclers told lately. Then we can assume that it began its existence at an unknown date before 848, when the authorities reported it had been killed in Ireland. Perhaps in the aftermath of the Viking triumph and battle over the Pigs in 839 and on formerly Dalryartan territory after that kingdom collapsed. Possibly its revenues came from raiding an island as well as from neighbouring territories of the Pigs of Britain and from the control it exercised over the waterways between Scandinavia and the Irish Sea. It was the homeland of the Viking warrior Olafur as laid out just a moment before. This is of course a hypothesis and a suggestion. There is no unequivocal proof. I do not claim to have answered the question once and for all, but I think I have mapped out an idea of a possible and plausible contribution to a solution of this challenging and controversial problem. Future research is called upon to provide clarity if that is at all possible to achieve of Olaf's origin and destinations, his wets and with that. Thank you very much.