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St. Columba, known in Gaelic as Colum Cille or "Dove of the Church," was born c. 521 and died in 597. Over the course of his lifetime he became a figure of enormous importance to the Gaelsthe people of Ireland and western Scotland. He worked to convert the Picts of eastern Scotland.

which Hughes described a church that, at its beginning in the fifth century, looked like a primitive version of any other local church. It was governed by bishops who ruled over territorially defined dioceses. Because of the peculiar nature of Irish society, however, this entirely conventional system was gradually supersededthough never completelyby one in which real power rested with abbots who governed over monastic paruchiae, which were not territorially limited. In addition, Hughes drew attention to the strongly dynastic nature of the Irish church, according to which the right to administer a particular church and collect revenues often belonged to the members of a family, whose claim to this right rested on their kinship with the saint who had founded the church. 1 This model was not seriously challenged until 1984, when Richard Sharpe argued that the theory of two competing systems, one, characterized by territorial bishoprics, which was supplanted by another, characterized by scattered monastic paruchiae, had little evidence to support it. Instead, he proposed that the early medieval Irish church was marked by both episcopal and abbatial government and that the relationship between these two systems was marked more by harmony and continuity rather than confrontation. 2 Since Sharpe"s critique, the question of the degree to which the Irish church was governed by abbots who ruled over scattered monasteries, as opposed to geographically limited bishops, remains a matter of debate. In a recent study, Colmán Etchingham argues 1 K. Hughes, The church in early Irish society (Ithaca, 1966), p. 161. 2 Richard Sharpe, 'Some problems concerning the organization of the church in early medieval Ireland', Peritia, 3 (1984), 230-70. that the Irish church was far more akin to the mainstream organizational model found on the Continent than previous researchers have suggested. 3 He writes that, according to the annalistic evidence, "it is clear that the episcopal office continued to define the churches of greatest significance throughout the first millennium and was not consigned to the periphery". 4 He concedes, however, that the church in Ireland was unique in that, from an early date, the administration of individual churches was the prerogative of comarbs, who, though not bishops and often only laymen, inherited rights over their particular church. In his description of the Irish church, Dáibhí Ó Cróinín also emphasizes the strong proprietary principle according to which Irishmen organized their church. This proprietary principle can be seen in the provisions, found in the additamenta to the Book of Armagh, which Fith Fio made for the church he had founded at Drumlease: This is Fith Fio"s declaration and his testament, [made] between the chancel and the altar two years before his death to the familia of Druim Lías and the nobles of Callraige: that there is no family right of inheritance to Druim Lías [for any] except the race of Fith Fio, if there be one of them [available] who is good, devout, and conscientious. Should there not be, let there be an investigation whether one [such]

St. Sunniva, the patron saint of Bergen and one of the most popular saints in medieval Scandinavia, has an obscure and baffling history. The site of Sunniva's death is first mentioned by Adam of Bremen as a holy place in c. 1080 -a testament to the quick development of this pilgrimage after the official conversion of Norway in 995. Her legend is found in Latin in the Breviary of Nidaros and in Norse in Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar and Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta. Hardly anyone doubts that the basic facts of her life, as recorded in these sources, are most improbable, and historians have suggested many other saints' legends as being the primary inspiration behind Sunniva's. Her unusual name, however, has not come under much scrutiny. It is generally assumed that "Sunniva" is a form of the Anglo-Saxon Sunn-gifu, meaning "sun gift". This explanation ignores two facts. The first is that names with "sun" as an element are rare in Germanic languages. The second is that the only female sunn-name listed in the Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum is "Sungeova", recorded for the first and only time by Symeon of Durham in the early twelfth century, more than a century after St. Sunniva supposedly died. 1 There are a number of explanations for this set of circumstances. The name "Sunniva" could be an Anglo-Saxon import whose linguistic ancestors were just not recorded much in England. It could also have been invented by an English churchman for the budding Norwegian cult, and then traveled to England. It is also possible that the name was inspired by that of some other saint, and then reworked by speakers of Germanic languages. As we shall see, none of these explanations is quite satisfactory.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers to "Danes" and to the "Danish tongue", but it is not clear that English writers would have known how to distinguish between Danes and Norwegians, or even that Danes and Norwegians distinguished between themselves. The first record we have of Englishmen differentiating between Scandinavian groups occurs in the continuations of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at 920A. In the Chronicle itself, the first such delineation appears in a poem under the year 942, in which the Danes are contrasted favorably with the Norðmenn. 1 The word Danair does not appear in Irish sources until the 980s, when we suddenly see it used in 986, 987, and 990. 2 This word must have seeped into the Irish language from the Old Norse word dönsk, which actually referred to the language spoken by all Scandinavians. The word

Unlike England, modern Ireland has relatively few place names of Norse origin, a fact that is surprising when one considers the Vikings' enormous impact on Irish history. Of the Norse names that do survive in Ireland, almost all are totally secular in meaning. They refer to the site's natural features and contain neither the name of any Scandinavian god, nor any Old Norse words relating to religion, such as hof, meaning 'temple', or ví or vé, meaning 'hallowed site'. It cannot be said that the Norse simply did not use such names, for hof, ví, vé, and a host of other Old Norse religious terms are easy to find on a map of Scandinavia (Steinsland 2005, 270-72). It is my contention that, though few if any of these names have survived in Ireland, medieval Irish sources occasionally mention places whose names clearly reveal the practice of Norse heathenism in Ireland. These names often consist of Irish words for ordinary things, such as forests, mixed with words or names that were specific to Norse religion, such as the name Þórr.

As many researchers have noticed, women are unusually visible in Anglo-Saxon wills.1 Despite the fact that we have a number of women`s wills, the will of one woman named Wynflaed stands out for its length and detail. Wynflaed's will (1539 in P. H. Sawyer`s Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography) is found on one sheet of parchment that is damaged by holes and a tear. The handwriting dates from the eleventh century, but Dorothy Whitelock argues that, because of the preservation of certain letters and letter combinations, this manuscript must be a copy of one from the tenth century, although it is impossible to be certain of this.2 Though Wynflaed was clearly a very wealthy woman, the length of her will comes from its detail, not because she was wealthier than other women whose wills have survived. The tenth-century testatrix AElfgifu, for instance, disposed of at least fourteen estates, but mentioned only six people by name. One of these was a bishop and another may have been a repetition. By contrast, Wynflaed disposed of only five named estates, but she named sixty individuals (and perhaps more, if certain names are not repetitions), often making reference to unfree individuals and mentioning individuals' occupations, relationships, and sometimes whom they should serve once freed. Her will is also unusual in granting specific, well described possessions to a number of individuals. Wynflaed distributed, for example, " two wooden cups ornamented with dots " , " a long hall-tapestry and a short one and three seat coverings " , a " red tent " , and an " engraved bracelet " .3 On many occasions, she even made suggestions about the use of an item or offered options to the person on whom she bequeathed something. In doing so, she revealed a remarkable awareness of the lives of even the unfree peasants living on her estates. It is unlikely that the Wynflaed who made this will was the same Wynflaed who was involved in a dispute at the shire-moot in the 990's over land in Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. After all, none of the lands mentioned in the document recording this dispute (1454 in Sawyer) are mentioned in Wynflaed's will, nor are the estates mentioned in the will also in the record of the dispute. Furthermore, there is nothing unusual about Wynflaed as a name. Given these facts, we cannot identify our Wynflaed with the Wynflaed involved in the dispute and therefore cannot date her will to the 990's. Given that she bequeathed " her nun's vestments " and bequeathed property to " the church " and " the refectory " , it seems reasonable to assume that she had an association with some religious community, although her ownership of several estates means that she could not have been a cloistered nun. Whitelock notes that, according to a grant preserved in the cartulary of Shaftesbury Abbey, in 942 King Edmund gave two estates to " the holy, religious