Bjólan (Beollán, Bejolan) king of Scotland - Father of King Bjolan "O'Beolan"

@Les Ross This is interesting and tank you for the info's. Huge input to the Book of Icelandic Settlers. But there is no mentioning of a son to Helgi by the name of Beolan. Then I really wouldn't mind being a descendant of The House of Tarah - If the info's are correct, then a huge treat for me. Kudos to you for pointing this out. And DNA wise, we here in Iceland are no less Celts than Norwegians.

Here is a link to Helgi himself in Icelandic on Geni (he is duplicated now).
Helgi Bjóla Ketilsson

@Les Ross Here is a link to Laxdaela Saga a manuscript that was written in the 13th century and survived until modern times - The saga of Ketill Flatnefur and his people. https://sagadb.org/laxdaela_saga.en

Les Ross wrote; "Beolain is certainly not a typical Gaelic name..."

"Bjolan" (Beolain), nickname, the animal bear + thighs, (the human leg between the hip and the knee) in swedish, = björnlår. I really do not think that they would have used any Irish or Gaelic word, because they speaked norse at that point. The name Björn goes in that family, the second part is just for fun, he might just have had powerful legs.

Hi Anna, this is from the Scottish historians that the O'Beollans were from the House of Tarah, Ireland. That's who they were.

"The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland said in 1897 that a Scottish King was of the name Beollan. And there is an Irish surname Beollan they say. The Isles of Mann (near Ireland) and the Hebrides (above Applecross, Scotland) are likely referred to in this quote about action from Norway:
"When King Harald heard of this, he sent west Ketil flatnef, the son of (Bjorn) buna, to win back the (islands). Ketil did so, but more for his own hand than in King Harald's interests. His son, Helgi bj6Ia (bjola), went to Iceland from the Hebrides, and took possession of Kjalarness on the West coast. It is very probable that this surname of 'bj61a' (bjola) or 'bj61an' (bjolan) is the Irish .... (Beollan). A Scottish king of that name, belonging to the 9th century, is mentioned in Ldri ii, 11, and the use of Gaelic names as appendages to Norse ones appears in other cases..."
(https://books.google.com/books?id=fBYnAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA250&amp...;...).

Hi Ulf, It was the Scots according to their tradition who gave the nickname to Helgi of Beolan. That means they had a high opinion of Helgi to do so. I can't reconcile the differences in meaning either. The Scots apparently adored this family from Ketill, "The Wise" as one source said they named him.

Hi Anna, The Brits must have had the same question we had. Here is a recent study linking DNA from North East Ireland, the West Isle of Scotland and Iceland...Blockbuster study:

https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/genetics-study-s...

I looked to see where else it says the son of Kitell was Helgi Bjolan:

"Most of Ketill's family eventually emigrated to Iceland. Ketill's wife was Yngvild Ketilsdóttir, daughter of Ketill Wether, a hersir from Ringerike. They had a number of children, including Bjǫrn Ketilsson, who lived at Bjarnarhofn; Helgi "Bjolan" Ketilsson, who lived at Esjuberg on Kjalarnes; Thorunn Ketilsdatter, wife of Helgi the Lean, the first settler in Eyjafjordur bay; and Jorunn Ketilsdatter. Ketill's daughter, Aud the Deep-Minded, married Olaf the White, King of Dublin. Their son, Thorstein the Red, briefly conquered much of northern Scotland during the 870s and 880s before he was killed in battle. Aud and many members of her clan settled in the Laxdael region of Iceland."

That it is highlighted "Bjolan" may mean it was a second name. Doesn't say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketill_Flatnose

Hi again Anna. One of he best Irish sources is the ancient An Banshenchas -- quoted by Wikipedia under Rollo -- mentioning Cadlinar. She was the daughter of the King of South Brega of the treacherous Vikings. Although the Prince Beolan Ciarmac Wikipedia speaks of, and his father King Ciarmac, were dcd in Ireland in 969 after a battle (Viking Pirates and Chrisian Princesses, Hudson). That makes Prince Beolan of South Lagore the grandson of King Bjolan. Interestingly South Lagore is in the same county of Ireland as the Hill of Tarah. The South Lagore Clan was a related clan of scholars and teachers (priests). Iceland thus is from scholars and teachers among others. The local Scots liked them in the Isles.

These Irish and Scot sources help authenticate the Icelandic ones. I see that you have done a lot of work on this. Thank you.

I have been attempting to very carefully follow the links given in this discussion, and to follow the argumentation.

One of the problems I'm having is that much of the information is unsourced -- electricscotland, for instance, makes lots of assertions with no evidence -- some of it is dated or can't be traced -- the links to the discussion in ancestry surnames takes us to a volume that is supposedly from 1813, but that's when it was published; it's actually from the early 17th century, and I can't find the Beolan information in it, even searching under several name variations (though I'm highly impressed with the 17th century work; though as usual it doesn't cite sources in the text, there IS a long list of manuscripts and works consulted, which is unusual for the time and cheers me greatly), and there is other information that clearly comes from someplace that cites something, as it gives page numbers, but we aren't told what it is and I can't find it.

I gave up after a while.

As far as I can tell, what's going on is that there is evidence for the connection of the Norse and the Scots in this line, but that the direct line is not clear.

What is the evidence for Helgi having been the father of Beolan?

It would be more surprising if there were *no* Norse-Scots connection - they intermarried a lot during the 9th-11th centuries. Especially after the Norse grabbed off the Shetlands, the Faeroes, the Orkneys, the Hebrides and Man, and parts of the Highlands.

Hi Maven. Me as well, "truth is reason".
Hi Anne. Proofs in the name. The rest is a number of good reasonable connections. Does verify Cadlinar/Kadlin in Ireland and Scotland. Viking saga says King Bjolan. Wikipedia says Helgi "Bjolan". Maybe I should have traced that down as it looks like an added second name but there is no article yet on Wikipedia for the son Helgi "Bjolan" son of Kitell Flatnose. Someone can trace that down. If "Bjolan" is sourced from the Viking saga then Wikipedia is implying a connection. I like that. I have an old charter from Scotland that has a nobility list going back to here I can show you (MS1467).

All this actually adds proof that the saga was real.

That there is a connection isn’t the issue. The issue is what exactly the connection is; what is your evidence?

When you say MS 1467, you mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_1467

and so you are probably looking at Skene’s transcription and translation.

The pedigrees in the mandate highly problematic, and Skene’s transcription flawed.

That said, I went to see what you would be meaning.

Here is the genealogy for the Mackenzies from that manuscript: https://www.1467manuscript.co.uk/kindred%2011.html

It doesn’t go back any further than Gilleon, and that isn’t Beolan; that’s an entirely different name, and he lived in the 12th century.

It’s also a very real problem that from the Norse side, Helgi is not given a son named Beolan, by nay spellings.

http://www.fullbooks.com/History-Of-The-Mackenzies1.html

"The surname Ross has in early times been invariably rendered in
Gaelic as Gilleanrias, or Gillanders, and the Rosses appear under
this appellation in all the early Acts of Parliament. There is
also an unvarying tradition that on the death of the last Earl of
the O'Beolan line a certain Paul Mac Tire was for some years head
of the Rosses, and this tradition is corroborated by the fact
that there is a charter on record by Earl William of the lands of
Gairloch in 1366 in favour of Paul Mac Tire and his heirs by Mary
Graham, in which the Earl styles Mac Tire his cousin. This grant
was confirmed by King Robert II. in 1372. In the manuscript of
1467 the genealogy of Clann Gille-Anrias, or the descendants of
Gillean-Ard-Rois, begins with a Paul Mac Tire. The clan whose
genealogy is there given is undoubtedly that of the Rosses, and
in the manuscript they are traced upwards from Paul MacTire in a
direct line to Gilleon na h'Airde, the "Beolan" of the Norse Sagas,
who lived in the tenth century, and who will be shown to be also
the remote progenitor of the Mackenzies. The Aird referred to is
said to be the Aird of Ross."

Clan Gillanders/Gillandrias now Clan Ross -- MS1467

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_Gillanders

You have to see the whole genealogy to get back before Beolan/ Gillion to the people in Ireland. That would be on the female line, the "O" in the name O'Beolan. The Beollan side is what we are working on.

"Gilleon na h'Airde, the "Beolan" of the Norse Sagas,
who lived in the tenth century, and who will be shown to be also
the remote progenitor of the Mackenzies" [and Rosses].

Alexander MacKenzie makes the connection above. The 3 Clan genealogy table in this version is broken.

http://www.fullbooks.com/History-Of-The-Mackenzies1.html

https://archive.org/details/historymackenzi00mackgoog/page/n64/mode...

Anyone have questions? One of the problems was Mac Tyr could not remember all his generations I think. The part from William, Earl of Ross is fine -- that would be their royal pedigree. MacKenzie adds one name alludes there might be two right after Farquhard Earl of Ross.. The rest looks good to me. I have gone cross-eyed looking at this chart for over two years.

Ok!

I've looked at all of the things that Les Ross has posted, here, and in private messages to me. Many thanks, Les, for all your work!

Also I went and looked at things on my own.

Here is my precis of the situation:

The issue (as I have said before) is not whether the O'Beolans are connected to Helgi Bjolan. They probably are.

The issue, for Geni, is the problem of whether or not Helgi Bjóla Ketilsson is the father of https://www.geni.com/people/Bjólan-Beollán-Bejolan-king-of-Scotland...

That's it.

And the answer is, alas, probably not.

Here is why:

The ONLY mention of King Beolan is in the Landnámabók (The Book of Settlement, a medieval Icelandic history of the 9th and 10th centuries; the oldest copies we have are from after 1250). Here is a transcription of that work, if you are interested: https://www.snerpa.is/net/snorri/landnama.htm

In the Landnámabók, what we are told is that https://www.geni.com/people/Niðbjörg/6000000008277237018?through=60... is the daughter of King Beolan of Scotland and Kaðlínar the daughter of Rollo (go to the Overview for Niðbjörg to see a transcription of this passage).

That's it. That is the entirety of what we know about King Beolan.

He does not appear in the Scots genealogies or the Irish genealogies. He doesn't appear in the Norse genealogies. He appears in no other histories.

There's no reason to cut him off the Geni tree -- but we can't attach parents because of a host of suppositions and guesses and jumps made by early historians.

And frankly, it's highly problematic that he doesn't appear in either the Norse or the Celtic genealogies, if what one is trying to do is create a direct line in between the two cultures, with Beolan as the link.

He simply isn't there.

So we have him in the Geni tree as the father of Niðbjörg, as there is evidence in a history for that, but there is no more we can do with him -- all the rest is built on guesses.

So, yes, the information from the earlier historians (and most of the current clan histories, by the way, are ultimately based on Skene, which is a problem; current historians discount his work in this area) can be added to the Overviews, and links can be added, so that users can navigate from King Beolan to his supposed father Helgi, but given the current standards on Geni, they can't be directly in the Tree.

More to the point, Kaðlin is said to be the daughter of Ganger-Hrolf, a legendary figure more or less identified with Rollo of Normandy but whose historicity has been questioned.

There's a lot of "who's your daddy" regarding both Hrolf and Rollo. The oldest record we have (for Rollo, not necessarily Hrolf) is Richer's statement that he was "fili[us] Catilli", i.e. Ketilsson, which doesn't tell us much, "Ketil" being a rather common Norse name. Orkneyinga Saga claims that Hrolf (specifically identified with Rollo) was the son of Jarl Ragnvald of Möre...but Laxdaela Saga preserves an alternate tradition that Hrolf (not necessarily Rollo) was the son of one Oxen-Thorir.

There's not much doubt about Rollo's career once he started harrying France, but before then it's Katy-bar-the-door.

This is an interesting book by the scholar Benjamin Hudson who has some Irish old parchment to Rollo whom he says may have a connection to Kitell Bjornson by names:

https://books.google.com/books?id=fH0mL0m95fsC&pg=PA64&lpg=...
6AEwA3oECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=beollan%20son%20of%20ciarmac&f=false

It's page 64 in case the link changes. Wikipedia said the same thing somewhere about a circumstantial connection by the name Kitell.

Associate professosr, and the book is published by the Oxford University Press.

So it's VERY frustrating that even if we had, in this e-book preview, access to the footnotes -- which we don't -- there is a footnote that goes to the information that Rollo's daughter was married to Beolan, which we already knew, but NO footnote to the information that King Beolan is the same person as Beollan macCormac.

Why. Why would a scholar not footnote that.

I sometimes despair.

If he is the same person as Beollan macCormac, he is then not the son of Helgi.

But whatever.

Wander down the page a little and we read about Nithbeorg and Deichtar of the King of South Brega of the treacherous Vikings. Another search shows Soutfh Brega to be in the same county as the Hill of Tarah.

The King of South Lagore (Loch Gabor) is not named but Hudson makes reference to Prince Beollan and his father King Ciarmac who were dcd after a battle in 969 in Ireland. Hudson says Beollan was the Beollan. But an old and a young man dcd in 969 that many years after 886 would be son and grandson of King Beolan of South Lagore, Ireland and Wester Ross (North Argyll - MacKenzie), Scotland.

Moreover a new DNA study shows the following: "The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science on Monday, found strong genetic connections between the Scots and Norse Vikings. Moreover it sheds light on the Gaelic component to the Icelandic gene pool, including direct links to Ireland."

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/we-re-cousins-genetic-map-of...

The only thing I know about DNA is from Maven. Thanks.

You have some good suggestions above, Anne. I have some ideas about how to find some of the original documents including the ones Hudson referred to, which were several. And some more possibilities have surfaced in some searches. A lot more of the story can be told from the people who lived it by them or their writers. I can't do as much now so if you can all help that will get it done faster. Thanks for pointing the way.

I think you are going to find some really good stuff from these old books and magazines pouring online. For example, the name Beolan is in Ireland plenty, but was the name Bjolan there on some wrinkled old paper? And that is just a place to start (see DNA source above). Try a search. Bring it here for help.

After some more digging around in my brain, I make a new lead on that name, or nickname, so this will be clue one, (what I wrote earlier) plus another new clue.

Les Ross wrote; "Beolain is certainly not a typical Gaelic name..."

"Bjolan" (Beolain), nickname, the animal bear + thighs, (the human leg between the hip and the knee) in swedish, = björnlår. I really do not think that they would have used any Irish or Gaelic word, because they speaked norse at that point. The name Björn goes in that family, the second part is just for fun, he might just have had powerful legs.

---------

I got the new clue to the name from the Scandinavian old female name Bolla, that had a male correspondent in baldr = man, lord, prins, or baldr, ballr, = brave, bold'.

It's way over 1500 years old and have been found on runestones, and the basic root meaning is quite simple, it means the shape for something that is round, examples, "bowl" just as well as "ball", and yes ballocks, testicles.

The use of the same root in this word, in similar ways, are found in Gaelic, Irish and other Germanic and anglo-frisian languages.

Les Ross -- The original documents will not be accessible, except in the cases where they have been photographed. They will be held in archives and in record offices, and you would have to actually go to those places (and in the case of the archives, prove that you are a scholar on legitimate business and able to read them; the record offices are more lax) in order to see them.

So you will be looking for photographs of the documents.

Or, transcriptions, which would be even more useful to you, most likely, as one has to get trained to read the medieval manuscripts.

Or, even better, if the language is one you are not used to, translations.

I had a post here and lost it while correcting an error. What I was saying is I can use some of that right now like looking for photocopies. These ideas really work. Others will be able to use them as well who get interested.

So the root word for Bjolan is in Ireland. Thanks Ulf. I wonder how long?