Amlaíb mac Ilduilb known in English as simply Amlaíb (died 977) was King of Scots during the 970s. He was the son of King Indulf

Indulf of Scotland

Ildulb mac Causantín, anglicised as Indulf, nicknamed An Ionsaighthigh, "the Aggressor" was king of Scots from 954. He was the son of Constantine II ; his mother may have been a daughter of Earl Eadulf I of Bernicia, who was an exile in Scotland.John of Fordun and others supposed that Indulf had...

 (Idulb mac Causantín) and brother of King Cuilén

Cuilén of Scotland

Cuilén mac Ildulb , sometimes anglicised as Culen or Colin, and nicknamed An Fionn, "the White" was king of Scotland from 967 to 971...

 (Cuilén mac Iduilb). His name is of Old Norse or Norse-Gael origin, in this case the Old Irish

Old Irish language

Old Irish is the name given to the oldest form of the Goidelic languages for which extensive written texts are extant. It was used from the 6th to the 10th centuries, by which time it had developed into Middle Irish....

 equivalent of Olaf

Olaf

Olaf is a Germanic name of Proto-Germanic origin, meaning "ancestor's heirloom". It was borrowed into Old Irish and spelled Amlaíb. It may refer to:-Kings:Norse:*Olaf Haraldsson Geirstadalf, petty king...

.

He is known from the notice of his death in the Annals of Tigernach

Annals of Tigernach

The Annals of Tigernach is a chronicle probably originating in Clonmacnoise, Ireland. The language is a mixture of Latin and Old and Middle Irish....

, which reports that he was killed by Kenneth II of Scotland

Kenneth II of Scotland

Cináed mac Maíl Coluim was King of Scots...

 (Cináed mac Maíl Coluim). His name is not included in any extant king lists, nor is he named as a king in 973 when Kenneth II met with King Edgar the Peaceable

Edgar of England

Edgar the Peaceful, or Edgar I , also called the Peaceable, was a king of England . Edgar was the younger son of Edmund I of England.-Accession:...

 at Chester

Chester

Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...

, so that the length of his reign is unknown.

Alex Woolf

Alex Woolf

Alex Woolf is a medieval historian based at the University of St Andrews. He specialises in the history of the British Isles and Scandinavia in the Early Middle Ages, especially in relation to the peoples of Wales and Scotland. He is author of volume two in the New Edinburgh History of Scotland,...

 asserts that the Norse origin of the name Amlaíb "...strongly suggests that his maternal kind may have been from a Scandinavian background and they are likely to have been a branch of the Uí Ímair

Uí Ímair

The Uí Ímair , or Dynasty of Ivar, were an enormous royal and imperial Norse dynasty who ruled Northern England, the Irish Sea region and Kingdom of Dublin, and the western coast of Scotland, including the Hebrides, from the mid 9th century, losing control of the first in the mid 10th, but the rest...

... ...He may well be the grandson of Amlaíb Cúaran, or his cousin Amlaíb son of Gothfrith".

External links

• CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts at University College Cork includes
  • The Annals of Tigernach (translation in progress)
  • The Annals of Ulster (translation)
  • The Chronicon Scotorum (translation)
• The Annals of Clonmacnoise at Cornell University
  Cornell University
  Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...