Holding fast

Dunvegan Castle, Isle of Skye The seat of Clan MacLeod One of Scotland’s most celebrated and anciently occupied castles has undergone a decade of restoration and renovation.

- John Goodall

DUNVEGAN answers the popular ideal of a Scottish castle. It commands a natural harbour inlet at the head of Loch Dunvegan and the rugged outcrop of basalt from which the walls rise is washed on three sides by the tide. The castle has been a possession of the MacLeods of Harris and Dunvegan for nearly eight centuries, a determined connection through many vicissitudes of fortune that echoes their blunt motto: ‘hold fast’. Now, after more than a decade of repair and ambitious restoration undertaken by the present and 30th chief of the clan, the immediate future of this exceptional building is being secured.

As their name suggests, the MacLeods claim descent from a certain Leòd, who established what amounted almost to a petty kingdom in Skye and its surrounds in the early 13th century, then a region tied by the sea into the political and cultural orbit of Norway. He enjoyed the support of Olaf the Black, King of Man and the Isles (possibly his father; Leòd’s parentage remains a matter of debate), as well as several of Olaf’s close allies. These included the Earl of Ross and his foster father, Paul Balkasson, the Seneschal of Skye.

Dunvegan came to Leòd through an advantageous marriage to the heiress of a certain Armuin MacRaild. It can only have been one of several residences in his possession and already had a long history of human occupation. Certainly, there is widespread evidence of Pictish occupation in the immediate locality and the name Dunvegan probably means the fort or ‘dun’ of Began, a reference to a previous and otherwise forgotten Norse occupant of the naturally defensible and strategically placed castle rock.