• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Long-Lost Monastery And Home Of Earliest Written Scots Gaelic Found After 1,000 Years

November 21, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

Archaeologists believe they have located the site of the long-lost Monastery of Deer in Northeast Scotland. The site is not only significant in its own right but is also important for the history of Scots Gaelic.

It is thought that the earliest examples of this form of Celtic language were produced at this monastery in the 11th and 12th centuries CE. These texts were Gaelic land grants, which were subsequently placed in the Book of Deer, a pocket gospel book that was originally written between 850 and 1000 CE.

Advertisement

For a long time, academics have speculated that these entries – which represent possession of land – were added to the book when it was in the monastery. Now, archaeologists believe they have found the building’s remains around 80 meters (262.5 feet) from the ruins of Deer Abbey, close to the village of Mintlaw in Aberdeenshire.

“As home to the earliest surviving Scots Gaelic, the Book of Deer is a vital manuscript in Scottish history,” Alice Jaspars, PhD researcher from the Archaeology department at the University of Southampton who co-led the archaeological investigations, said in a statement.

“It is now our belief that in our 2022 excavation, we found the lost monastery where these were written.”

The Book of Deer

The Book of Deer in all its ancient splendor.

Image courtesy of Midas Media

Jaspars and colleagues carbon-dated material associated with the post holes they found during their excavations near the abbey, which match the time when the land grants, known as “addenda”, were added to the book. The team also recovered medieval pottery, fragments of glass, a stylus (implement used for writing), and hnefatafl boards (sometimes referred to as Viking chess).

Advertisement

All this evidence, the team argues, points to a monastic complex at this site.

Investigations have been carried out here since 2009, with the help of the Book of Deer Project. Jaspar’s and her colleagues’ work since 2022 has largely been funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and supported by a group of volunteers.

“This would not have been possible without the extensive work of our volunteers, and the financial backing of the National Lottery Heritage Fund”, Japsars added.

The 2022 research coincided with the Book of Deer’s return to the Scottish highlands for the first time in 1,000 years. During this time, it was displayed in Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums while on loan from Cambridge University Library. 

Advertisement

“The material record of monasteries from this period is so poor that finds such as these can really help to inform our overall academic understanding. This also adds to the ongoing discussion regarding where the Book of Deer is cared for in the future,” said Jaspars.

The team plan to publish their results in an academic journal in the near future.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Singapore Exchange launches SPAC rules after easing some proposals
  2. Chinese court rules against #MeToo plaintiff
  3. Burro raises $10.9M for autonomous produce field transport
  4. How Much Heat Can A Human Take? Scientists Crack The Critical Limit

Source Link: Long-Lost Monastery And Home Of Earliest Written Scots Gaelic Found After 1,000 Years

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Entirely New Virus Detected In Bat Urine, And It’s Only The 4th Of Its Kind Ever Isolated
  • The First Ever Full Asteroid History: From Its Doomed Discovery To Collecting Its Meteorites
  • World’s Oldest Pachycephalosaur Fossil Pushes Back These Dinosaurs’ Emergence By 15 Million Years
  • The Hole In The Ozone Layer Is Healing And On Track For Full Recovery In The 21st Century, Thanks To Science
  • First Sweet Potato Genome Reveals They’re Hybrids With A Puzzling Past And 6 Sets Of Chromosomes
  • Why Is The Top Of Canada So Sparsely Populated? Meet The “Canadian Shield”
  • Humans Are In The Middle Of “A Great Evolutionary Transition”, New Paper Claims
  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • 130-Year-Old Butter Additive Discovered In Danish Basement Contains Bacteria From The 1890s
  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Why Cats Adapted This Defense Mechanism From Snakes
  • Mother Orca Seen Carrying Dead Calf Once Again On Washington Coast
  • A Busy Spider Season Is Brewing: Why This Fall Could See A Boom Of Arachnid Activity
  • What Alternatives Are There To The Big Bang Model?
  • Magnetic Flip Seen Around First Photographed Black Hole Pushes “Models To The Limit”
  • Something Out Of Nothing: New Approach Mimics Matter Creation Using Superfluid Helium
  • Surströmming: Why Sweden’s Stinky Fermented Fish Smells So Bad (But People Still Eat It)
  • First-Ever Recording Of Black Hole Recoil Captured During Merger – And You Can Listen To It
  • The Moon Is Moving Away From Earth At A Rate Of About 3.8 Centimeters Per Year. Will It Ever Drift Apart?
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version