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BELOW Three fragments of gold and silver from the Iona Hoard a cache of Viking Age character deposited c.986 and excavated in 1950.

Iona in the Viking Age: laying a ‘zombie narrative’ to rest

The traditional story of Iona’s early medieval monastery ends in tragedy and bloodshed, with the religious community wiped out by vicious Viking raiders. Increasingly, though, the archaeological and historical evidence does not support this persistent narrative, as Adrián Maldonado, Ewan Campbell, Thomas Owen Clancy, and Katherine Forsyth report.

BELOW Lying off the west coast of Scotland, the tiny island of Iona with its 6th century monastery was a beacon of Christian scholarship and creativity during the Medieval period.

Exploring Scotland’s most sacred place

The Scottish island of Iona was one of the most influential Christian centres in Early Medieval Europe. But how much of its first monastery, built in the 6th century, has survived to the present day? As 2013, the 1,450th anniversary of its foundation, approached, it was time to find out, as Peter Yeoman explains.