Páll Bálkason
Hebridean lord
Páll, son of Bálki, or Paal Baalkeson, was a 13th-century Hebridean lord who was an ally of Olaf the Black, king of Mann and the Isles. He was long remembered in Gaelic tradition and is traditionally the progenitor of certain families with roots in the Hebrides. Páll is recorded as being a "sheriff" of Skye, a post which had earlier been held by another Páll, son of Bálki, who was possibly an ancestor. This earlier sheriff was said to have been a close friend of Godred II, King of Mann and the Isles.
Background
Much of the contemporary knowledge of Páll comes from his appearances in the mediaeval Chronicle of Mann and later MacLeod tradition. Within the Chronicle of Mann he is named as Paul filius Boke, and is titled as a vicecomes of Skye. This title has usually been translated into English as "sheriff", since it is the regular form of "sheriff" in later times in Scotland. According to W.D.H. Sellar, it is more likely that vicecomes refers to a Norse title, such as syslumadh or armadhr (Gaelic: armann). His title appears to show that he was the official representative of the kings of Man on Skye. In later Gaelic tradition, Páll is portrayed as a "hermit"; it has been suggested that this description may actually refer to this Norse title.
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This entry incorporates text from “Páll Bálkason” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.