Ì Chaluim Chille, Ioua
insula, Ì. Eo... all are names for a beautiful island just one mile
off the coast of Fionnphort on the Isle of Mull, in the Hebridean islands of Scotland .
The Isle of Iona is a place I began to read about and discover in an
undergraduate course on Medieval Christianity at Gettysburg . It was somewhere I never thought
I'd get to see or visit, and was struggling at finding resources to read about
back in the States. Upon my arrival in Scotland ,
I realized just how big an influence the island had over not only the
region of Argyll and Bute , but the whole of
the country. A new world of books, articles, and knowledge was accessible to me
now. It was now possible, more so than ever before, to visit Iona and get a
taste for why the Vikings attacked several times in the 9th century, or why St
Columba began his monastery in 563 after leaving Ireland ,
or see how the prehistoric peoples of the Hebrides
lived their lives all the while separated from the mainland. Iona became a huge factor into a piqued interest for the
Western Isles/Hebrides in general, and continued to build off this weird
fascination for monasteries and why these people: monks, friars, nuns, would
choose to live their lives in a community dedicated to solitude, poverty, and
chastity out in the middle of, quite literally, nowhere.
