Editing Hebrides (section)

=== Celtic era ===
{{main|Dál Riata}}
In 55&nbsp;BC, the Greek historian [[Diodorus Siculus]] wrote that there was an island called ''[[Hyperborea]]'' (which means "beyond the North Wind"), where a round temple stood from which the moon appeared only a little distance above the earth every 19 years. This may have been a reference to the stone circle at Callanish.<ref>See for example Haycock, David Boyd. [http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/texts/viewtext.php?id=OTHE00024&mode=normalized "Much Greater, Than Commonly Imagined."] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090226101259/http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/texts/viewtext.php?id=OTHE00024&mode=normalized|date=26 February 2009}} [[Newton Project|The Newton Project]]. Retrieved 14 March 2008.</ref>

A traveller called Demetrius of Tarsus related to [[Plutarch]] the tale of an expedition to the west coast of Scotland in or shortly before 83&nbsp;AD. He stated it was a gloomy journey amongst uninhabited islands, but he had visited one which was the retreat of holy men. He mentioned neither the [[druids]] nor the name of the island.<ref>Moffat, Alistair (2005) ''Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History''. London. Thames & Hudson. pp. 239–40.</ref>

The first written records of native life begin in the 6th century AD, when the founding of the kingdom of [[Dál Riata]] took place.<ref>Nieke, Margaret R. "Secular Society from the Iron Age to Dál Riata and the Kingdom of Scots" in Omand (2006) p. 60.</ref> This encompassed roughly what is now [[Argyll and Bute]] and [[Lochaber]] in Scotland and [[County Antrim]] in Ireland.<ref name="OxfordCompanion1">Lynch (2007) pp. 161 162.</ref> The figure of [[Columba]] looms large in any history of Dál Riata, and his founding of a monastery on [[Iona]] ensured that the kingdom would be of great importance in the spread of Christianity in northern Britain. However, Iona was far from unique. [[Lismore, Scotland|Lismore]] in the territory of the Cenél Loairn, was sufficiently important for the death of its abbots to be recorded with some frequency and many smaller sites, such as on [[Eigg]], [[Hinba]], and [[Tiree]], are known from the annals.<ref>Clancy, Thomas Owen "Church institutions: early medieval" in Lynch (2001).</ref>

North of Dál Riata, the Inner and Outer Hebrides were nominally under [[Picts|Pictish]] control, although the historical record is sparse. Hunter (2000) states that in relation to King [[Bridei I of the Picts]] in the sixth century: "As for Shetland, Orkney, Skye and the Western Isles, their inhabitants, most of whom appear to have been Pictish in culture and speech at this time, are likely to have regarded Bridei as a fairly distant presence."<ref name=Hunt44>Hunter (2000) pp. 44, 49.</ref>