Bio

Prince Malcolm Canmore (Caennmor), King Malcolm III was the son of King Duncan I. Canmore, alternately spelled Caennmor, meaning literally large or great head, also called the Chief, or Big Chief by the common folk was a respected War-Captain and Chieftain before he turned twenty. At a young age and already a respected Anglo-Scot chieftain, he was living in exile in Northumbria and later Cumbria after the death of his father King Duncan I at the hands of the usurper Macbeth. Canmore was fostered by his uncle Siward Jarl of Northumbria, a major influence on him during his upbringing.

Prince Malcolm invaded Alba for the first time in 1054, with the armies of his uncle and with the allegiance of numerous Western Isle viking chieftains. He fought in all the major engagements of the invasion of 1054 including the decisive victory over Macbeth at the Battle of Dunsinane Hill. Named Prince of Cumbria thereafter by his uncle Siward, eventually retreating to Cumbria upon Macbeth making good on his escape and fleeing to the safety of Elgin Castle, in late August of 1054.

Prince Malcolm Canmore’s Scottish and Norse army invaded Scotland a second time in 1057. Following his invasion Prince Malcolm defeats the royalist armies of King Macbeth in three separate battles in as many days, at Dundurn, Forteviot, and Scone. In the same year, Macbeth is intercepted and his army annihilated at the Battle of the Peelring of Lumphanan, where Macbeth is killed by three spears, each hurled by one of Malcolm’s housecarls. Malcolm killed Macbeth’s stepson King Lulach in 1058, while they parlayed before the Battle of Essie, where his rebel army, 10,000 strong, slaughtered the remnants of the royalist and Moravian armies leading to his ascendancy as King in 1058.

King Malcolm Canmore makes war with England three separate times trying to expand south during his reign. He pays homage in 1075 to William I, King of England, giving his son Prince Duncan to him as a royal hostage. Despite this Malcolm makes war throughout his reign with the Kingdom of Northumbria, sacking the island of Lindisfarne in 1061, and pillaging Northumbria in great raids from 1069-1071, culminating in the Battle of Tweedsmuir in August of 1071. He was the victor at the Battle of Lannraig in 1073 over Jarl Einar of the Orkney and Shetland Islands, after the Jarl had invaded Strathclyde.

King Malcolm spent most of the 1080’s and early 1090’s trying to secure a lasting peace between Alba and Moray, allowing Óengus the Mormaer of Moray to crown himself King of Moray in the year 1080. Malcolm also attempted in vain to secure a long-lasting treaty of friendship with the Norsemen of the Western Isles who had long raided Moray, Fife, & Strathclyde in observance of the long standing treaty which allowed for the use of Iona as the Tomb of the Kings of Alba since before the reign of King Alpin the Elder in exchange for Norse summer raiding rights in the isles and in any lands north of the Cromarty Firth.

Malcolm was killed in 1093 at the Battle of Alnwick outside Sir Robert de Mowbray’s keep in Northumbria, along with his eldest son Prince Malcolm. King Malcolm Canmore was slain by the steward of the Norman Earl of Northumbria, de Mowbray, as he charged the Northumbrian vanguard despite his advanced age. The King did not know that his son Prince Malcolm, commanding the vanguard of his army had been already killed by Ivar Thorgeir, The Hound of Ulster, in the ensuing melee. He was succeeded a month later by his brother Donalbane, crowned King Donald III. As of the harvest of 1094, his two living sons, Duncan and Edgar the Valiant, currently fight for the throne of Alba with their dethroned uncle.

Prelude I-King Malcolm III, Battle of Alnwick, Northumbria 1093