When the remains of several dozen butchered bodies were dug up in Iona, not far from the village port – after being found by 20th-century Scottish workmen – their chalky and brittle bones were the colour of white coral. They turned out to be 9th-century monks.
They had been slaughtered in AD 806, in a bay that would become known as Martyrs’ Bay. You can stand at the small beach where the abbot of Iona, along with 67 of these monks, had been killed by Viking warriors when they made the mistake of trying to greet them. There had been a previous raid four years earlier at another beach closer to the abbey called the White Strand of the Monks.
