Clan Gunn: History, Castles, Territory & Highland Origins

Clan Gunn is one of the oldest clans in the far north of Scotland, with roots that reach back not to the Highlands but to the Viking world. Their territory in Caithness and Sutherland sits at Scotland's north-eastern tip, a landscape of open moorland, sea cliffs, and wide skies. Their history is defined by one of the most dramatic feuds in Scottish clan warfare, and by a refusal to disappear even when more powerful neighbours tried to wipe them out.

We tell it a little differently here. As well as the history, you'll find landscape photography from across Gunn territory woven through the story, because these places are as much a part of the clan's legacy as the people who lived in them. By the end, we hope your imagination has a few more images to draw on when you think about where your ancestors came from.

Where did Clan Gunn come from?

Most Scottish clans trace their roots to Celtic or Norman ancestors. Clan Gunn does not. The Gunns are Norse, descended from Viking settlers who came to the north of Scotland through Orkney. The name itself is a shortened form of longer Norse names like Gunnarr or Gunnbjorn, and the Gaelic word guinneach, meaning fierce or keen, suggests how their neighbours regarded them from an early date.

The clan's founding story centres on Gunni, who came to Caithness at the end of the 12th century. His wife, Ragnhild, had inherited estates there from her brother Harald, Jarl of Orkney. Ragnhild herself was descended from St Ragnvald, the founder of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall. Gunni's grandfather, Sweyn, had been killed on a raid in Dublin in 1171. It is a thoroughly Scandinavian origin story: inheritance through the female line, Orkney connections, and a grandfather who died raiding an Irish city.

The clan also claims descent from Olaf the Black, the Norse King of Man and the Isles, who died around 1237. Whether or not the genealogy is exact, the Norse character of the Gunns is not in doubt. Caithness itself was more Scandinavian than Gaelic for much of the medieval period, and the flat moorland and dramatic coastline of the region have more in common with Orkney and Norway than with the mountainous Highlands to the south.

The Gunn homeland lay in the Kildonan district, around the upper reaches of the River Helmsdale, where the mountain glens come down to a fertile strath. It was a good place to settle. The lochs were full of trout, red deer and grouse were plentiful on the moors, and grains of gold could be found in the sand and gravel of the streams. But it was also a contested place. To the south were the Earls of Sutherland, to the east the Earls of Caithness, and to the west lay Strathnaver, the territory of the Mackays. The Gunns, squeezed between three more powerful neighbours, had feuds and friendships with all of them.

Who was the Crowner of Caithness?

The first Gunn chief to appear clearly in the historical record was George Gunn, who held the office of crowner (coroner) of Caithness in the 15th century. The crowner was not just a local functionary. In this period it was a high judicial office, and George Gunn used it to establish himself as the most powerful man in the far north of Scotland, at a time when there was no Earl of Sutherland to overshadow him.

George was known as Am Braisdeach Mor, "the great brooch-wearer", for the large silver brooch he wore as the insignia of his office. The Gaelic patronymic of the Gunn chiefs, MacSheumais Chataich (son of James of Caithness), probably derives from George's son James, who survived the disaster that was about to engulf the clan. George held court at Gunn's Castle at Clyth, on the Caithness coast, with a state said to rival any chief in the Highlands.

What was the Gunn-Keith feud?

The feud between the Gunns and the Keiths was one of the longest and bloodiest in the history of the Scottish clans. It started, as many feuds did, with a competition for land and political control, but the story that has survived centres on something more personal.

The Keiths had gained a foothold in Caithness when a member of the family married the heiress of the Cheynes of Ackergill, acquiring Ackergill Tower on the north-east coast. From there, they challenged the Gunns for both the political control of the region and the land itself. The Gunns were not pleased to see the followers of such a powerful family appear in their neighbourhood.

Like many feuds that were really about wealth and power, the Gunn-Keith conflict acquired a personal story to justify the bloodshed. According to tradition, Dugald Keith coveted Helen, the daughter of the Gunn of Braemore, and when he learned she was to be married to another man, he took her by force. Helen chose death over captivity, and the story of her defiance became part of the fabric of Caithness legend. A Green Lady is said to haunt Ackergill to this day.

The Gunns raided Keith territory in retaliation, but the military engagements went against them. They were defeated at the Battle of Tannach Moor in 1438 and again at Dirlot in 1464, where the Gunn chief and four of his sons were killed. Both sides were exhausted by the fighting, and around 1478 they agreed to settle their differences at the Chapel of St Tayre. Each side was to bring twelve horsemen.

The Keiths arrived with two men on each horse.

The Gunns, outnumbered two to one, fought with what one account describes as "added fury and desperation." Both sides fought until they could fight no more. When it was over, the Crowner and seven of his men lay dead, and the great silver brooch was stolen. The Keiths were barely able to carry their own wounded from the field. Of the Gunns, five of the chief's sons survived, all wounded.

The chief's surviving sons, all five of them wounded, regrouped after the battle. The youngest, known as Little Henry, refused to let the defeat stand. He and two of his brothers tracked the Keith party to where they were sheltering with Sutherland allies. In a night ambush, Henry killed the Keith chief with a single arrow shot, and several more Keiths died in the confusion that followed. The Gunns escaped under cover of darkness. It was a small revenge for what had happened at St Tayre, but it kept the clan's name alive. James, another of the chief's sons, later killed Keith of Ackergill and his son at Drummoy, settling the account more fully.

Dirlot Castle

Where Gunn's Castle and Halberry cling to the coast, Dirlot Castle sits inland, on the open moorland near Watten. It is a different kind of Gunn stronghold entirely. The castle was originally built by the Cheynes and passed to the Gunns in the 15th century. It later changed hands to the Sutherlands and then the Mackays, but its place in Gunn history is fixed by the feud: in 1464, the Gunn chief and four of his sons were killed here in battle with the Keiths.

The landscape around Dirlot is unlike anything on the coast. It is wide, treeless, and almost lunar in character, dark peat moors stretching to the horizon under enormous skies, cut through by the gorge of the Thurso River. There is a stillness to the place that makes the violence of its history feel distant and strange. Today, only fragments of the castle remain, but the isolation of the site captures something essential about inland Caithness. This is some of the emptiest country in Britain, and it has a raw, otherworldly beauty that photographs unlike anywhere else in Scotland.

How did Clan Gunn survive?

The fighting with the Keiths left the Gunns severely weakened, and their troubles were far from over. Around 1562, the Gunn chief Alastair, who had married a daughter of the Earl of Sutherland, was marching through Aberdeen with his followers when he met the Earl of Moray, half-brother to Mary Queen of Scots, coming the other way. Both men expected the other to yield the road. Neither would. Moray, affronted, had Gunn entrapped near Nairn and taken to Inverness, where he was executed.

By 1585, the Earls of Caithness and Sutherland had entered a pact to destroy Clan Gunn entirely. They planned to attack from both sides simultaneously, "so to compass them that no place of retreat might be left unto them." The Gunns took up position on the slopes of Ben Grian. The Sinclairs, fighting for the Earl of Caithness, saw the Gunns were fewer in number and rushed forward impulsively without waiting for the Sutherlands to join them. The Gunns waited until their enemies were breathless from the climb, poured arrows into them at close range, then charged downhill and killed the Sinclair commander and over a hundred of his men. The Sutherlands pursued the Gunns west as far as Lochbroom, where they were finally defeated, their captain wounded and thirty-two of the clan killed.

The Gunns strengthened their position through marriage alliances with the Mackays. The chief of Killearnan married Mary, sister of Lord Reay, the Mackay chief, and the next chief married Lord Reay's daughter. But the clan's later seat at Killearnan was destroyed, apparently by an accidental gunpowder explosion, and the lands were eventually lost through debt.

More Gunn Castles

The Gunns held a cluster of fortified sites beyond the three featured above. Kinbrace, in Sutherland, was an ancient site with a saga connection. Around 1140, Lady Frakark was burned to death there by Sweyn Asleifson, as told in the Orkneyinga Saga. It was later a Gunn property. Latheron Castle, near Dunbeath, was held by the Gunns before passing to the Sinclairs in the 17th century. The old parish church at Latheron now houses the Clan Gunn Heritage Centre and Museum.

One branch of the family found fame far from Caithness. The Gunns of Braemore, descended from Robert, a younger son of Am Braisdeach Mor, were known as the Robson Gunns. Sir William Gunn of Braemore took service in the army of the Protestant King of Sweden, rose to command a battalion, and later fought for Charles I, who knighted him in 1639. He returned to the Continent, entered the service of the Holy Roman Empire, married a German baroness, and was created a baron of the Empire in 1649. He ended his days as an imperial general, based near the city of Ulm on the Danube.

The Gunns did not support the Jacobite cause. In the rising of 1745 they fought on the government side. The eighth chief served as a regular Highland officer and was killed in action in India. The chiefship passed to a cousin, but the line of the MacSheumais Chataich eventually died out in the 19th century when the tenth chief died without an heir.

Your Gunn Connection

You've just read about Viking settlers, a crowner who held court like a king, and a clan that fought its way through ambush after ambush and refused to disappear. So where do you fit in? The Gunn name has been in Caithness for over eight centuries, and it spread by routes that are specific to this clan. Some Gunns descend from the chiefly line of the MacSheumais Chataich, which branched through the chief's sons into families like the Hendersons (from Hendry), the Jamesons (from James, the Crowner's son), the Williamsons, the Johnsons, and the Robsons of Braemore. If your surname is any of those, your connection to the clan runs through a named individual.

Others carry the Gunn name because their families lived in Gunn territory, in Kildonan, along the Caithness coast, or in the inland straths around Watten and Latheron, and the name was the thread that bound the community together. The clan system in the far north worked the same way it did across the Highlands. The chief answered for his people, and his people answered for him. The Gunns who defended Ben Grian against the Sinclairs were not all blood relatives of the chief. They were his clan, and they stood together because the name meant something.

The Clearances scattered Gunns across the world, from Kildonan to Canada, New Zealand and Australia. But the name survived, and in 2015 it gained a recognised chief again for the first time in two centuries. The castles and coastline you've been reading about, Clyth, Halberry, Dirlot, those belonged to the clan as a whole. That's what the name meant. Those places are part of your inheritance.

What is the Gunn clan motto and crest?

The Gunn motto is Aut pax aut bellum ("Either peace or war"). For a clan whose name literally translates as "war", and whose history was shaped by relentless feuding, the motto feels less like a choice and more like a statement of character. The crest shows an armoured hand grasping a basket-hilted sword, with the arm dressed in Gunn tartan.

Clan Crest Armoured hand with sword

Gunn Tartan Green, dark blue, and black with a red overcheck

Does Clan Gunn exist today?

The Clearances of the early 19th century hit Gunn country hard. The parish of Kildonan, which measures some 250 square miles and had been home to hundreds of Gunn families for centuries, was cleared for sheep farming. The population was removed to the neighbouring parish of Loth, and many emigrated to Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Some of the displaced Gunns had already scattered earlier. A group who settled in Ross-shire in the 16th century were known as the Gall-aobh, or Gallie, meaning "strangers," because they were far from their home territory.

Today, the Clan Gunn Society and the Clan Gunn Society of North America keep the clan's heritage alive. A "Bond and Covenant of Friendship" was signed in 1978 between the Chief of Clan Keith and the Gunn commander at the site of St Tayre, on the 500th anniversary of the battle there. After centuries of bloodshed, the two clans made peace.

If you've been reading this as someone with Gunn ancestors, we hope it's filled in a few pieces of your story. We also hope the photography has given your imagination something to work with, because exploring your roots is better when you can picture the places. The Gunns came from the Viking world, held their ground against enemies on every side, and outlasted every attempt to destroy them. That is not a small thing. That's your lineage.