By 850 the Viking threat forced Kenneth mac Alpin to move St Columba’s relics from Iona to Dunkeld. Later, as a new identity and a national mythology were created for the Scots, it was said that Kenneth also had the Stone of Destiny brought from Iona to Scone.
The stone was used as the king’s throne during coronations on the Moot Hill, and later in the abbey, at Scone.
By the 14th century chroniclers wrote of elaborate coronation ceremonies at Scone:
So the king [Alexander III] sat down upon the royal throne - that is, the stone - while the earls and other nobles, on bended knee, strewed their garments under his feet, before the stone.
Now, this stone is reverently kept in that same monastery, for the consecration of the kings of Alba; and no king was ever wont to reign in Scotland, unless he had first, on receiving the name of king, sat upon this stone at Scone, which, by the kings of old, had been appointed the capital of Alba.
John of Fordun, Chronica Gentis Scottorum
In 1296 King Edward I of England raided Scone Abbey and took the stone to Westminster. Two years later he attacked the Abbey. Robert the Bruce was made king by Isobel of Fife, Countess of Buchan, at Scone on 25 March 1306.
The Abbey was destroyed during the reformation. In 2007 archaeologists found the site of Scone Abbey. They traced the outline of the Abbey using geophysical remote sensing technology. In 2008 an archaeological dig at the Abbey revealed burials with three complete human skeletons.
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