Robert Louis Stevenson once observed that it is the mark of the Scot of all classes that he remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebares, good or bad, and there burns alive in him a sense of identitiy with the dead even to the 20th generation.

Three hundred years earlier, the royal tutor and philospher George Buchanan asserted that the purpose of writing Scottish history was "to retore us to our own ancestors and our own ancestors to us".

A recent DNA investigation demonstrated that a significent percentage of the population of the Western Isles today is of Norwegian stock. This is remarkable because not only have the MacLeods who still live and inhabit the Isles in large numbers traditionally been thought of as Viking in origin, but it was a MacLeod who was actually among the three people who revealed the existence of DNA to the world in1944.

Little could he have known his revelation would be one of the most important events in the history of not only the world , but, as it turned out, the MacLeods as well.

Thanks to the wonders of DNA, it can now be said with considerable confidence that the earliest MacLeods were largely incomers from Scandinavia. This is backed up by the fact that the name MacLeod, or Leod, derives from the Norse "Ljotr", which means "Ugly". There is no evidence, however , that ugliness is in the MacLeod DNA.

For the Clans part tradition tells that the original Leod son of Olav the Black, King of Man and the Isles, who lived in the 134th Century held lands on the islands of Lewis, Harris and Skye.

From these beginings the present day family of MacLeod has spread far and wide around the world and it remains quite remarkable that the present Clan Chief of the Clan MacLeod remains at Dunvegan Castle on the Isle of Skye after some 850 years. Surviving the extremes of feast and famine, the intermittent periods of warring with neighbouring clans, and the immense changes of social, political and economic life through which the Western Highlands and Islands have passed.

Whilst Clan members are these days spread throughout the world a Clan's cultural significance is based upon family and its instictive attitude is to be more in sympathy with a family than with institutions. In this regard The Associated  Clan MacLeod Societies around the world are a gathering and coming together of family and friends in Kinship.

To find out more about The Associated Clan MacLeod Societites world wide go to their website.

http://www.clanmacleod.org