Clan MacNicol has a long and proud history extending more than 800 years through the Hebrides and Western Highlands. The clan’s name-father, Nicail or Nicholas, is believed to have lived in the mid-thirteenth century, at a time when Lewis and Skye were still part of the Scandinavian Kingdom of Mann and the Isles under Norwegian influence.

Clan tradition places the MacNicols among the earliest Celtic clans of the northern Hebrides. The family developed within a mixed Norse and Gaelic world, and its early chiefs appear to have held important positions among the leading families of the western islands.

The first recorded MacNicol was John, son of Nicail, who appears in the early fourteenth century in the company of leading Hebridean chiefs, including members of the MacDonald, MacDougall, and MacRuairi families.

In 1316, MacNicol and his spearmen supported Edward Bruce, brother of Robert the Bruce, during the siege of Carrickfergus Castle in Ireland.

In the following generation, much of the MacNicol property on Lewis passed to the MacLeods, but the male line of the clan continued and became established in the Trotternish peninsula of Skye.

During the later Middle Ages, the MacNicols followed the MacDonald Lords of the Isles and sat on their council. Clan tradition also records that King James V was entertained at Scorrybreac when he landed at Portree in 1540.

Another tradition tells that Bonnie Prince Charlie, fleeing after the Jacobite defeat at Culloden, was hidden overnight in a cow shed by the MacNicol Chief.

In the nineteenth century, the clan was badly affected by the Highland Clearances. The chiefly family was forced to leave Scorrybreac and eventually settled in Tasmania, while many other clanspeople emigrated abroad. Prince Edward Island became an especially important destination.

Clan MacNicol has produced poets, preachers, writers, warriors, historians, and heraldists. Its cultural legacy also includes Gaelic song and oral tradition preserved over generations.