Scotland was divided into a series of kingdoms in the Early Middle Ages, i.e. between the end of Roman authority in southern and central Britain from around 400 AD and the rise of the kingdom of Alba in 900 AD. Of these, the four most important to emerge were the Picts, the Gaels of Dál Riata, the Britons of Alt Clut, and the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia. After the arrival of the Vikings in the late 8th century, Scandinavian rulers and colonies were established on the islands and along parts of the coasts. In the 9th century, the House of Alpin combined the lands of the Scots and Picts to form a single kingdom which constituted the basis of the Kingdom of Scotland.
Scotland has an extensive coastline, vast areas of difficult terrain and poor agricultural land. In this period, more land became marginal due to climate change, resulting in relatively light human settlement, particularly in the interior and Highlands. Northern Britain lacked urban centres and settlements were based on farmsteads and around fortified positions such as brochs, with mixed farming primarily based on self-sufficiency. In this period, changes in settlement and colonisation meant that the Pictish and Brythonic languages began to be subsumed by Gaelic, Scots, and, at the end of the period, by Old Norse. Life expectancy was relatively low, leading to a young population, with a ruling aristocracy, freemen, and relatively large numbers of slaves. Kingship was multi-layered, with different kings surrounded by their warbands that made up the most important elements of armed forces, and who engaged in both low-level raiding and occasional longer-range, major campaigns.
Some highly distinctive monumental and ornamental art, culminating in the development of the Insular art style, are common across Britain and Ireland. The most impressive structures included nucleated hill forts and, after the introduction of Christianity, churches and monasteries. The period also saw the beginnings of Scottish literature in British, Old English, Gaelic and Latin languages.
Sources
As the first half of the period is largely prehistoric, archaeology plays an important part in studies of early Medieval Scotland. There are no significant contemporary internal sources for the Picts, although evidence has been gleaned from lists of kings, annals preserved in Wales and Ireland and from sources written down much later, which may draw on oral traditions or earlier sources. From the 7th century there is documentary evidence from Latin sources including the lives of saints, such as Adomnán's Life of St. Columba, and Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Archaeological sources include settlements, art, and surviving everyday objects. Other aids to understanding in this period include onomastics (the study of names) – divided into toponymy (place-names), showing the movement of languages, and the sequence in which different languages were spoken in an area, and anthroponymy (personal names), which can offer clues to relationships and origins.
History
By the time of Bede and Adomnán, in the late seventh century and early eighth century, four major circles of influence had emerged in northern Britain. In the east were the Picts, whose kingdoms eventually stretched from the river Forth to Shetland. In the west were the Gaelic (Goidelic)-speaking people of Dál Riata with their royal fortress at Dunadd in Argyll, with close links with the island of Ireland, from which they brought with them the name "Scots", originally a term for the inhabitants of Ireland. In the south was the British (Brythonic) Kingdom of Alt Clut, descendants of the peoples of the Roman-influenced kingdoms of "The Old North". Finally, there were the English or "Angles", Germanic invaders who had overrun much of southern Britain and held the Kingdom of Bernicia (later the northern part of Northumbria), in the south-east, and who brought with them Old English.
Picts
The confederation of Pictish tribes that developed north of the Firth of Forth may have stretched up as far as Orkney. It probably developed out of the tribes of the Caledonii (whose name continued to be used for at least part of the confederation), perhaps as a response to the pressure exerted by the presence of the Romans to the south. They first appear in Roman records at the end of the 3rd century as the picti (the painted people: possibly a reference to their habit of tattooing their bodies) when Roman forces campaigned against them. The first identifiable king of the Picts, who seems to have exerted a superior and wide-ranging authority, was Bridei mac Maelchon (r. c. 550–84). His power was based in the kingdom of Fidach, and his base was at the fort of Craig Phadrig, near modern Inverness. After his death, leadership seems to have shifted to the Fortriu, whose lands were centred on Moray and Easter Ross and who raided along the eastern coast into modern England. Christian missionaries from Iona appear to have begun the conversion of the Picts to Christianity from 563.
In the 7th century, the Picts acquired Bridei map Beli (671–693) as a king, perhaps imposed by the kingdom of Alt Clut, where his father Beli I and then his brother Eugein I ruled. At this point the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Bernicia was expanding northwards, and the Picts were probably tributary to them until, in 685, Bridei defeated them at the Battle of Dunnichen in Angus, killing their king, Ecgfrith. In the reign of Óengus mac Fergusa (729–761), the Picts appear to have reached the height of their influence, defeating the forces of Dál Riata (and probably making them a tributary), invading Alt Clut and Northumbria, and making the first known peace treaties with the English. Succeeding Pictish kings may have been able to dominate Dál Riata, with Caustantín mac Fergusa (793–820) perhaps placing his son Domnall on the throne from 811.
Dál Riata
The Gaelic overkingdom of Dál Riata was on the western coast of modern Scotland, with some territory on the northern coasts of Ireland. It probably ruled from the fortress of Dunadd, now near Kilmartin in Argyll and Bute. In the late 6th and early 7th centuries, it encompassed roughly what is now Argyll and Bute and Lochaber in Scotland, and also County Antrim in Ireland. Dál Riata is commonly viewed as having been an Irish Gaelic colony in Scotland, although some archaeologists have recently argued against this. The inhabitants of Dál Riata are often referred to as Scots, from Latin scotti, a name used by Latin writers for the inhabitants of Ireland. Its original meaning is uncertain, but it later refers to Gaelic-speakers, whether from Ireland or elsewhere.
In 563, a mission from Ireland under St. Columba founded the monastery of Iona off the west coast of Scotland, and probably began the conversion of the region to Christianity. The kingdom reached its height under Áedán mac Gabráin (r. 574–608), but its expansion was checked at the Battle of Degsastan in 603 by Æthelfrith of Northumbria. Serious defeats in Ireland and Scotland in the time of Domnall Brecc (d. 642) ended Dál Riata's golden age, and the kingdom became a client of Northumbria, then a subject to the Picts. There is disagreement over the fate of the kingdom from the late 8th century onwards. Some scholars argue that Dál Riata underwent a revival under king Áed Find (736–78), before the arrival of the Vikings.
Alt Clut
The kingdom of Alt Clut took its name from the Northern Brittonic for 'rock of the Clyde', today's Dumbarton Rock, which derives from the Gaelic for 'fort of the Britons'.
The kingdom may have had its origins with the Damnonii people of Ptolemy's Geographia. Two kings are known from near-contemporary sources in this early period. The first is Coroticus or Ceretic (Ceredig), known as the recipient of a letter from Saint Patrick, and stated by a 7th-century biographer to have been king of the Height of the Clyde, Dumbarton Rock, placing him in the second half of the 5th century. From Patrick's letter it is clear that Ceretic was a Christian, and it is likely that the ruling class of the area were also Christians, at least in name. His descendant Rhydderch Hael is named in Adomnán's Life of Saint Columba.
After 600, information on the Britons of Alt Clut becomes more common in the sources. In 642, led by Eugein son of Beli, they defeated the men of Dál Riata and killed Domnall Brecc, grandson of Áedán, at Strathcarron. The kingdom suffered a number of attacks from the Picts under Óengus, and later the Picts' Northumbrian allies between 744 and 756. They lost the region of Kyle in the southwest of modern Scotland to Northumbria, and the last attack may have forced the king Dumnagual III to submit to his neighbours. After this, little is heard of Alt Clut or its kings until Alt Clut was besieged and captured by Vikings in 870, at which point the Clyde Britons seem to have reconstituted a kingdom based on a centre at Partick and the Clyde Britons' existing Christian centre at Govan, home of The Govan Stones.
Bernicia
The Brythonic successor states of what is now the modern Anglo-Scottish border region are referred to by Welsh scholars as part of Yr Hen Ogledd ("The Old North"). This included the kingdoms of Bryneich, which may have had its capital at modern Bamburgh in Northumberland, and Gododdin, centred on Din Eidyn (what is now Edinburgh) and stretching across modern Lothian. Some "Angles" may have been employed as mercenaries along Hadrian's Wall during the late Roman period. Others are thought to have migrated north (by sea) from Deira (Old English: Derenrice or Dere) in the early 6th century. At some point the Angles took control of Bryneich, which became the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Bernicia (Old English: Beornice). The first Anglo-Saxon king in the historical record is Ida, who is said to have obtained the throne around 547. Around 600, the Gododdin raised a force of about 300 men to assault the Anglo-Saxon stronghold of Catraeth, perhaps Catterick, North Yorkshire. The battle, which ended disastrously for the Britons, was memorialised in the poem Y Gododdin.
Ida's grandson, Æthelfrith, united Deira with his own kingdom, killing its king Æthelric to form Northumbria around 604. Ætherlric's son returned to rule both kingdoms after Æthelfrith had been defeated and killed by the East Anglians in 616, presumably bringing with him the Christianity to which he had converted while in exile. After his defeat and death at the hands of the Welsh and Mercians at the Battle of Hatfield Chase on 12 October 633, Northumbria again was divided into two kingdoms under pagan kings. Oswald (r. 634–42), (another son of Æthelfrith) defeated the Welsh and appears to have been recognised by both Bernicians and Deirans as king of a united Northumbria. He had converted to Christianity while in exile in Dál Riata and looked to Iona for missionaries, rather than to Canterbury. The island monastery of Lindisfarne was founded in 635 by the Irish monk Saint Aidan, who had been sent from Iona at the request of King Oswald. It became the seat of the Bishop of Lindisfarne, which stretched across Northumbria. In 638 Edinburgh was attacked by the English and at this point, or soon after, the Gododdin territories in Lothian and around Stirling came under the rule of Bernicia. After Oswald's death fighting the Mercians, the two kingdoms were divided again, with Deira possibly having sub-kings under Bernician authority, but from this point the English kings were Christian and after the Synod of Whitby in 664, the Northumbrian kings accepted the primacy of Canterbury and Rome. In the late 7th century, the Northumbrians extended their influence north of the Forth, until they were defeated by the Picts at the Battle of Nechtansmere in 685.
Vikings and the Kingdom of Alba
The balance between rival kingdoms was transformed in 793 when ferocious Viking raids began on monasteries like Iona and Lindisfarne, creating fear and confusion across the kingdoms of North Britain. Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles eventually fell to the Norsemen. The king of Fortriu, Eógan mac Óengusa, and the king of Dál Riata, Áed mac Boanta, were among the dead after a major defeat by the Vikings in 839. A mixture of Viking and Gaelic Irish settlement in south-west Scotland produced the Gall-Gaidel, the Norse Irish, from which the region gets the modern name Galloway. Sometime in the 9th century, the beleaguered kingdom of Dál Riata lost the Hebrides to the Vikings, when Ketil Flatnose is said to have founded the Kingdom of the Isles. These threats may have speeded a long-term process of gaelicisation of the Pictish kingdoms, which adopted Gaelic language and customs. There was also a merger of the Gaelic and Pictish crowns, although historians debate whether it was a Pictish takeover of Dál Riata, or the other way around. This culminated in the rise of Cínaed mac Ailpín (Kenneth MacAlpin) in the 840s, which brought to power the House of Alpin, who became the leaders of a combined Gaelic-Pictish kingdom. In 867 the Vikings seized Northumbria, forming the Kingdom of York; three years later they stormed the Briton fortress of Dumbarton and subsequently conquered much of England except for a reduced Kingdom of Wessex, leaving the new combined Pictish and Gaelic kingdom almost encircled.
The immediate descendants of Cináed were styled either as King of the Picts or King of Fortriu. They were ousted in 878 when Áed mac Cináeda was killed by Giric mac Dúngail, but returned on Giric's death in 889. When Cínaed's eventual successor Domnall mac Causantín died at Dunnottar in 900, he was the first man to be recorded as rí Alban (i.e. King of Alba). Such an apparent innovation in the Gaelic chronicles is occasionally taken to spell the birth of Scotland, but there is nothing extant from or about his reign that might confirm this. Known in Gaelic as "Alba", in Latin as "Scotia", and in English as "Scotland", his kingdom was the nucleus from which the Scottish kingdom would expand as the Viking influence waned, just as in the south the Kingdom of Wessex expanded to become the Kingdom of England.
Geography
Physical geography
Modern Scotland is half the size of England and Wales in area, but with its many inlets, islands and inland lochs, it has roughly the same amount of coastline at 4,000 miles. Only a fifth of Scotland is less than 60 metres above sea level. Its east Atlantic position means that it experiences heavy rainfall, especially in the west. This encouraged the spread of blanket peat bog, the acidity of which, combined with high levels of wind and salt spray, made most of the islands treeless. The existence of hills, mountains, quicksands and marshes made internal communication and conquest extremely difficult and may have contributed to the fragmented nature of political power. The Early Middle Ages were a period of climate deterioration, with a drop in temperature and an increase in rainfall, resulting in more land becoming unproductive.
Settlement
Roman influence beyond Hadrian's Wall does not appear to have had a major impact on settlement patterns, with Iron Age hill forts and promontory forts continuing to be occupied through the early Medieval period. These often had defences of dry stone or timber laced walls, sometimes with a palisade. The large number of these forts has been taken to suggest peripatetic monarchies and aristocracies, moving around their domains to control and administer them. In the Northern and Western Isles the sites of Iron Age Brochs and wheel houses continued to be occupied, but were gradually replaced with less imposing cellular houses. There are a handful of major timber halls in the south, comparable to those excavated in Anglo-Saxon England and dated to the 7th century. In the areas of Scandinavian settlement in the islands and along the coast a lack of timber meant that native materials had to be adopted for house building, often combining layers of stone with turf.
Place-name evidence, particularly the use of the prefix "pit", meaning land or a field, suggests that the heaviest areas of Pictish settlement were in modern Fife, Perthshire, Angus, Aberdeen and around the Moray Firth, although later Gaelic migration may have erased some Pictish names from the record. Early Gaelic settlement appears to have been in the regions of the western mainland of Scotland between Cowal and Ardnamurchan, and the adjacent islands, later extending up the West coast in the 8th century. There is a place name and archaeological evidence of Anglian settlement in south-east Scotland reaching into West Lothian, and to a lesser extent into south-western Scotland. Later Norse settlement was probably most extensive in Orkney and Shetland, with lighter settlement in the western islands, particularly the Hebrides and on the mainland in Caithness, stretching along fertile river valleys through Sutherland and into Ross. There was also extensive Viking settlement in Bernicia, the Northern part of Northumbria, which stretched into the modern Borders and Lowlands.
Language
This period saw dramatic changes in the geography of language. Modern linguists divide the Celtic languages into two major groups, the P-Celtic, from which Welsh, Breton and Cornish derive and the Q-Celtic, from which comes Irish, Manx and Gaelic. The Pictish language remains enigmatic since the Picts had no written script of their own and all that survives are place names and some isolated inscriptions in Irish ogham script. Most modern linguists accept that, although the nature and unity of the Pictish language is unclear, it belonged to the former group. Historical sources, as well as place-name evidence, indicate how the Pictish language in the north and Cumbric languages in the south were overlaid and replaced by Gaelic, English and later Norse in this period.
Economy
Lacking the urban centres created under the Romans in the rest of Britain, the economy of Scotland in the Early Middle Ages was overwhelmingly agricultural. Without significant transport links and wider markets, most farms had to produce a self-sufficient diet of meat, dairy products and cereals, supplemented by hunter-gathering. Limited archaeological evidence indicates that throughout Northern Britain farming was based around a single homestead or a small cluster of three or four homes, each probably containing a nuclear family, with relationships likely to be common among neighbouring houses and settlements, reflecting the partition of land through inheritance. Farming became based around a system that distinguished between the infield around the settlement, where crops were grown every year and the outfield, further away and where crops were grown and then left fallow in different years, in a system that would continue until the 18th century. The evidence of bones indicates that cattle were by far the most important domesticated animal, followed by pigs, sheep and goats, while domesticated fowl were rare. Imported goods found in archaeological sites of the period include ceramics and glass, while many sites indicate iron and precious metal working.
Demography
There are almost no written sources from which to reconstruct the demography of early Medieval Scotland. Estimates have been made of a population of 10,000 inhabitants in Dál Riata and 80–100,000 for Pictland. The 5th and 6th centuries likely saw higher mortality rates due to the appearance of bubonic plague, which may have reduced net population. The known conditions have been taken to suggest it was a high fertility, high mortality society, similar to many developing countries in the modern world, with a relatively young demographic profile, and perhaps early childbearing, and large numbers of children for women. This would have meant that there was a relatively small proportion of available workers to the number of mouths to feed. This would have made it difficult to produce a surplus that would allow demographic growth and more complex societies to develop.
Society
The primary unit of social organisation in Germanic and Celtic Europe was the kin group. The mention of descent through the female line in the ruling families of the Picts in later sources and the recurrence of leaders clearly from outside of Pictish society, has led to the conclusion that their system of descent was matrilineal. However, this has been challenged by a number of historians who argue that the clear evidence of awareness of descent through the male line suggests that this is more likely to indicate a bilateral system of descent, where descent was counted through both male and female lines.
Scattered evidence, including the records in Irish annals and the images of warriors like those depicted on the Pictish stone slabs at Aberlemno, Forfarshire and Hilton of Cadboll in Easter Ross, suggest that in Northern Britain, as in Anglo-Saxon England, society was dominated by a military aristocracy, whose status was dependent in a large part on their ability and willingness to fight. Below the level of the aristocracy it is assumed that there were non-noble freemen, working their own small farms or holding lands as free tenants. There are no surviving law codes from Scotland in this period, but codes in Ireland and Wales indicate that freemen had the right to bear arms, represent themselves in law and to receive compensation for murdered kinsmen.
Indications are that society in North Britain contained relatively large numbers of slaves, often taken in war and raids, or bought, as St. Patrick indicated the Picts were doing from the Britons in Southern Scotland. Slavery probably reached relatively far down in society, with most rural households containing some slaves. Because they were taken relatively young and were usually racially indistinguishable from their masters, many slaves would have been more integrated into their societies of capture than their societies of origin, in terms of both culture and language. Living and working beside their owners they in practice may have become members of a household without the inconvenience of the partible inheritance rights that divided estates. Where there is better evidence from England and elsewhere, it was common for such slaves who survived to middle age to gain their freedom, with such freedmen often remaining clients of the families of their former masters.
Kingship
In the early Medieval period, British kingship was not inherited in a direct line from previous kings, as would be the case in the late Middle Ages. There were instead a number of candidates for kingship, who usually needed to be a member of a particular dynasty and to claim descent from a particular ancestor. Kingship could be multi-layered and very fluid. The Pictish kings of Fortriu were probably acting as overlords of other Pictish kings for much of this period and occasionally were able to assert an overlordship over non-Pictish kings, but occasionally themselves had to acknowledge the overlordship of external rulers, both Anglian and British. Such relationships may have placed obligations to pay tribute or to supply armed forces. After a victory, sub-kings may have received rewards in return for this service. Interaction with and intermarriage into the ruling families of subject kingdoms may have opened the way to the absorption of such sub-kingdoms and, although there might be later overturnings of these mergers, likely, a complex process by which kingship was gradually monopolised by a handful of the most powerful dynasties was taking place.
The primary role of the king was to act as a war leader, reflected in the very small number of minority or female reigning monarchs in the period. Kings organised the defence of their people's lands, property and persons and negotiated with other kings to secure these things. If they failed to do so, the settlements might be raided, destroyed or annexed, and the populations killed or taken into slavery. Kings also engaged in the low-level warfare of raiding and the more ambitious full-scale warfare that led to conflicts of large armies and alliances, and which could be undertaken over relatively large distances, such as the expedition to Orkney by Dál Riata in 581 or the Northumbrian attack on Ireland in 684.
Kingship had its ritual aspects. The kings of Dál Riata were inaugurated by putting their foot in a footprint carved in stone, signifying that they would follow in the footsteps of their predecessors. The kingship of the unified kingdom of Alba had Scone and its sacred stone at the heart of its coronation ceremony, which historians presume was inherited from Pictish practices. Iona, the early centre of Scottish Christianity, became the burial site of the early kings of Scotland until the eleventh century, when the House of Canmore adopted Dunfermline, closer to Scone.
Warfare
At the most basic level, a king's power rested on the existence of his bodyguard or war-band. In the British language, this was called the teulu, as in teulu Dewr (the "War-band of Deira"). In Latin the word is either comitatus or tutores, or even familia; tutores is the most common word in this period, and derives from the Latin verb tueor, meaning "defend, preserve from danger". The war-band functioned as an extension of the ruler's legal person, and was the core of the larger armies that were mobilised from time to time for campaigns of significant size. In peacetime, the war-band's activity was centred on the "Great Hall". Here, in both Germanic and Celtic cultures, the feasting, drinking and other forms of male bonding that kept up the war-band's integrity would take place. In the epic poem Beowulf, the war-band was said to sleep in the Great Hall after the lord had retired to his adjacent bed chamber. It is not likely that any war-band in the period exceeded 120–150 men, as no hall structure having a capacity larger than this has been found by archaeologists in northern Britain. Pictish stones, like that at Aberlemno in Angus, show mounted and foot warriors with swords, spears, bows, helmets and shields. The large number of hill forts in Scotland may have made open battle less important than in Anglo-Saxon England and the relatively high proportion of kings who are recorded as dying in fires or drowning suggest that sieges were a more important part of warfare in Northern Britain.
Sea power may also have been important. Irish annals record an attack by the Picts on Orkney in 682, which must have necessitated a large naval force: they also lost 150 ships in a disaster in 729. Ships were also vital in the amphibious warfare in the Highlands and Islands and from the seventh century the Senchus fer n-Alban indicates that Dál Riata had a ship-muster system that obliged groups of households to produce a total of 177 ships and 2,478 men. The same source mentions the first recorded naval battle around the British Isles in 719 and eight naval expeditions between 568 and 733. The only vessels to survive from this period are dugout canoes, but images from the period suggest that there may have been skin boats (similar to the Irish currach) and larger oared vessels. The Viking raids and invasions of the British Isles were based on superior sea power. The key to their success was a graceful, long, narrow, light, wooden boat with a shallow draft hull designed for speed. This shallow draft allowed navigation in waters only 3 feet (1 m) deep and permitted beach landings, while its light weight enabled it to be carried over portages. Longships were also double-ended, the symmetrical bow and stern allowing the ship to reverse direction quickly without having to turn around.
Religion
Pre-Christian religion
Very little is known about religion in Scotland before the arrival of Christianity. The lack of native written sources among the Picts means that it can only be judged from parallels elsewhere, occasional surviving archaeological evidence and hostile accounts of later Christian writers. It is generally presumed to have resembled Celtic polytheism. The names of more than two hundred Celtic deities have been noted, some of which, like Lugh, The Dagda and The Morrigan, come from later Irish mythology, whilst others, like Teutates, Taranis and Cernunnos, come from evidence from Gaul. The Celtic pagans constructed temples and shrines to venerate these gods, something they did through votive offerings and performing sacrifices, possibly including human sacrifice. According to Greek and Roman accounts, in Gaul, Britain and Ireland, there was a priestly caste of "magico-religious specialists" known as the druids, although very little is definitely known about them. Irish legends about the origin of the Picts and stories from the life of St. Ninian, associate the Picts with druids. The Picts are also associated with "demon" worship and one story concerning St Columba has him exorcising a demon from a well in Pictland, suggesting that the worship of well spirits was a feature of Pictish paganism. Roman mentions of the worship of the Goddess Minerva at wells and a Pictish stone associated with a well near Dunvegan Castle on Skye have been taken to support this case.
Early Christianisation
The roots of Christianity in Scotland can probably be found among the soldiers, notably Saint Kessog, son of the king of Cashel, and ordinary Roman citizens in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall. The archaeology of the Roman period indicates that the northern parts of the Roman province of Britannia were among the most Christianized in the island.Chi-Rho inscriptions and Christian grave slabs have been found on the wall from the 4th century, and from the same period the Mithraic shrines (known as Mithraea) which existed along Hadrian's Wall were attacked and destroyed, presumably by Christians. After the departure of the Romans it is generally presumed that Christianity would have survived among the Brythonic enclaves such as Strathclyde, but retreated as the pagan Anglo-Saxons advanced, with their gods Tiw, Woden, Thor and Frig, all of whom gave their names to days of the week, and Eostre, whose name was appropriated for the spring festival of Easter. While British Christians continued to practice inhumation without grave goods, the pagan Anglo-Saxons are visible in the archaeological record from their practice of cremation and burial in urns, accompanied by extensive grave goods, perhaps designed to accompany the dead to the afterlife. However, despite growing evidence of Anglian settlement in southern Scotland, only one such grave has been found, at Dalmeny in East Lothian.
The growth of Christianity in Scotland has been traditionally seen as dependent on Irish-Scots "Celtic" missionaries and to a lesser extent those from Rome and England. Celtic Christianity had its origins in the conversion of Ireland from late Roman Britain associated with St. Patrick in the 5th century. In the 6th century, monks ordained by St Patrick as missionaries such as St Kessog, son of the Irish King of Cashel, about 490 CE started his abbey halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Shortly after St. Columba, also Irish, formed Iona abbey; both martyrs. Subsequent monk missionaries from Ireland operated on the British mainland, spreading a unifying culture. St Ninian is the figure associated with a monastery founded at Whithorn in what is now Galloway, although it is generally accepted that Ninian may be a later construct. St Columba left Ireland and founded the monastery at Iona off the West Coast of Scotland in 563 and from there carried out missions to the Scots of Dál Riata and the Picts. It seems likely that both the Scots and the Picts had already begun to convert to Christianity before this period. Saint Patrick referred in a letter to "apostate Picts", suggesting that they had previously been Christian, while the poem Y Gododdin, set in the early 6th century does not remark on the Picts as pagans. Conversion of the Pictish élite seems likely to have run over a considerable period, beginning in the 5th century and not complete until the 7th.
Among the key indicators of Christianisation are long-cist cemeteries that generally indicate Christian burials due to their east-west orientation, although this correlation has been challenged by recent research. These burials are found between the end of the Roman era and the 7th century, after which point they become rarer. They are concentrated strongly in eastern Scotland south of the Tay, in Angus, the Mearns, Lothian and the Borders. It is generally accepted among scholars that the place-name element eccles-, from the Brythonic word for church, represents evidence of the British church of the Roman and immediate post-Roman period, most of which are located in the south-west, south and east. About a dozen inscribed stones of the 5th and 6th centuries, beginning with the so-called Latinus stone of Whithorn, dating to c. 450, indicate Christianity through their dedications and are spread across southern Scotland.
Celtic Christianity
Celtic Christianity differed in some respects from that based on Rome, most importantly on the issues of how Easter was calculated and the method of tonsure, but there were also differences in the rites of ordination, baptism and in the liturgy. Celtic Christianity was heavily based on monasticism. Monasteries differed significantly from those on the continent, and were often an isolated collection of wooden huts surrounded by a wall. Because much of the Celtic world lacked the urban centres of the Roman world, bishoprics were often attached to abbeys. In the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries, Irish monks established monastic institutions in parts of modern-day Scotland. Monks from Iona, under St. Aidan, then founded the See of Lindisfarne in Anglian Northumbria. The part of southern Scotland dominated by the Anglians in this period had a Bishopric established at Abercorn in West Lothian, and it is presumed that it would have adopted the leadership of Rome after the Synod of Whitby in 663, until the Battle of Dunnichen in 685, when the Bishop and his followers were ejected. By this time the Roman system of calculating Easter and other reforms had already been adopted in much of Ireland. The Picts accepted the reforms of Rome under Nechtan mac Der-Ilei around 710. The followers of Celtic traditions retreated to Iona and then to Innishbofin and the Western isles remained an outpost of Celtic practice for some time. Celtic Christianity continued to influence religion in England and across Europe into the late Middle Ages as part of the Hiberno-Scottish mission, spreading Christianity, monasteries, art and theological ideas across the continent.
Viking paganism
The Viking occupation of the islands and coastal regions of modern Scotland brought a return to pagan worship in those areas. Norse paganism had some of the same gods as had been worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons before their conversion and is thought to have been focused around a series of cults, involving gods, ancestors and spirits, with calendric and life cycle rituals often involving forms of sacrifice. The paganism of the ruling Norse elite can be seen in goods found in 10th century graves in Shetland, Orkney and Caithness. There is no contemporary account of the conversion of the Vikings in Scotland to Christianity. Historians have traditionally pointed to a process of conversion to Christianity among Viking colonies in Britain dated to the late 10th century, for which later accounts indicate that Viking earls accepted Christianity. However, there is evidence that conversion had begun before this point. There are a large number of isles called Pabbay or Papa in the Western and Northern Isles, which may indicate a "hermit's" or "priest's isle" from this period. Changes in patterns of grave goods and Viking place names using -kirk also suggests that Christianity had begun to spread before the official conversion. Later documentary evidence suggests that a Bishop was operating in Orkney in the mid-9th century and more recently uncovered archaeological evidence, including explicitly Christian forms such as stone crosses, suggest that Christian practice may have survived the Viking take over in parts of Orkney and Shetland and that the process of conversion may have begun before Christianity was officially accepted by Viking leaders. The continuity of Scottish Christianity may also explain the relatively rapid way in which Norse settlers were later assimilated into the religion.
Art
From the 5th to the mid-9th centuries the art of the Picts is primarily known through stone sculpture, and a smaller number of pieces of metalwork, often of very high quality. After the conversion of the Picts and the cultural assimilation of Pictish culture into that of the Scots and Angles, elements of Pictish art became incorporated into the style known as Insular art, which was common over Britain and Ireland and became highly influential in continental Europe and contributed to the development of Romanesque styles.
Pictish stones
About 250 Pictish stones survive and have been assigned by scholars to three classes. Class I stones are those thought to date to the period up to the 7th century and are the most numerous group. The stones are largely unshaped and include incised symbols of animals including fish and the Pictish beast, everyday objects such as mirrors, combs and tuning forks and abstract symbols defined by names including V-rod, double disc and Z-rod. They are found from the Firth of Forth to Shetland. The greatest concentrations are in Sutherland, around modern Inverness and Aberdeen. Good examples include the Dunrobin (Sutherland) and Aberlemno stones (Angus). Class II stones are carefully shaped slabs dating after the arrival of Christianity in the 8th and 9th centuries, with a cross on one face and a wide range of symbols on the reverse. In smaller numbers than Class I stones, they predominate in southern Pictland, in Perth, Angus and Fife. Good examples include Glamis 2, which contains a finely executed Celtic cross on the main face with two opposing male figures, a centaur, cauldron, deer head and a triple disc symbol and Cossans, Angus, which shows a high-prowed Pictish boat with oarsmen and a figure facing forward in the prow. Class III stones are thought to overlap chronologically with Class II stones. Most are elaborately shaped and incised cross-slabs, some with figurative scenes, but lacking idiomatic Pictish symbols. They are widely distributed but predominate in the southern Pictish areas.
Pictish metalwork
Metalwork has been found throughout Pictland; the Picts appear to have had a considerable amount of silver available, probably from raiding further south, or the payment of subsidies to keep them from doing so. The very large hoard of late Roman hacksilver found at Traprain Law may have originated in either way. The largest hoard of early Pictish metalwork was found in 1819 at Norrie's Law in Fife, but unfortunately, much was dispersed and melted down. Over ten heavy silver chains, some over 0.5 metres (2 ft) long, have been found from this period; the double-linked Whitecleuch Chain is one of only two that have a penannular ring, with symbol decoration including enamel, which shows how these were probably used as "choker" necklaces. The St Ninian's Isle Treasure contains perhaps the best collection of Pictish forms.
Irish-Scots art
The kingdom of Dál Riata has been seen as a crossroads between the artistic styles of the Picts and those of Ireland, with which the Scots settlers in what is now Argyll kept close contact. This can be seen in representations found in excavations of the fortress of Dunadd, which combine Pictish and Irish elements. This included extensive evidence for the production of high-status jewellery and moulds from the 7th century that indicate the production of pieces similar to the Hunterston brooch, found in Ayrshire, but with elements that suggest Irish origins. These and other finds, including a trumpet spiral decorated hanging bowl disc and a stamped animal decoration (or pressblech), perhaps from a bucket or drinking horn, indicate how Dál Riata was one of the locations where the Insular style was developed. In the 8th and 9th centuries the Pictish elite adopted true penannular brooches with lobed terminals from Ireland. Some older Irish pseudo-penannular brooches were adapted to the Pictish style, for example, the Breadalbane Brooch (British Museum). The 8th century Monymusk Reliquary has elements of Pictish and Irish style.
Insular art
Insular art, or Hiberno-Saxon art, is the name given to the common style produced in Scotland, Britain and Anglo-Saxon England from the 7th century, with the combining of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon forms. Surviving examples of Insular art are found in metalwork, carving, but mainly in illuminated manuscripts. Surfaces are highly decorated with intricate patterning, with no attempt to give an impression of depth, volume or recession. The best examples include the Book of Kells, Lindisfarne Gospels, Book of Durrow. Carpet pages are a characteristic feature of Insular manuscripts, although historiated initials (an Insular invention), canon tables and figurative miniatures, especially Evangelist portraits, are also common. The finest era of the style was brought to an end by the disruption to monastic centres and aristocratic life of the Viking raids in the late 8th century. The influence of Insular art affected all subsequent European Medieval art, especially in the decorative elements of Romanesque and Gothic manuscripts.
Architecture
For the period after the departure of the Romans, there is evidence of a series of new forts, often smaller "nucleated" constructions compared with those from the Iron Age, sometimes utilising major geographical features, as at Edinburgh and Dunbarton. All the northern British peoples utilised different forms of fort and the determining factors in construction were local terrain, building materials, and politico-military needs. The first identifiable king of the Picts, Bridei mac Maelchon had his base at the fort of Craig Phadrig near modern Inverness. The Gaelic overkingdom of Dál Riata was probably ruled from the fortress of Dunadd now near Kilmartin in Argyll and Bute. The introduction of Christianity into Scotland from Ireland from the sixth century, led to the construction of the first churches. These may originally have been wooden, like that excavated at Whithorn, but most of those for which evidence survives from this era are basic masonry-built churches, beginning on the west coast and islands and spreading south and east.
Early chapels tended to have square-ended converging walls, similar to Irish chapels of this period. Medieval parish church architecture in Scotland was typically much less elaborate than in England, with many churches remaining simple oblongs, without transepts and aisles, and often without towers. In the Highlands, they were often even simpler, many built of rubble masonry and sometimes indistinguishable from the outside from houses or farm buildings. Monasteries also differed significantly from those on the continent, and were often an isolated collection of wooden huts surrounded by a wall. At Eileach an Naoimh in the Inner Hebrides there are huts, a chapel, refectory, guest house, barns and other buildings. Most of these were made of timber and wattle construction and probably thatched with heather and turves. They were later rebuilt in stone, with underground cells and circular "beehive" huts like those used in Ireland. Similar sites have been excavated on Bute, Orkney and Shetland. From the eighth century more sophisticated buildings emerged.
Literature
Much of the earliest Welsh literature was composed in or near the country now called Scotland, although only written down in Wales much later. These include The Gododdin, considered the earliest surviving verse from Scotland, which is attributed to the bard Aneirin, said to have been resident in Gododdin in the 6th century, and the Battle of Gwen Ystrad attributed to Taliesin, traditionally thought to be a bard at the court of Rheged in roughly the same period. There are also religious works in Gaelic including the Elegy for St Columba by Dallan Forgaill (c. 597) and "In Praise of St Columba" by Beccan mac Luigdech of Rum (c. 677). In Latin they include a "Prayer for Protection" (attributed to St Mugint) (c. mid-6th century) and Altus Prosator ("The High Creator", attributed to St Columba) (c. 597). In Old English there is The Dream of the Rood, from which lines are found on the Ruthwell Cross, making it the only surviving fragment of Northumbrian Old English from early Medieval Scotland.
Notes
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- I. Brown, T. Owen Clancy, M. Pittock, S. Manning, eds, The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature: From Columba to the Union, until 1707 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), ISBN 0-7486-1615-2, p. 94.
- E. M. Treharne, Old and Middle English c.890-c.1400: an Anthology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004), ISBN 1-4051-1313-8, p. 108.
References
- Alcock, Leslie (2003), Kings and warriors, craftsmen and priests in Northern Britain AD 550–850, Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, ISBN 978-0-903903-24-0
- Armit, Ian (2005), Celtic Scotland (2nd ed.), London: Batsford, ISBN 978-0-7134-8949-1
- Breeze, David (2006), Roman Scotland: Frontier Country (2nd ed.), London: Batsford, ISBN 978-0-7134-8995-8
- Crawford, Barbara (1987), Scandinavian Scotland, Leicester: Leicester University Press, ISBN 978-0-7185-1282-8
- Foster, Sally M. (2004), Picts, Gaels and Scots: Early Historic Scotland (2nd ed.), London: Batsford, ISBN 978-0-7134-8874-6
- Harding, D. W. (2004), The Iron Age in Northern Britain. Celts and Romans, Natives and Invaders, Abingdon: Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-30150-3
- Higham, N. J. (1993), The Kingdom of Northumbria AD 350–1100, Stroud: Sutton, ISBN 978-0-86299-730-4
- McNeill, Peter G. B.; MacQueen, Hector L., eds. (2000), Atlas of Scottish History to 1707 (reprinted with corrections ed.), Edinburgh: The Scottish Medievalists and Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh, ISBN 978-0-9503904-1-3
- Nicolaisen, W. F. H. (2001), Scottish Place-names: Their Study and Significance (2nd ed.), Edinburgh: John Donald, ISBN 978-0-85976-556-5
- Ritchie, Graham (1981), Scotland: Archaeology and early history, London: Thames and Hudson, ISBN 978-0-500-02100-2
- Smyth, Alfred P. (1989) [1984], Warlords and Holy Men: Scotland AD 80–1000, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, ISBN 978-0-7486-0100-4
- Williams, Ann; Smyth, Alfred; Kirby, D.P. (1991), A Biographical Dictionary of Dark Age Britain, London: Seaby, ISBN 978-1-85264-047-7
- Woolf, Alex (2007), From Pictland to Alba, 789–1070, The New Edinburgh History of Scotland, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, ISBN 978-0-7486-1234-5
- Yorke, Barbara (2006), The Conversion of Britain: Religion, Politics and Society in Britain c.600–800, Harlow: Pearson Longman, ISBN 978-0-582-77292-2
Scotland was divided into a series of kingdoms in the Early Middle Ages i e between the end of Roman authority in southern and central Britain from around 400 AD and the rise of the kingdom of Alba in 900 AD Of these the four most important to emerge were the Picts the Gaels of Dal Riata the Britons of Alt Clut and the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia After the arrival of the Vikings in the late 8th century Scandinavian rulers and colonies were established on the islands and along parts of the coasts In the 9th century the House of Alpin combined the lands of the Scots and Picts to form a single kingdom which constituted the basis of the Kingdom of Scotland Scotland has an extensive coastline vast areas of difficult terrain and poor agricultural land In this period more land became marginal due to climate change resulting in relatively light human settlement particularly in the interior and Highlands Northern Britain lacked urban centres and settlements were based on farmsteads and around fortified positions such as brochs with mixed farming primarily based on self sufficiency In this period changes in settlement and colonisation meant that the Pictish and Brythonic languages began to be subsumed by Gaelic Scots and at the end of the period by Old Norse Life expectancy was relatively low leading to a young population with a ruling aristocracy freemen and relatively large numbers of slaves Kingship was multi layered with different kings surrounded by their warbands that made up the most important elements of armed forces and who engaged in both low level raiding and occasional longer range major campaigns Some highly distinctive monumental and ornamental art culminating in the development of the Insular art style are common across Britain and Ireland The most impressive structures included nucleated hill forts and after the introduction of Christianity churches and monasteries The period also saw the beginnings of Scottish literature in British Old English Gaelic and Latin languages SourcesMajor political centres in early Medieval Scotland As the first half of the period is largely prehistoric archaeology plays an important part in studies of early Medieval Scotland There are no significant contemporary internal sources for the Picts although evidence has been gleaned from lists of kings annals preserved in Wales and Ireland and from sources written down much later which may draw on oral traditions or earlier sources From the 7th century there is documentary evidence from Latin sources including the lives of saints such as Adomnan s Life of St Columba and Bede s Ecclesiastical History of the English People Archaeological sources include settlements art and surviving everyday objects Other aids to understanding in this period include onomastics the study of names divided into toponymy place names showing the movement of languages and the sequence in which different languages were spoken in an area and anthroponymy personal names which can offer clues to relationships and origins HistoryBy the time of Bede and Adomnan in the late seventh century and early eighth century four major circles of influence had emerged in northern Britain In the east were the Picts whose kingdoms eventually stretched from the river Forth to Shetland In the west were the Gaelic Goidelic speaking people of Dal Riata with their royal fortress at Dunadd in Argyll with close links with the island of Ireland from which they brought with them the name Scots originally a term for the inhabitants of Ireland In the south was the British Brythonic Kingdom of Alt Clut descendants of the peoples of the Roman influenced kingdoms of The Old North Finally there were the English or Angles Germanic invaders who had overrun much of southern Britain and held the Kingdom of Bernicia later the northern part of Northumbria in the south east and who brought with them Old English Picts The so called Daniel Stone Pictish cross slab fragment found at Rosemarkie Easter Ross The confederation of Pictish tribes that developed north of the Firth of Forth may have stretched up as far as Orkney It probably developed out of the tribes of the Caledonii whose name continued to be used for at least part of the confederation perhaps as a response to the pressure exerted by the presence of the Romans to the south They first appear in Roman records at the end of the 3rd century as the picti the painted people possibly a reference to their habit of tattooing their bodies when Roman forces campaigned against them The first identifiable king of the Picts who seems to have exerted a superior and wide ranging authority was Bridei mac Maelchon r c 550 84 His power was based in the kingdom of Fidach and his base was at the fort of Craig Phadrig near modern Inverness After his death leadership seems to have shifted to the Fortriu whose lands were centred on Moray and Easter Ross and who raided along the eastern coast into modern England Christian missionaries from Iona appear to have begun the conversion of the Picts to Christianity from 563 In the 7th century the Picts acquired Bridei map Beli 671 693 as a king perhaps imposed by the kingdom of Alt Clut where his father Beli I and then his brother Eugein I ruled At this point the Anglo Saxon kingdom of Bernicia was expanding northwards and the Picts were probably tributary to them until in 685 Bridei defeated them at the Battle of Dunnichen in Angus killing their king Ecgfrith In the reign of oengus mac Fergusa 729 761 the Picts appear to have reached the height of their influence defeating the forces of Dal Riata and probably making them a tributary invading Alt Clut and Northumbria and making the first known peace treaties with the English Succeeding Pictish kings may have been able to dominate Dal Riata with Caustantin mac Fergusa 793 820 perhaps placing his son Domnall on the throne from 811 Dal Riata Dunadd Fort Kilmartin Glen probably the centre of the kingdom of Dal Riata The Gaelic overkingdom of Dal Riata was on the western coast of modern Scotland with some territory on the northern coasts of Ireland It probably ruled from the fortress of Dunadd now near Kilmartin in Argyll and Bute In the late 6th and early 7th centuries it encompassed roughly what is now Argyll and Bute and Lochaber in Scotland and also County Antrim in Ireland Dal Riata is commonly viewed as having been an Irish Gaelic colony in Scotland although some archaeologists have recently argued against this The inhabitants of Dal Riata are often referred to as Scots from Latin scotti a name used by Latin writers for the inhabitants of Ireland Its original meaning is uncertain but it later refers to Gaelic speakers whether from Ireland or elsewhere In 563 a mission from Ireland under St Columba founded the monastery of Iona off the west coast of Scotland and probably began the conversion of the region to Christianity The kingdom reached its height under Aedan mac Gabrain r 574 608 but its expansion was checked at the Battle of Degsastan in 603 by AEthelfrith of Northumbria Serious defeats in Ireland and Scotland in the time of Domnall Brecc d 642 ended Dal Riata s golden age and the kingdom became a client of Northumbria then a subject to the Picts There is disagreement over the fate of the kingdom from the late 8th century onwards Some scholars argue that Dal Riata underwent a revival under king Aed Find 736 78 before the arrival of the Vikings Alt Clut Looking north at Dumbarton Rock fort of the Britons the chief fort of Strathclyde from the 6th century to 870 when it was taken by the Vikings The kingdom of Alt Clut took its name from the Northern Brittonic for rock of the Clyde today s Dumbarton Rock which derives from the Gaelic for fort of the Britons The kingdom may have had its origins with the Damnonii people of Ptolemy s Geographia Two kings are known from near contemporary sources in this early period The first is Coroticus or Ceretic Ceredig known as the recipient of a letter from Saint Patrick and stated by a 7th century biographer to have been king of the Height of the Clyde Dumbarton Rock placing him in the second half of the 5th century From Patrick s letter it is clear that Ceretic was a Christian and it is likely that the ruling class of the area were also Christians at least in name His descendant Rhydderch Hael is named in Adomnan s Life of Saint Columba After 600 information on the Britons of Alt Clut becomes more common in the sources In 642 led by Eugein son of Beli they defeated the men of Dal Riata and killed Domnall Brecc grandson of Aedan at Strathcarron The kingdom suffered a number of attacks from the Picts under oengus and later the Picts Northumbrian allies between 744 and 756 They lost the region of Kyle in the southwest of modern Scotland to Northumbria and the last attack may have forced the king Dumnagual III to submit to his neighbours After this little is heard of Alt Clut or its kings until Alt Clut was besieged and captured by Vikings in 870 at which point the Clyde Britons seem to have reconstituted a kingdom based on a centre at Partick and the Clyde Britons existing Christian centre at Govan home of The Govan Stones Bernicia St Aidan founder of Lindisfarne Priory The Brythonic successor states of what is now the modern Anglo Scottish border region are referred to by Welsh scholars as part of Yr Hen Ogledd The Old North This included the kingdoms of Bryneich which may have had its capital at modern Bamburgh in Northumberland and Gododdin centred on Din Eidyn what is now Edinburgh and stretching across modern Lothian Some Angles may have been employed as mercenaries along Hadrian s Wall during the late Roman period Others are thought to have migrated north by sea from Deira Old English Derenrice or Dere in the early 6th century At some point the Angles took control of Bryneich which became the Anglo Saxon kingdom of Bernicia Old English Beornice The first Anglo Saxon king in the historical record is Ida who is said to have obtained the throne around 547 Around 600 the Gododdin raised a force of about 300 men to assault the Anglo Saxon stronghold of Catraeth perhaps Catterick North Yorkshire The battle which ended disastrously for the Britons was memorialised in the poem Y Gododdin Ida s grandson AEthelfrith united Deira with his own kingdom killing its king AEthelric to form Northumbria around 604 AEtherlric s son returned to rule both kingdoms after AEthelfrith had been defeated and killed by the East Anglians in 616 presumably bringing with him the Christianity to which he had converted while in exile After his defeat and death at the hands of the Welsh and Mercians at the Battle of Hatfield Chase on 12 October 633 Northumbria again was divided into two kingdoms under pagan kings Oswald r 634 42 another son of AEthelfrith defeated the Welsh and appears to have been recognised by both Bernicians and Deirans as king of a united Northumbria He had converted to Christianity while in exile in Dal Riata and looked to Iona for missionaries rather than to Canterbury The island monastery of Lindisfarne was founded in 635 by the Irish monk Saint Aidan who had been sent from Iona at the request of King Oswald It became the seat of the Bishop of Lindisfarne which stretched across Northumbria In 638 Edinburgh was attacked by the English and at this point or soon after the Gododdin territories in Lothian and around Stirling came under the rule of Bernicia After Oswald s death fighting the Mercians the two kingdoms were divided again with Deira possibly having sub kings under Bernician authority but from this point the English kings were Christian and after the Synod of Whitby in 664 the Northumbrian kings accepted the primacy of Canterbury and Rome In the late 7th century the Northumbrians extended their influence north of the Forth until they were defeated by the Picts at the Battle of Nechtansmere in 685 Vikings and the Kingdom of Alba Danish seamen painted mid 12th century The balance between rival kingdoms was transformed in 793 when ferocious Viking raids began on monasteries like Iona and Lindisfarne creating fear and confusion across the kingdoms of North Britain Orkney Shetland and the Western Isles eventually fell to the Norsemen The king of Fortriu Eogan mac oengusa and the king of Dal Riata Aed mac Boanta were among the dead after a major defeat by the Vikings in 839 A mixture of Viking and Gaelic Irish settlement in south west Scotland produced the Gall Gaidel the Norse Irish from which the region gets the modern name Galloway Sometime in the 9th century the beleaguered kingdom of Dal Riata lost the Hebrides to the Vikings when Ketil Flatnose is said to have founded the Kingdom of the Isles These threats may have speeded a long term process of gaelicisation of the Pictish kingdoms which adopted Gaelic language and customs There was also a merger of the Gaelic and Pictish crowns although historians debate whether it was a Pictish takeover of Dal Riata or the other way around This culminated in the rise of Cinaed mac Ailpin Kenneth MacAlpin in the 840s which brought to power the House of Alpin who became the leaders of a combined Gaelic Pictish kingdom In 867 the Vikings seized Northumbria forming the Kingdom of York three years later they stormed the Briton fortress of Dumbarton and subsequently conquered much of England except for a reduced Kingdom of Wessex leaving the new combined Pictish and Gaelic kingdom almost encircled The immediate descendants of Cinaed were styled either as King of the Picts or King of Fortriu They were ousted in 878 when Aed mac Cinaeda was killed by Giric mac Dungail but returned on Giric s death in 889 When Cinaed s eventual successor Domnall mac Causantin died at Dunnottar in 900 he was the first man to be recorded as ri Alban i e King of Alba Such an apparent innovation in the Gaelic chronicles is occasionally taken to spell the birth of Scotland but there is nothing extant from or about his reign that might confirm this Known in Gaelic as Alba in Latin as Scotia and in English as Scotland his kingdom was the nucleus from which the Scottish kingdom would expand as the Viking influence waned just as in the south the Kingdom of Wessex expanded to become the Kingdom of England GeographyPhysical geography Map showing the distribution of Pit place names in Scotland thought to indicate Pictish settlement Modern Scotland is half the size of England and Wales in area but with its many inlets islands and inland lochs it has roughly the same amount of coastline at 4 000 miles Only a fifth of Scotland is less than 60 metres above sea level Its east Atlantic position means that it experiences heavy rainfall especially in the west This encouraged the spread of blanket peat bog the acidity of which combined with high levels of wind and salt spray made most of the islands treeless The existence of hills mountains quicksands and marshes made internal communication and conquest extremely difficult and may have contributed to the fragmented nature of political power The Early Middle Ages were a period of climate deterioration with a drop in temperature and an increase in rainfall resulting in more land becoming unproductive Settlement Roman influence beyond Hadrian s Wall does not appear to have had a major impact on settlement patterns with Iron Age hill forts and promontory forts continuing to be occupied through the early Medieval period These often had defences of dry stone or timber laced walls sometimes with a palisade The large number of these forts has been taken to suggest peripatetic monarchies and aristocracies moving around their domains to control and administer them In the Northern and Western Isles the sites of Iron Age Brochs and wheel houses continued to be occupied but were gradually replaced with less imposing cellular houses There are a handful of major timber halls in the south comparable to those excavated in Anglo Saxon England and dated to the 7th century In the areas of Scandinavian settlement in the islands and along the coast a lack of timber meant that native materials had to be adopted for house building often combining layers of stone with turf Place name evidence particularly the use of the prefix pit meaning land or a field suggests that the heaviest areas of Pictish settlement were in modern Fife Perthshire Angus Aberdeen and around the Moray Firth although later Gaelic migration may have erased some Pictish names from the record Early Gaelic settlement appears to have been in the regions of the western mainland of Scotland between Cowal and Ardnamurchan and the adjacent islands later extending up the West coast in the 8th century There is a place name and archaeological evidence of Anglian settlement in south east Scotland reaching into West Lothian and to a lesser extent into south western Scotland Later Norse settlement was probably most extensive in Orkney and Shetland with lighter settlement in the western islands particularly the Hebrides and on the mainland in Caithness stretching along fertile river valleys through Sutherland and into Ross There was also extensive Viking settlement in Bernicia the Northern part of Northumbria which stretched into the modern Borders and Lowlands Language Possible language zones in southern Scotland 7th 8th centuries This period saw dramatic changes in the geography of language Modern linguists divide the Celtic languages into two major groups the P Celtic from which Welsh Breton and Cornish derive and the Q Celtic from which comes Irish Manx and Gaelic The Pictish language remains enigmatic since the Picts had no written script of their own and all that survives are place names and some isolated inscriptions in Irish ogham script Most modern linguists accept that although the nature and unity of the Pictish language is unclear it belonged to the former group Historical sources as well as place name evidence indicate how the Pictish language in the north and Cumbric languages in the south were overlaid and replaced by Gaelic English and later Norse in this period EconomyMap of available land in early Medieval Scotland Lacking the urban centres created under the Romans in the rest of Britain the economy of Scotland in the Early Middle Ages was overwhelmingly agricultural Without significant transport links and wider markets most farms had to produce a self sufficient diet of meat dairy products and cereals supplemented by hunter gathering Limited archaeological evidence indicates that throughout Northern Britain farming was based around a single homestead or a small cluster of three or four homes each probably containing a nuclear family with relationships likely to be common among neighbouring houses and settlements reflecting the partition of land through inheritance Farming became based around a system that distinguished between the infield around the settlement where crops were grown every year and the outfield further away and where crops were grown and then left fallow in different years in a system that would continue until the 18th century The evidence of bones indicates that cattle were by far the most important domesticated animal followed by pigs sheep and goats while domesticated fowl were rare Imported goods found in archaeological sites of the period include ceramics and glass while many sites indicate iron and precious metal working DemographyThere are almost no written sources from which to reconstruct the demography of early Medieval Scotland Estimates have been made of a population of 10 000 inhabitants in Dal Riata and 80 100 000 for Pictland The 5th and 6th centuries likely saw higher mortality rates due to the appearance of bubonic plague which may have reduced net population The known conditions have been taken to suggest it was a high fertility high mortality society similar to many developing countries in the modern world with a relatively young demographic profile and perhaps early childbearing and large numbers of children for women This would have meant that there was a relatively small proportion of available workers to the number of mouths to feed This would have made it difficult to produce a surplus that would allow demographic growth and more complex societies to develop SocietyDetail of the Class II Hilton of Cadboll Stone showing mounted members of the aristocracy The primary unit of social organisation in Germanic and Celtic Europe was the kin group The mention of descent through the female line in the ruling families of the Picts in later sources and the recurrence of leaders clearly from outside of Pictish society has led to the conclusion that their system of descent was matrilineal However this has been challenged by a number of historians who argue that the clear evidence of awareness of descent through the male line suggests that this is more likely to indicate a bilateral system of descent where descent was counted through both male and female lines Scattered evidence including the records in Irish annals and the images of warriors like those depicted on the Pictish stone slabs at Aberlemno Forfarshire and Hilton of Cadboll in Easter Ross suggest that in Northern Britain as in Anglo Saxon England society was dominated by a military aristocracy whose status was dependent in a large part on their ability and willingness to fight Below the level of the aristocracy it is assumed that there were non noble freemen working their own small farms or holding lands as free tenants There are no surviving law codes from Scotland in this period but codes in Ireland and Wales indicate that freemen had the right to bear arms represent themselves in law and to receive compensation for murdered kinsmen Indications are that society in North Britain contained relatively large numbers of slaves often taken in war and raids or bought as St Patrick indicated the Picts were doing from the Britons in Southern Scotland Slavery probably reached relatively far down in society with most rural households containing some slaves Because they were taken relatively young and were usually racially indistinguishable from their masters many slaves would have been more integrated into their societies of capture than their societies of origin in terms of both culture and language Living and working beside their owners they in practice may have become members of a household without the inconvenience of the partible inheritance rights that divided estates Where there is better evidence from England and elsewhere it was common for such slaves who survived to middle age to gain their freedom with such freedmen often remaining clients of the families of their former masters KingshipFootprint replica used in king making ceremonies at Dunadd In the early Medieval period British kingship was not inherited in a direct line from previous kings as would be the case in the late Middle Ages There were instead a number of candidates for kingship who usually needed to be a member of a particular dynasty and to claim descent from a particular ancestor Kingship could be multi layered and very fluid The Pictish kings of Fortriu were probably acting as overlords of other Pictish kings for much of this period and occasionally were able to assert an overlordship over non Pictish kings but occasionally themselves had to acknowledge the overlordship of external rulers both Anglian and British Such relationships may have placed obligations to pay tribute or to supply armed forces After a victory sub kings may have received rewards in return for this service Interaction with and intermarriage into the ruling families of subject kingdoms may have opened the way to the absorption of such sub kingdoms and although there might be later overturnings of these mergers likely a complex process by which kingship was gradually monopolised by a handful of the most powerful dynasties was taking place The primary role of the king was to act as a war leader reflected in the very small number of minority or female reigning monarchs in the period Kings organised the defence of their people s lands property and persons and negotiated with other kings to secure these things If they failed to do so the settlements might be raided destroyed or annexed and the populations killed or taken into slavery Kings also engaged in the low level warfare of raiding and the more ambitious full scale warfare that led to conflicts of large armies and alliances and which could be undertaken over relatively large distances such as the expedition to Orkney by Dal Riata in 581 or the Northumbrian attack on Ireland in 684 Kingship had its ritual aspects The kings of Dal Riata were inaugurated by putting their foot in a footprint carved in stone signifying that they would follow in the footsteps of their predecessors The kingship of the unified kingdom of Alba had Scone and its sacred stone at the heart of its coronation ceremony which historians presume was inherited from Pictish practices Iona the early centre of Scottish Christianity became the burial site of the early kings of Scotland until the eleventh century when the House of Canmore adopted Dunfermline closer to Scone WarfareThe battle scene from the Aberlemno Pictish stone generally presumed to show the Battle of Dunnichen in 685 At the most basic level a king s power rested on the existence of his bodyguard or war band In the British language this was called the teulu as in teulu Dewr the War band of Deira In Latin the word is either comitatus or tutores or even familia tutores is the most common word in this period and derives from the Latin verb tueor meaning defend preserve from danger The war band functioned as an extension of the ruler s legal person and was the core of the larger armies that were mobilised from time to time for campaigns of significant size In peacetime the war band s activity was centred on the Great Hall Here in both Germanic and Celtic cultures the feasting drinking and other forms of male bonding that kept up the war band s integrity would take place In the epic poem Beowulf the war band was said to sleep in the Great Hall after the lord had retired to his adjacent bed chamber It is not likely that any war band in the period exceeded 120 150 men as no hall structure having a capacity larger than this has been found by archaeologists in northern Britain Pictish stones like that at Aberlemno in Angus show mounted and foot warriors with swords spears bows helmets and shields The large number of hill forts in Scotland may have made open battle less important than in Anglo Saxon England and the relatively high proportion of kings who are recorded as dying in fires or drowning suggest that sieges were a more important part of warfare in Northern Britain Sea power may also have been important Irish annals record an attack by the Picts on Orkney in 682 which must have necessitated a large naval force they also lost 150 ships in a disaster in 729 Ships were also vital in the amphibious warfare in the Highlands and Islands and from the seventh century the Senchus fer n Alban indicates that Dal Riata had a ship muster system that obliged groups of households to produce a total of 177 ships and 2 478 men The same source mentions the first recorded naval battle around the British Isles in 719 and eight naval expeditions between 568 and 733 The only vessels to survive from this period are dugout canoes but images from the period suggest that there may have been skin boats similar to the Irish currach and larger oared vessels The Viking raids and invasions of the British Isles were based on superior sea power The key to their success was a graceful long narrow light wooden boat with a shallow draft hull designed for speed This shallow draft allowed navigation in waters only 3 feet 1 m deep and permitted beach landings while its light weight enabled it to be carried over portages Longships were also double ended the symmetrical bow and stern allowing the ship to reverse direction quickly without having to turn around ReligionSt John s cross which stood outside Iona AbbeyPre Christian religion Very little is known about religion in Scotland before the arrival of Christianity The lack of native written sources among the Picts means that it can only be judged from parallels elsewhere occasional surviving archaeological evidence and hostile accounts of later Christian writers It is generally presumed to have resembled Celtic polytheism The names of more than two hundred Celtic deities have been noted some of which like Lugh The Dagda and The Morrigan come from later Irish mythology whilst others like Teutates Taranis and Cernunnos come from evidence from Gaul The Celtic pagans constructed temples and shrines to venerate these gods something they did through votive offerings and performing sacrifices possibly including human sacrifice According to Greek and Roman accounts in Gaul Britain and Ireland there was a priestly caste of magico religious specialists known as the druids although very little is definitely known about them Irish legends about the origin of the Picts and stories from the life of St Ninian associate the Picts with druids The Picts are also associated with demon worship and one story concerning St Columba has him exorcising a demon from a well in Pictland suggesting that the worship of well spirits was a feature of Pictish paganism Roman mentions of the worship of the Goddess Minerva at wells and a Pictish stone associated with a well near Dunvegan Castle on Skye have been taken to support this case Early Christianisation The Monymusk Reliquary or Brecbennoch as it was called dates from c 750 and purportedly enclosed bones of Columba the most popular saint in Medieval Scotland The roots of Christianity in Scotland can probably be found among the soldiers notably Saint Kessog son of the king of Cashel and ordinary Roman citizens in the vicinity of Hadrian s Wall The archaeology of the Roman period indicates that the northern parts of the Roman province of Britannia were among the most Christianized in the island Chi Rho inscriptions and Christian grave slabs have been found on the wall from the 4th century and from the same period the Mithraic shrines known as Mithraea which existed along Hadrian s Wall were attacked and destroyed presumably by Christians After the departure of the Romans it is generally presumed that Christianity would have survived among the Brythonic enclaves such as Strathclyde but retreated as the pagan Anglo Saxons advanced with their gods Tiw Woden Thor and Frig all of whom gave their names to days of the week and Eostre whose name was appropriated for the spring festival of Easter While British Christians continued to practice inhumation without grave goods the pagan Anglo Saxons are visible in the archaeological record from their practice of cremation and burial in urns accompanied by extensive grave goods perhaps designed to accompany the dead to the afterlife However despite growing evidence of Anglian settlement in southern Scotland only one such grave has been found at Dalmeny in East Lothian The growth of Christianity in Scotland has been traditionally seen as dependent on Irish Scots Celtic missionaries and to a lesser extent those from Rome and England Celtic Christianity had its origins in the conversion of Ireland from late Roman Britain associated with St Patrick in the 5th century In the 6th century monks ordained by St Patrick as missionaries such as St Kessog son of the Irish King of Cashel about 490 CE started his abbey halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh Shortly after St Columba also Irish formed Iona abbey both martyrs Subsequent monk missionaries from Ireland operated on the British mainland spreading a unifying culture St Ninian is the figure associated with a monastery founded at Whithorn in what is now Galloway although it is generally accepted that Ninian may be a later construct St Columba left Ireland and founded the monastery at Iona off the West Coast of Scotland in 563 and from there carried out missions to the Scots of Dal Riata and the Picts It seems likely that both the Scots and the Picts had already begun to convert to Christianity before this period Saint Patrick referred in a letter to apostate Picts suggesting that they had previously been Christian while the poem Y Gododdin set in the early 6th century does not remark on the Picts as pagans Conversion of the Pictish elite seems likely to have run over a considerable period beginning in the 5th century and not complete until the 7th Among the key indicators of Christianisation are long cist cemeteries that generally indicate Christian burials due to their east west orientation although this correlation has been challenged by recent research These burials are found between the end of the Roman era and the 7th century after which point they become rarer They are concentrated strongly in eastern Scotland south of the Tay in Angus the Mearns Lothian and the Borders It is generally accepted among scholars that the place name element eccles from the Brythonic word for church represents evidence of the British church of the Roman and immediate post Roman period most of which are located in the south west south and east About a dozen inscribed stones of the 5th and 6th centuries beginning with the so called Latinus stone of Whithorn dating to c 450 indicate Christianity through their dedications and are spread across southern Scotland Celtic Christianity The Roman tonsure in the shape of a crown differing from the Irish tradition where the hair above the forehead was shaved Celtic Christianity differed in some respects from that based on Rome most importantly on the issues of how Easter was calculated and the method of tonsure but there were also differences in the rites of ordination baptism and in the liturgy Celtic Christianity was heavily based on monasticism Monasteries differed significantly from those on the continent and were often an isolated collection of wooden huts surrounded by a wall Because much of the Celtic world lacked the urban centres of the Roman world bishoprics were often attached to abbeys In the 5th 6th and 7th centuries Irish monks established monastic institutions in parts of modern day Scotland Monks from Iona under St Aidan then founded the See of Lindisfarne in Anglian Northumbria The part of southern Scotland dominated by the Anglians in this period had a Bishopric established at Abercorn in West Lothian and it is presumed that it would have adopted the leadership of Rome after the Synod of Whitby in 663 until the Battle of Dunnichen in 685 when the Bishop and his followers were ejected By this time the Roman system of calculating Easter and other reforms had already been adopted in much of Ireland The Picts accepted the reforms of Rome under Nechtan mac Der Ilei around 710 The followers of Celtic traditions retreated to Iona and then to Innishbofin and the Western isles remained an outpost of Celtic practice for some time Celtic Christianity continued to influence religion in England and across Europe into the late Middle Ages as part of the Hiberno Scottish mission spreading Christianity monasteries art and theological ideas across the continent Viking paganism The Viking occupation of the islands and coastal regions of modern Scotland brought a return to pagan worship in those areas Norse paganism had some of the same gods as had been worshipped by the Anglo Saxons before their conversion and is thought to have been focused around a series of cults involving gods ancestors and spirits with calendric and life cycle rituals often involving forms of sacrifice The paganism of the ruling Norse elite can be seen in goods found in 10th century graves in Shetland Orkney and Caithness There is no contemporary account of the conversion of the Vikings in Scotland to Christianity Historians have traditionally pointed to a process of conversion to Christianity among Viking colonies in Britain dated to the late 10th century for which later accounts indicate that Viking earls accepted Christianity However there is evidence that conversion had begun before this point There are a large number of isles called Pabbay or Papa in the Western and Northern Isles which may indicate a hermit s or priest s isle from this period Changes in patterns of grave goods and Viking place names using kirk also suggests that Christianity had begun to spread before the official conversion Later documentary evidence suggests that a Bishop was operating in Orkney in the mid 9th century and more recently uncovered archaeological evidence including explicitly Christian forms such as stone crosses suggest that Christian practice may have survived the Viking take over in parts of Orkney and Shetland and that the process of conversion may have begun before Christianity was officially accepted by Viking leaders The continuity of Scottish Christianity may also explain the relatively rapid way in which Norse settlers were later assimilated into the religion ArtThe Class II Kirkyard stone c 800 Aberlemno From the 5th to the mid 9th centuries the art of the Picts is primarily known through stone sculpture and a smaller number of pieces of metalwork often of very high quality After the conversion of the Picts and the cultural assimilation of Pictish culture into that of the Scots and Angles elements of Pictish art became incorporated into the style known as Insular art which was common over Britain and Ireland and became highly influential in continental Europe and contributed to the development of Romanesque styles Pictish stones About 250 Pictish stones survive and have been assigned by scholars to three classes Class I stones are those thought to date to the period up to the 7th century and are the most numerous group The stones are largely unshaped and include incised symbols of animals including fish and the Pictish beast everyday objects such as mirrors combs and tuning forks and abstract symbols defined by names including V rod double disc and Z rod They are found from the Firth of Forth to Shetland The greatest concentrations are in Sutherland around modern Inverness and Aberdeen Good examples include the Dunrobin Sutherland and Aberlemno stones Angus Class II stones are carefully shaped slabs dating after the arrival of Christianity in the 8th and 9th centuries with a cross on one face and a wide range of symbols on the reverse In smaller numbers than Class I stones they predominate in southern Pictland in Perth Angus and Fife Good examples include Glamis 2 which contains a finely executed Celtic cross on the main face with two opposing male figures a centaur cauldron deer head and a triple disc symbol and Cossans Angus which shows a high prowed Pictish boat with oarsmen and a figure facing forward in the prow Class III stones are thought to overlap chronologically with Class II stones Most are elaborately shaped and incised cross slabs some with figurative scenes but lacking idiomatic Pictish symbols They are widely distributed but predominate in the southern Pictish areas Pictish metalwork The Rogart brooch National Museums of Scotland FC2 Pictish penannular brooch 8th century silver with gilding and glass Classified as Fowler H3 type Metalwork has been found throughout Pictland the Picts appear to have had a considerable amount of silver available probably from raiding further south or the payment of subsidies to keep them from doing so The very large hoard of late Roman hacksilver found at Traprain Law may have originated in either way The largest hoard of early Pictish metalwork was found in 1819 at Norrie s Law in Fife but unfortunately much was dispersed and melted down Over ten heavy silver chains some over 0 5 metres 2 ft long have been found from this period the double linked Whitecleuch Chain is one of only two that have a penannular ring with symbol decoration including enamel which shows how these were probably used as choker necklaces The St Ninian s Isle Treasure contains perhaps the best collection of Pictish forms Irish Scots art The kingdom of Dal Riata has been seen as a crossroads between the artistic styles of the Picts and those of Ireland with which the Scots settlers in what is now Argyll kept close contact This can be seen in representations found in excavations of the fortress of Dunadd which combine Pictish and Irish elements This included extensive evidence for the production of high status jewellery and moulds from the 7th century that indicate the production of pieces similar to the Hunterston brooch found in Ayrshire but with elements that suggest Irish origins These and other finds including a trumpet spiral decorated hanging bowl disc and a stamped animal decoration or pressblech perhaps from a bucket or drinking horn indicate how Dal Riata was one of the locations where the Insular style was developed In the 8th and 9th centuries the Pictish elite adopted true penannular brooches with lobed terminals from Ireland Some older Irish pseudo penannular brooches were adapted to the Pictish style for example the Breadalbane Brooch British Museum The 8th century Monymusk Reliquary has elements of Pictish and Irish style Insular art Opening page from the Gospel of John from the Book of Kells Insular art or Hiberno Saxon art is the name given to the common style produced in Scotland Britain and Anglo Saxon England from the 7th century with the combining of Celtic and Anglo Saxon forms Surviving examples of Insular art are found in metalwork carving but mainly in illuminated manuscripts Surfaces are highly decorated with intricate patterning with no attempt to give an impression of depth volume or recession The best examples include the Book of Kells Lindisfarne Gospels Book of Durrow Carpet pages are a characteristic feature of Insular manuscripts although historiated initials an Insular invention canon tables and figurative miniatures especially Evangelist portraits are also common The finest era of the style was brought to an end by the disruption to monastic centres and aristocratic life of the Viking raids in the late 8th century The influence of Insular art affected all subsequent European Medieval art especially in the decorative elements of Romanesque and Gothic manuscripts ArchitectureFor the period after the departure of the Romans there is evidence of a series of new forts often smaller nucleated constructions compared with those from the Iron Age sometimes utilising major geographical features as at Edinburgh and Dunbarton All the northern British peoples utilised different forms of fort and the determining factors in construction were local terrain building materials and politico military needs The first identifiable king of the Picts Bridei mac Maelchon had his base at the fort of Craig Phadrig near modern Inverness The Gaelic overkingdom of Dal Riata was probably ruled from the fortress of Dunadd now near Kilmartin in Argyll and Bute The introduction of Christianity into Scotland from Ireland from the sixth century led to the construction of the first churches These may originally have been wooden like that excavated at Whithorn but most of those for which evidence survives from this era are basic masonry built churches beginning on the west coast and islands and spreading south and east A page from the Book of Aneirin shows the first part of the text from the Gododdin c sixth century Early chapels tended to have square ended converging walls similar to Irish chapels of this period Medieval parish church architecture in Scotland was typically much less elaborate than in England with many churches remaining simple oblongs without transepts and aisles and often without towers In the Highlands they were often even simpler many built of rubble masonry and sometimes indistinguishable from the outside from houses or farm buildings Monasteries also differed significantly from those on the continent and were often an isolated collection of wooden huts surrounded by a wall At Eileach an Naoimh in the Inner Hebrides there are huts a chapel refectory guest house barns and other buildings Most of these were made of timber and wattle construction and probably thatched with heather and turves They were later rebuilt in stone with underground cells and circular beehive huts like those used in Ireland Similar sites have been excavated on Bute Orkney and Shetland From the eighth century more sophisticated buildings emerged LiteratureMuch of the earliest Welsh literature was composed in or near the country now called Scotland although only written down in Wales much later These include The Gododdin considered the earliest surviving verse from Scotland which is attributed to the bard Aneirin said to have been resident in Gododdin in the 6th century and the Battle of Gwen Ystrad attributed to Taliesin traditionally thought to be a bard at the court of Rheged in roughly the same period There are also religious works in Gaelic including the Elegy for St Columba by Dallan Forgaill c 597 and In Praise of St Columba by Beccan mac Luigdech of Rum c 677 In Latin they include a Prayer for Protection attributed to St Mugint c mid 6th century and Altus Prosator The High Creator attributed to St Columba c 597 In Old English there is The Dream of the Rood from which lines are found on the Ruthwell Cross making it the only surviving fragment of Northumbrian Old English from early Medieval Scotland NotesL R Laing The Archaeology of Celtic Britain and Ireland c AD 400 1200 Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2006 ISBN 0 521 54740 7 pp 14 15 C Kay C Hough and I Wotherspoon eds Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science Amsterdam John Benjamins 1975 ISBN 1 58811 515 1 p 215 J R Maddicott and D M Palliser eds The Medieval State Essays presented to James Campbell London Continuum 2000 ISBN 1 85285 195 3 p 48 L R Laing The Archaeology of Late Celtic Britain and Ireland c 400 1200 AD London Taylor amp Francis 1975 ISBN 0 416 82360 2 pp 83 4 J Haywood The Celts Bronze Age to New Age London Pearson Education 2004 ISBN 0 582 50578 X p 116 A P Smyth Warlords and Holy Men Scotland AD 80 1000 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1989 ISBN 0 7486 0100 7 pp 43 6 A P Smyth Warlords and Holy Men Scotland AD 80 1000 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1989 ISBN 0 7486 0100 7 pp 63 4 J E Fraser From Caledonia to Pictland Scotland to 795 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2009 ISBN 0 7486 1232 7 p 287 A Woolf From Pictland to Alba 789 1070 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2007 ISBN 0 7486 1234 3 p 64 M Lynch ed Oxford Companion to Scottish History Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 923482 0 pp 161 2 E Campbell Were the Scots Irish in Antiquity 75 2001 pp 285 92 T M Charles Edwards Early Christian Ireland Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2000 ISBN 0 521 36395 0 pp 159 160 A Woolf From Pictland to Alba 789 1070 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2007 ISBN 0 7486 1234 3 pp 57 67 Clarkson Tim 2014 Strathclyde and the Anglo Saxons in the Viking Age Birlinn ISBN 9781322571645 A Macquarrie The kings of Strathclyde c 400 1018 in G W S Barrow A Grant and K J Stringer eds Medieval Scotland Crown Lordship and Community Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1998 ISBN 0 7486 1110 X p 2 A Macquarrie The kings of Strathclyde c 400 1018 in G W S Barrow A Grant and K J Stringer eds Medieval Scotland Crown Lordship and Community Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1998 ISBN 0 7486 1110 X p 8 A Williams and A P Smyth eds A Biographical Dictionary of Dark Age Britain England Scotland and Wales c 500 c 1050 London Routledge 1991 ISBN 1 85264 047 2 p 106 T Hodgkin The History of England From the Earliest Times to the Norman Conquest READ BOOKS 2007 ISBN 1 4067 0896 8 B Yorke Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo Saxon England London Routledge 2002 ISBN 0 203 44730 1 pp 75 7 J Rowland Gododdin Aneirin in I Brown T O Clancy M Pittock and S Manning The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature From Columba to the Union Until 1707 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2007 ISBN 0 7486 1615 2 pp 72 3 B Yorke Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo Saxon England London Routledge 2002 ISBN 0 203 44730 1 p 78 D W Rollason Northumbria 500 1100 Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2003 ISBN 0 521 81335 2 p 44 D W Rollason Northumbria 500 1100 Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2003 ISBN 0 521 81335 2 p 89 A P Smyth Warlords and Holy Men Scotland AD 80 1000 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1989 ISBN 0 7486 0100 7 p 31 B Yorke Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo Saxon England London Routledge 2002 ISBN 0 203 44730 1 pp 78 W E Burns A Brief History of Great Britain Infobase Publishing 2009 ISBN 0 8160 7728 2 pp 44 5 R Mitchison A History of Scotland London Routledge 3rd edn 2002 ISBN 0 415 27880 5 p 10 F D Logan The Vikings in History London Routledge 2nd edn 1992 ISBN 0 415 08396 6 p 49 R Mitchison A History of Scotland London Routledge 3rd edn 2002 ISBN 0 415 27880 5 p 9 B Yorke The Conversion of Britain Religion Politics and Society in Britain c 600 800 Pearson Education 2006 ISBN 0 582 77292 3 p 54 D W Rollason Northumbria 500 1100 Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2003 ISBN 0 521 81335 2 p 212 C A Snyder The Britons Wiley Blackwell 2003 ISBN 0 631 22260 X p 220 J Hearn Claiming Scotland National Identity and Liberal Culture Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2000 ISBN 1 902930 16 9 p 100 A Woolf From Pictland to Alba 789 1070 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2007 ISBN 0 7486 1234 3 pp 122 6 A O Anderson Early Sources of Scottish History A D 500 to 1286 General Books LLC 2010 vol i ISBN 1 152 21572 8 p 395 W E Burns A Brief History of Great Britain Infobase Publishing 2009 ISBN 0 8160 7728 2 p 48 C Harvie Scotland a Short History Oxford Oxford University Press 2002 ISBN 0 19 210054 8 pp 10 11 P Fouracre and R McKitterick eds The New Cambridge Medieval History c 500 c 700 Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2005 ISBN 0 521 36291 1 p 234 K J Edwards and I Ralston Scotland after the Ice Age Environment Archaeology and History 8000 BC AD 1000 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2003 ISBN 0 7486 1736 1 p 175 K J Edwards and I Ralston Scotland after the Ice Age Environment Archaeology and History 8000 BC AD 1000 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2003 ISBN 0 7486 1736 1 pp 224 5 K J Edwards and I Ralston Scotland after the Ice Age Environment Archaeology and History 8000 BC AD 1000 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2003 ISBN 0 7486 1736 1 p 226 K J Edwards and I Ralston Scotland after the Ice Age Environment Archaeology and History 8000 BC AD 1000 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2003 ISBN 0 7486 1736 1 p 227 J Chapelot and R Fossier The Village and House in the Middle Ages Berkeley CA University of California Press 1985 ISBN 0 520 04669 2 p 274 B Yorke The Conversion of Britain Religion Politics and Society in Britain c 600 800 Pearson Education 2006 ISBN 0 582 77292 3 p 53 D W Harding The Iron Age in Northern Britain Celts and Romans Natives and Invaders London Routledge 2004 ISBN 0 415 30149 1 p 226 J Graham Campbell and C E Batey Vikings in Scotland an Archaeological Survey Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1998 ISBN 0 7486 0641 6 pp 37 41 R Mitchison A History of Scotland London Routledge 3rd edn 2002 ISBN 0 415 27880 5 p 4 W O Frazer and A Tyrrell Social Identity in Early Medieval Britain London Continuum 2000 ISBN 0 7185 0084 9 p 238 Lyons Anona May cartographer 2000 Subsistence Potential of the Land in McNeil Peter G B MacQueen Hector L eds Atlas of Scottish History to 1707 Edinburgh The Scottish Medievalists and Department of Geography University of Edinburgh p 15 ISBN 978 0 9503904 1 3 A Woolf From Pictland to Alba 789 1070 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2007 ISBN 0 7486 1234 3 pp 17 20 H P R Finberg The Formation of England 550 1042 London Paladin 1974 ISBN 978 0 586 08248 5 p 204 K J Edwards and I Ralston Scotland after the Ice Age Environment Archaeology and History 8000 BC AD 1000 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2003 ISBN 0 7486 1736 1 p 230 L R Laing The Archaeology of Celtic Britain and Ireland c AD 400 1200 Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2006 ISBN 0 521 54740 7 pp 21 2 C Haigh The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1990 ISBN 0 521 39552 6 pp 82 4 A P Smyth Warlords and Holy Men Scotland AD 80 1000 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1989 ISBN 0 7486 0100 7 pp 57 8 J T Koch Celtic Culture a Historical Encyclopedia ABC CLIO 2006 ISBN 1 85109 440 7 p 369 D E Thornton Communities and kinship in P Stafford ed A Companion to the Early Middle Ages Britain and Ireland c 500 c 1100 Chichester Wiley Blackwell 2009 ISBN 1 4051 0628 X pp 98 J P Rodriguez The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery Volume 1 ABC CLIO 1997 ISBN 0 87436 885 5 p 136 Scottish Archaeological Research Framework ScARF National Framework Early Medieval accessed May 2022 Revealed carved footprint marking Scotland s birth is a replica The Herald 22 September 2007 A Woolf From Pictland to Alba 789 1070 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2007 ISBN 0 7486 1234 3 p 27 B Yorke Kings and kingship in P Stafford ed A Companion to the Early Middle Ages Britain and Ireland c 500 c 1100 Chichester Wiley Blackwell 2009 ISBN 1 4051 0628 X pp 76 90 J Haywood The Celts Bronze Age to New Age London Pearson Education 2004 ISBN 0 582 50578 X p 125 G W S Barrow Kingship and Unity Scotland 1000 1306 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1989 ISBN 0 7486 0104 X L Alcock Kings and Warriors Craftsmen and Priests in Northern Britain AD 550 850 Edinburgh Society of Antiquaries of Scotland ISBN 0 903903 24 5 p 56 L Alcock Kings and Warriors Craftsmen and Priests in Northern Britain AD 550 850 Edinburgh Society of Antiquaries of Scotland ISBN 0 903903 24 5 pp 248 9 L Alcock Kings and Warriors Craftsmen and Priests in Northern Britain AD 550 850 Edinburgh Society of Antiquaries of Scotland ISBN 0 903903 24 5 p 157 J N G Ritchie and A Ritchie Scotland Archaeology and Early History Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2nd edn 1991 ISBN 0 7486 0291 7 pp 171 2 K J Edwards and I Ralston Scotland after the Ice Age Environment Archaeology and History 8000 BC AD 1000 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2003 ISBN 0 7486 1736 1 p 221 N A M Rodger The Safeguard of the Sea A Naval History of Britain Volume One 660 1649 London Harper 1997 ISBN 0 14 191257 X p 6 L R Laing The Archaeology of Celtic Britain and Ireland c AD 400 1200 Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2nd edn 2006 ISBN 0 521 54740 7 pp 129 30 Skuldelev 2 The great longship Viking Ship Museum Roskilde retrieved 25 February 2012 N A M Rodger The Safeguard of the Sea A Naval History of Britain Volume One 660 1649 London Harper 1997 pp 13 14 B Cunliffe The Ancient Celts Oxford 1997 ISBN 0 14 025422 6 p 184 R Hutton Blood and Mistletoe The History of the Druids in Britain Yale University Press 2009 ISBN 0 300 14485 7 p 17 P Dunbavin Picts and ancient Britons an Exploration of Pictish Origins Third Millennium Publishing 1998 ISBN 0 9525029 1 7 p 41 L Alcock Kings and Warriors and Priests in Northern Britain AD 550 850 Edinburgh Society of Antiquaries of Scotland ISBN 0 903903 24 5 p 63 Lucas Quensel von Kalben The British Church and the Emergence of the Anglo Saxon Kingdom in T Dickinson and D Griffiths eds Anglo Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 10 Papers for the 47th Sachsensymposium York September 1996 Oxford 1999 ISBN 0 86054 138 X p 93 I Smith The Origins and Development of Christianity in North Britain and Southern Pictland in J Blair and C Pyrah eds Church Archaeology Research Directions for the Future ISBN 1 872414 68 0 York Council for British Archaeology 1996 p 20 N Brooks Anglo Saxon Myths State and Church 400 1066 London Continuum 2000 ISBN 1 85285 154 6 p 23 L R Laing The Archaeology of Celtic Britain and Ireland c AD 400 1200 Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2006 ISBN 0 521 54740 7 p 306 R A Fletcher The Barbarian Conversion from Paganism to Christianity Berkeley CA University of California Press 1999 ISBN 0 520 21859 0 pp 79 80 O Clancy The Scottish provenance of the Nennian recension of Historia Brittonum and the Lebor Bretnach in S Taylor ed Picts Kings Saints and Chronicles A Festschrift for Marjorie O Anderson Dublin Four Courts 2000 pp 95 6 and A P Smyth Warlords and Holy Men Scotland AD 80 1000 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1989 ISBN 0 7486 0100 7 pp 82 3 F Markus and O P Gilbert Conversion to Christianity in M Lynch ed The Oxford Companion to Scottish History Oxford Oxford University Press 2001 ISBN 0 19 211696 7 E Proudfoot The Hallow Hill and the Origins of Christianity in Eastern Scotland in B E Crawford ed Conversion and Christianity in the North Sea World The Proceedings of a Day Conference held on 21st February 1998 St John s House Papers St Andrews 1998 ISBN 0 9512573 3 1 pp 57 and 67 71 Maldonado Adrian 1 November 2013 Burial in Early Medieval Scotland New Questions Medieval Archaeology 57 1 001 034 doi 10 1179 0076609713Z 00000000013 ISSN 0076 6097 S2CID 162711350 S Foster Picts Gaels and Scots Early Historic Scotland London 2004 ISBN 0 7134 8874 3 p 77 G W S Barrow The childhood of Scottish Christianity a note on some place name evidence in Scottish Studies 27 1983 pp 1 15 J E Fraser From Caledonia to Pictland Scotland to 795 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2009 ISBN 0 7486 1232 7 p 89 C Evans The Celtic Church in Anglo Saxon times in J D Woods D A E Pelteret The Anglo Saxons synthesis and achievement Wilfrid Laurier University Press 1985 ISBN 0 88920 166 8 pp 77 89 D o Croinin A New History of Ireland Prehistoric and Early Ireland Oxford University Press 2008 ISBN 0 19 922665 2 p 698 H R Ellis Davidson Gods and Myths of Northern Europe London Penguin 1964 ISBN 0 14 013627 4 L R Laing The Archaeology of Celtic Britain and Ireland c AD 400 1200 Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2006 ISBN 0 521 54740 7 p 307 A Woolf From Pictland to Alba 789 1070 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2007 ISBN 0 7486 1234 3 pp 310 11 A Macquarrie Medieval Scotland Kinship and Nation Thrupp Sutton 2004 ISBN 0 7509 2977 4 pp 67 8 J H Barrett Christian and Pagan practice during the conversion of Viking age Orkney and Shetland in M Carver ed The Cross Goes North Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe AD 300 1300 Woodbridge Boydell Press 2006 ISBN 1 84383 125 2 pp 207 35 R A Fletcher The Barbarian Conversion from Paganism to Christianity Berkeley CA University of California Press 1999 ISBN 0 520 21859 0 p 170 N Saul The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England Oxford Oxford University Press 2000 ISBN 0 19 289324 6 p 211 J N G Ritchie and A Ritchie Scotland Archaeology and Early History Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2nd edn 1991 ISBN 0 7486 0291 7 pp 161 5 J Graham Campbell and C E Batey Vikings in Scotland an Archaeological Survey Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1998 ISBN 0 7486 0641 6 pp 7 8 S Youngs ed The Work of Angels Masterpieces of Celtic Metalwork 6th 9th centuries AD London British Museum Press 1989 ISBN 0 7141 0554 6 pp 26 8 L R Laing Later Celtic Art in Britain and Ireland London Osprey Publishing 1987 ISBN 0 85263 874 4 p 37 T M Charles Edwards Early Christian Ireland Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2000 ISBN 0 521 36395 0 pp 331 2 A Lane Citadel of the first Scots British Archaeology 62 December 2001 Retrieved 2 December 2010 S Youngs ed The Work of Angels Masterpieces of Celtic Metalwork 6th 9th centuries AD London British Museum Press 1989 ISBN 0 7141 0554 6 pp 109 113 H Honour and J Fleming A World History of Art London Macmillan ISBN 0 333 37185 2 pp 244 7 C R Dodwell The Pictorial Arts of the West 800 1200 Yale UP 1993 ISBN 0 300 06493 4 pp 85 and 90 G Henderson Early Medieval Art London Penguin 1972 pp 63 71 S Piggott The Prehistoric Peoples of Scotland London Taylor amp Francis 1962 p 141 OCLC 560286204 L R Laing The Archaeology of Celtic Britain and Ireland C AD 400 1200 Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2nd edn 2006 ISBN 0 521 54740 7 p 34 L Alcock Kings amp Warriors Craftsmen amp Priests In Northern Britain AD 550 850 Edinburgh Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 2003 ISBN 978 0 903903 24 0 p 190 Scottish Archaeological Research Framework ScARF Regional Archaeological Research Framework for Argyll accessed May 2022 J R Hume Scotland s Best Churches Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2005 ISBN 0 7486 2179 2 p 1 I Maxwell A History of Scotland s Masonry Construction in P Wilson ed Building with Scottish Stone Edinburgh Arcamedia 2005 ISBN 1 904320 02 3 pp 22 3 T W West Discovering Scottish Architecture Botley Osprey 1985 ISBN 0 85263 748 9 p 8 I D Whyte K A Whyte The Changing Scottish Landscape 1500 1800 London Taylor amp Francis 1991 ISBN 0 415 02992 9 p 117 R T Lambdin and L C Lambdin Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature London Greenwood 2000 ISBN 0 313 30054 2 p 508 J T Koch Celtic Culture a Historical Encyclopedia ABC CLIO 2006 ISBN 1 85109 440 7 p 999 I Brown T Owen Clancy M Pittock S Manning eds The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature From Columba to the Union until 1707 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2007 ISBN 0 7486 1615 2 p 94 E M Treharne Old and Middle English c 890 c 1400 an Anthology Wiley Blackwell 2004 ISBN 1 4051 1313 8 p 108 ReferencesAlcock Leslie 2003 Kings and warriors craftsmen and priests in Northern Britain AD 550 850 Edinburgh Society of Antiquaries of Scotland ISBN 978 0 903903 24 0 Armit Ian 2005 Celtic Scotland 2nd ed London Batsford ISBN 978 0 7134 8949 1 Breeze David 2006 Roman Scotland Frontier Country 2nd ed London Batsford ISBN 978 0 7134 8995 8 Crawford Barbara 1987 Scandinavian Scotland Leicester Leicester University Press ISBN 978 0 7185 1282 8 Foster Sally M 2004 Picts Gaels and Scots Early Historic Scotland 2nd ed London Batsford ISBN 978 0 7134 8874 6 Harding D W 2004 The Iron Age in Northern Britain Celts and Romans Natives and Invaders Abingdon Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 30150 3 Higham N J 1993 The Kingdom of Northumbria AD 350 1100 Stroud Sutton ISBN 978 0 86299 730 4 McNeill Peter G B MacQueen Hector L eds 2000 Atlas of Scottish History to 1707 reprinted with corrections ed Edinburgh The Scottish Medievalists and Department of Geography University of Edinburgh ISBN 978 0 9503904 1 3 Nicolaisen W F H 2001 Scottish Place names Their Study and Significance 2nd ed Edinburgh John Donald ISBN 978 0 85976 556 5 Ritchie Graham 1981 Scotland Archaeology and early history London Thames and Hudson ISBN 978 0 500 02100 2 Smyth Alfred P 1989 1984 Warlords and Holy Men Scotland AD 80 1000 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press ISBN 978 0 7486 0100 4 Williams Ann Smyth Alfred Kirby D P 1991 A Biographical Dictionary of Dark Age Britain London Seaby ISBN 978 1 85264 047 7 Woolf Alex 2007 From Pictland to Alba 789 1070 The New Edinburgh History of Scotland Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press ISBN 978 0 7486 1234 5 Yorke Barbara 2006 The Conversion of Britain Religion Politics and Society in Britain c 600 800 Harlow Pearson Longman ISBN 978 0 582 77292 2 Portals Middle AgesScotland