4.3 Scotland (Caledonia)

As a result of its geography, Scotland has always had two different societies. In the centre of Scotland mountains stretch to the far north and across to the west, beyond which lie many islands. To the east and to the south the lowland hills are gentler, and much of the countryside is like England, rich, welcoming and easy to farm. North of the "Highland Line", as the division between highland and lowland is called, people stayed tied to their own family groups. South and east of this line society was more easily influenced by the changes taking place in England.

During the Dark Ages Scotland was populated by four separate groups of people.

The main group, the Picts, was a confederation of tribes in central and northern Scotland from Roman times until the 10th century. They lived to the north of the Forth and the Clyde. Nobody knows the origin of Picts.

When Celts came to the British Isles in the 7th and 6th centuries BC, Picts already inhabited the lands north to modern Edinburgh, and when Romans invaded Britain in the 1st century BC and came to Scotland in the next one, they were still there occupying just the same lands. Different authors, from ancient times to our days, present different versions about where from the Picts came to Britain in prehistoric times. The archaeological sources suppose their arrival to Britain took place in about 1000 BC from the continent, and then in 200 BC from Scotland to Ireland. But the original homeland of the Picts in continental Europe is unknown, and that led to different explanations. Medieval authors supported a version that Picts were not Celts, and were a pre-Celtic race who came from Scythia or Spain, ancient Iberia. Many say that Picts are just a Celtic tribe with a strong element of earlier nations. They were the descendants of the Caledonii and other tribes named by Roman historians. But anthropological information we have opposes to that, and so does the linguistic material.

Ancient Greek and Latin sources claim that Celts who invaded Italy in the 5th century and Greece in the 3rd, were tall, blue-eyed and fair-haired men. Greeks even thought they were Hyperboreans, northern people, characters of several Greek myths. As for those Picts Romans met in Britain they were short and dark-headed (here we can recollect the description of Cuchulain’s appearance as it was given in Irish national legends).

Linguistic material is also important. Picts spoke Celtic as well as another, probably older, language completely unconnected with any known language today. The Pictish language has not survived. Evidence is limited to place names and to the names of people found on monuments and some contemporary records. The evidence of place-names and personal names argue strongly that the Picts spoke Insular Celtic languages related to the more southerly Brythonic languages. A number of inscriptions have been argued to be non-Celtic, and on this basis, it has been suggested that non-Celtic languages were also in use.

Pictish culture is very special in comparison with continental and insular Celts. Picts were described everywhere as people painted all over; their faces, their hands and bodies were covered with paintings or tattoos. At the same time, naturalistic depictions of Pictish nobles, hunters and warriors, male and female, without obvious tattoos, are found on monumental stones. These stones are to be found in Scotland, predominantly north of the Clyde-Forth line and include inscriptions in Latin and Ogham script, not all of which have been deciphered. The well known Pictish symbols found on stones, and elsewhere, are obscure in meaning. A variety of esoteric explanations have been offered, but the simplest conclusion may be that these symbols represent the names of those who had raised, or are commemorated on, these stones. They probably served as personal memorials, the symbols indicating membership of clans, lineages, or kindreds. Pictish art can be classed as Celtic, and later as Hiberno-Saxon. Many scientists stress the dissimilarity between Celtic and Pictish cultural traditions and material constructions. They say that Picts were different from the Celts because they inherited their rights, their names and property from their mothers, not from their fathers. In fact it was mentioned in Bede's history and Bede merely says that the Picts used matrilineal succession in exceptional cases. The kings of the Picts when Bede was writing were Bridei and Nechtan, sons of Der Ilei, who indeed claimed the throne through their mother Der Ilei, daughter of an earlier Pictish king.

As with most peoples in the north of Europe in Late Antiquity, the Picts were farmers living in small communities. The most common sort of buildings would have been roundhouses and rectangular timbered halls.

In the so-called Dark Ages Pictish recorded history began. It appears that they were not the dominant power in Northern Britain for the entire period.

The early Picts are associated with piracy and raiding along the coasts of Roman Britain. Even in the Late Middle Ages, the line between traders and pirates was unclear, so that Pictish pirates were probably merchants on other occasions. It is generally assumed that trade collapsed with the Roman Empire, but this is to overstate the case. There is only limited evidence of long-distance trade with Pictland, but tableware and storage vessels from Gaul, probably transported up the Irish Sea, have been found. This trade may have been controlled from Dunadd in Dál Riata, where such goods appear to have been common.

The Hadrian Wall was constructed in order to protect Roman Britain from Picts from the north, but it looks as if the wall divided Pictish lands into northern and southern, conquered by Romans, so southern Pictish minority had to become assimilated by Britons since then.

At this time Pictish lands, just liberated from Romans, began to suffer the invasions from the east – Celtic Scots landed in southern Scotland from Ireland. The Scots were Celtic settlers who had started to move into the western Highlands from Ireland in the fourth century. The Scottish kingdom founded in the 5th century occupied much of Pictish lands, and they had to fight but again had to retreat north. But Picts and Scots sometimes were allies, especially raiding south to plunder Britons, who accepted Christianity at that time. Being such allies, Celtic and Pictish populations were mixing with each other, and soon many southern Pictish lands acquired a Celtic language. This was also the time of the first Ogham inscriptions found in Ireland and Scotland.

Since the 6th century, Picts had already two kingdoms, southern and northern, and some scientists state even seven of them, but there was a supreme king, like in Ireland, and it happened that in 834 the crown of this highest Pictish king came to a Celtic Scot, the son of a Pictish princess, Kenneth mac Alpin. The relations between royal families of Picts and Celts became more and more unpleasant: before Kenneth, a Pictish king Oengus ruled both over Scots and Picts and might have caused great hatred between the two nations. Therefore Kenneth rebelled against Oengus and in fact started dominating over Picts. In 839, moreover, Picts suffered a great invasion from Vikings and were weakened significantly.

Kenneth managed to massacre all Pictish nobles, royal families, and Pictish lands were conquered by Scottish troops in the east, and Vikings in the west. In 843 the Pictish and Scottish kingdoms were united under a Scottish king. In a few generations Pictish language, Pictish culture and Picts themselves were forgotten, and Scottish kings made Scone, the last Pictish capital, their main city. Pictavia became the kingdom of Alba during the 10th century and the Picts became the Albannach or Scots.

The third group was the Britons, who inhabited the Lowlands, and had been part of the Romano-British world. (The name of their kingdom, Strathclyde, was used again in the county reorganisation of 1974.) They had probably given up their old tribal way of life by the 6th century.

Finally, there were Angles from Northumbria who had pushed northwards into the Scottish Lowlands.

Final unity between Picts, Scots and Britons was achieved for several reasons. They all shared a common Celtic culture, language and background. Their economy mainly depended on keeping animals. These animals were owned by the tribe as a whole, and for this reason land was also held by tribes, not by individual people. The common economic system increased their feeling of belonging to the same kind of society and the feeling of difference from the agricultural Lowlands. The sense of common culture may have been increased by marriage alliances between tribes. This idea of common landholding remained strong until the tribes of Scotland, called "clans", collapsed in the eighteenth century.