What we know and don’t know about Picts and their kingdom

Today and next week I will tell the story of Fortriu, the second in my series on the lost ancient kingdoms of Scotland, and once again with respect and affection I am dedicating this series to a great Scot and lover of our history, Alex Salmond.

Last week I finished my story of Dalriada of the Scoti, and in the weeks to come I will write about the Strathclyde of the Britons; Galloway of the Gaels; the Norse kingdom that comprised Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides, Caithness, part of the west coast and the Isle of Man; and will finish with Bernicia in the south-east of our country.

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They are all important for Scotland’s history because as I will show, our current nation was melded out of those lost ancient kingdoms. We really need to know more about them but we don’t. They are something of a mystery, especially the Picts.

That excellent historian Professor Michael Lynch wrote: “The history of the Picts can be likened to a mystery story with a few clues and no satisfactory ending. There is no firm explanation either of their origins before the third century AD or their disappearance in the mid-ninth century. Yet that period of over five centuries, too easily cast off as part of the ‘Dark Ages’, is crucial to any understanding of the mature medieval Scottish kingdom which would evolve after it.”

As always I say, I try to acknowledge original sources of material in my columns but as with Dalriada there are not a lot of contemporaneous accounts of Fortriu of the Picts – virtually none in fact. There are plenty of mentions of Fortriu but none that make it easy to define or describe it.

What we know about Fortriu and the Picts is from foreign sources – the Romans, the English and Irish chroniclers – and from archaeology and other research which thankfully is ongoing and is bringing to light more evidence of this truly lost kingdom and its peoples.

However, we still do not know what language was spoken by the Picts, nor do we know of any Pictish writings save some largely undeciphered inscriptions on the items which most prove that the Picts existed – the numerous standings stones and slabs which are scattered around those areas of modern-day Scotland in which they lived in the first millennium of the Common Era.

More than 200 Pictish stones have been identified due to their distinctive symbols, showing that the Picts were widespread across Scotland north of the Forth and Clyde, and that they had their own culture and an organised society, especially after they converted to Christianity in the sixth and seventh centuries.

Historians continue to debate exactly who the Picts were, from where they originated and where Fortriu was. Some historians use the terms Pictland or Pictavia to describe the home of the Picts but I will be using Fortriu because the kingdom of that name definitely existed between the fourth and 10th centuries.

Having studied the latest research as well as some of the older texts on the subject, my conclusion is that no-one will ever be able to say with certainty where Fortriu was, where its capital was, and what the kingdom consisted of – for example, who exactly were the tribes that made up Fortriu? And what does the name itself mean?

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For a start, we do not know what the Picts called themselves or their kingdom. The name Fortriu is actually Gaelic and derives from Verturiones, the name used by Roman writer and historian Ammianus Marcellinus to describe one of the tribes of the lands in the north of Scotland in the late fourth century.

Before then the Romans called the land Caledonia, and lumped various tribes together in a Caledonian confederation, the Caledones, which third-century Roman writer Eumenius called Picti. It means painted people and it stuck.

To me it seems the Caledones were the true originators of the Picts along with some of the tribes known to the Romans as the Maeatae who occupied the land to the north of the Antonine Wall from the Firth of Clyde to the Firth of Tay.

Where those Pictish tribes originated is much disputed but the theories which suggested the Pictish people came from Europe or the Middle East can now be discounted.

DNA research published last year by Aberdeen and Liverpool John Moores universities comprehensively demolished the concept of the Picts hailing through immigration from the continent.

Study leader Dr Adeline Morez said: “Our findings support the idea of regional continuity between the late Iron Age and early medieval periods and indicate that the Picts were local to the British Isles in their origin, as their gene pool is drawn from the older Iron Age, and not from large-scale migration, from exotic locations far to the east.”

As I said, we are continually finding out more about the Picts and Morez and her team have done us an invaluable service. I also discount completely the origin myth of the Picts as described in a quatrain in Old Irish, which states that the legendary chief Cruithne founded the kingdom. It translates thus: Seven of Cruithne’s offspring Divided Alba into seven shares Cait, Ce, Círig, children with hundreds, Fib, Fidach, Fotla, Fortrenn.

Of these names, Cait survives in Caithness, Fotla is taken to be Atholl and Fortrenn is the other name for Fortriu. We also know that many place names in the northern half of Scotland have roots going back to the Picts, sometimes mixed with Gaelic. Any name with Pitt or Aber, for instance, almost certainly has a Pictish origin.

Pict is itself an exonym, a word which describes a term used by people to define another people who do not use that name about themselves. All that remains of Pictish language are those place names and inscriptions on stones which indicate that the Picts spoke a form of the Brythonic tongue sometimes known as P-Celtic.

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You would think that saying where Fortriu was would be easy. Far from it. The accepted version for centuries was that Fortriu was centred on Strathearn south of Perth. But nearly 20 years ago, Professor Alex Woolf of St Andrews University showed that Fortriu was located in Moray and Easter Ross and this became the accepted version.

We do know that the Pictts territory was somewhere east of Drumalban, the range of hills that extends from Loch Long up to Loch Linnhe. You won’t find Drumalban on too many maps but at one time it was referred to as the “spine” of Britain and formed the boundary between Dalriada and Fortriu, between the Scoti and the Picts.

It is clear the Picts were divided along geographical lines, north and south and, amazingly, it was only last year’s DNA study which confirmed there was also a genetic split.

As Morez explained: “By comparing the samples between southern and northern Pictland we can see that they were not one homogenous group and that there are some distinct differences, which point to patterns of migration and life-time mobility that require further study.”

Let’s hope those studies continue and shed light on whether the Picts were actually divided into two kingdoms.

Lynch has explained what happened to the Picts: “A hundred years before the name Picti appeared, the 11 or 12 northern tribes which Ptolemy had earlier described were already being subsumed into two great peoples, the Caledonii and the Maeatae, bound together in an alliance against the Romans.

“The Maeatae, explained Dio Cassius, c310, ‘live close to the wall that divides the island into two parts’ but the Caledonii are ‘beyond them’.

“His dividing line between Roman and hostile territory would have been the Antonine Wall and the likely border between these two cognate peoples was the natural barrier of the Mounth.

“From this point until the sixth century, it is noticeable that there are consistently said to be two main groups of peoples north of the Forth/Clyde line: in 310 there is a reference to the ‘Caledones and other Picts’; by 368 Ammianus Marcellinus describes the Dicalydones (obviously related to the Caledones) and the Verturiones.

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“And Bede, in dealing with the sixth century, distinguishes clearly between ‘northern Picts’, a pagan people first touched by Columba in his mission up the Great Glen, and the ‘southern Picts’ who, he asserted, had been converted to Christianity much earlier by Ninian.”

After the Romans, Fortriu does not appear in written records until the seventh century, near the end of which St Columba and his monks from Iona in Dalriada made their mission to the Picts.

Saint Adomnan in his Life of Columba described how the saint made his way to the court of Bridei, King of the Picts. Adomnan locates the Pictish capital as near the River Ness and his account, though a hagiography, is important as it gives the first description of a Pictish king.

The first meeting between Columba and Bridei took place thanks to a miracle, according to Adomnan: “When the saint made his first journey to King Bridei, it happened that the king, elated by the pride of royalty, acted haughtily, and would not open his gates on the first arrival of the blessed man.

“When the man of God observed this, he approached the folding doors with his companions, and having first formed upon them the sign of the cross of our Lord, he then knocked at and laid his hand upon the gate, which instantly flew open of its own accord, the bolts having been driven back with great force.

“The saint and his companions then passed through the gate thus speedily opened. And when the king learned what had occurred, he and his councillors were filled with alarm, and immediately setting out from the palace, he advanced to meet with due respect the blessed man, whom he addressed in the most conciliating and respectful language.

“And ever after from that day, so long as he lived, the king held this holy and reverend man in very great honour, as was due.”

So we learn from Adomnan that Bridei had his court and a council, and that the king converted to Christianity due to the miraculous efforts of Columba.

As Adomnan explained: “When returning from the country of the Picts, where he had been for some days, he hoisted his sail when the breeze was against him to confuse the druids, and made as rapid a voyage as if the wind had been favourable. On other occasions, also, contrary winds were at his prayers changed into fair.

“In that same country, he took a white stone from the river, and blessed it for the working of certain cures, and that stone, contrary to nature, floated like an apple when placed in water. This divine miracle was accomplished in the presence of King Bridei and his household.”

According to Irish annals, Bridei was one of a long list of kings of the Picts and Adomnan indicates that he faced internal strife, possibly from a sub-king of Orkney. But Bridei clearly emerged as king of Fortriu and may even have carried out raids on Orkney before his death which was reported to have happened in 584.

It was another King Bridei of Fortriu who would make a massive impact on Scottish history.