Reconsidering Scotland's Past

reply to post by stumason


Er, quite. What would Mr. Salmond say if it were proved he wasn't a Pict?!

The more we learn about our heritage, it seems we can think ourselves kin, globally. And what a difference that would make.

reply to post by beansidhe


I would be very surprised if he was descended from any Picts, as his family lineage has been traced back to pre_union Scotland as hailing from Slamannan, near Falkirk, which to me places it squarely in the lowland area's that, back in the 9th century was an Anglo-Saxon area, part of the Kingdom of Northumbria and prior to that, had been a Celtic Kingdom for the Gododdin who, apparently, had Welsh roots (or at least the name of their tribe does).

Personally, I think Mr Salmond might be more like a West Country Englishman or Welshman, genetically, than any Highlander, but it's purely academic and ancient history at the end of the day...

reply to post by stumason



Aye, and Edinburgh and Glasgow are both brythonic (Welsh) placenames (as indeed are many other places in the lowlands and southern Scotland). I always think it odd that in Scotland even places like Haymarket have the gaelic form of their name shown on signs, yet they were never gaelic at all. Would make as much sense to show the welsh name instead!

reply to post by AndyMayhew


Yes, and that's a very modern addition, only a few years old:

Gaelic has long suffered from its lack of use in educational and administrative contexts and was long suppressed in the past.[32] It has not received the same degree of official recognition from the UK Government as Welsh. With the advent of devolution, however, Scottish matters have begun to receive greater attention, and it has achieved a degree of official recognition when the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act was enacted by the Scottish Parliament on 21 April 2005.
The key provisions of the Act are:[33]
Establishing the Gaelic development body, Bòrd na Gàidhlig, (BnG), on a statutory basis with a view to securing the status of the Gaelic language as an official language of Scotland commanding equal respect to the English language and to promote the use and understanding of Gaelic.
Requiring BnG to prepare a National Gaelic Language Plan for approval by Scottish Ministers.
Requiring BnG to produce guidance on Gaelic Education for education authorities.
Requiring public bodies in Scotland, both Scottish public bodies and cross border public bodies insofar as they carry out devolved functions, to develop Gaelic language plans in relation to the services they offer, if requested to do so by BnG.
Following a consultation period, in which the government received many submissions, the majority of which asked that the bill be strengthened, a revised bill was published with the main improvement that the guidance of the Bòrd is now statutory (rather than advisory).

Source

It was agreed after Devolution that local authorities should offer the Gaelic names on signage, so we have it on public buildings, schools etc as well as transport signs.

Coming from this mutt (no Pict, sorry, just Polish, Irish and Italian...), your threads are always enjoyable albeit time-consuming for me.

Your Wulvers thread had me spending a week looking into all sorts of related topics. Guess I have another week spending every spare moment looking into this. Uhhh, thanks?

reply to post by 35Foxtrot


You are most welcome, and since you always come back with great information I'm looking forward to seeing what you find!

If it wasn't for you, I'd never have found this lovely gentleman:

reply to post by beansidhe


I'll try not to disappoint. However, the only thing I can add is that I had an instructor in the School of Advanced Leadership and Tactics at the Army Command and General Staff College who used to re-enact all kinds of battles. Little figures, accurate topo maps, everything. His favorite and most elaborate (strangely) was the Battle of Dun Nechtain.
Not sure why except he said he liked the way they suckered the Northumbrians in...

I'll try harder to bring something with more mass appeal in the next few days.

Oh, and I miss that ugly gorilla...

reply to post by beansidhe

Claudian believed that the inhabitants of Thule were Picts.[27] This is supported by a physical description of the inhabitants of Thule by the Roman poet Silius Italicus, who wrote that the people of Thule were blue painted: ... the blue-painted native of Thule, when he fights, drives around the close-packed ranks in his scythe-bearing chariot.[28] The Picts are often said to have derived their name from Latin pingere "to paint"; pictus, "painted". Martial talks about "blue" and "painted Britons",[29] just like Julius Caesar.[30] Eustathius of Thessalonica in his 12th century commentary on the Iliad, wrote that the inhabitants of Thule were at war with a dwarf-like stature tribe only 20 fingers in height.[31] The American classical scholar Charles Anthon believed this legend may have been rooted in history (although exaggerated), if the dwarf or pygmy tribe were interpreted as being a smaller aboriginal tribe of Britain the people on Thule had encountered.[

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by LUXUS


Thanks Luxus. That could possibly place Thule as Orkney or Shetland, as it is thought that the Picts moved down into Scotland from the north east. It's an interesting proposition.

There is speculation that Orkney held a far more prominent position than it does now, as a centre for learning and astronomy in Neolithic times. Priestesses and priests would have travelled there to learn their skills, and brought them back down to Southern Britain.

Ness of Brodgar


B x

reply to post by beansidhe



Thule in Irish tradition is called Tír na nÓg and is located north west of Ireland which would discount the Shetlands as that would north east of Ireland, it is where Druidry had its origins, a land that was later submerged like the story's of Atlantis.

The Nazis believed it to be Greenland though I personally believe it was where the faroe islands are now located.

reply to post by LUXUS


Hmm, the Faroe Islands? That's interesting because have a look at them before Doggerland became submerged:



Not a million miles away, after all.

My first instinct is to take Claudian's word's with a pinch of salt, though. Which I suppose takes us back round full circle, trying to get a sense of our own identity through the eyes of our enemies.
I like your thinking about the Faroe Islands, because of the Danish link. They are still Danish territory, are they not? And McHardy states that in Bede's time of writing Scythia would have meant the area around Denmark and Scandinavia.

All thought provoking stuff. This why I love ATS - the more you think you know, the more you have to go off and research again.

Cheers Luxus!

reply to post by beansidhe


What a thoroughly excellent thread, thank you for posting this. I like the ideas that you put forward regarding absorption and will have a proper read through everything later on.

However, i would say that Rome actually pretty much conquered Scotland. Pictish opposition nearly wiped out the 9th Legion until they were saved by Agricola's Cavalry. However, Agricola then advanced and destroyed the Pictish force at Mons Graupius (over 10'000 Pictish dead). Advances were then consolidated and the Antonine Wall constructed - the only reason this didn't continue was that forces were then recalled by Emperor Domitian due to pressure on the Rhine and Danube Frontiers.

Given that the Picts were good at "absorbing" other peoples', i do wonder how many other Brits ended up in "Pictish" lands following the Roman conquest. I certainly wouldn't rule it out......

reply to post by beansidhe


Until recently it was always my understanding that The Picts were not a Celtic people whose origins were uncertain.
Sure, there were several theories regarding their ethnicity / origins etc but they were generally regarded as more or less indigenous and were amongst the first people to recolonize Britain as the glaciers and ice sheet of the last Ice Age retreated.
I remember these theories suggested that with the arrival of the Celts and the Beker people The Picts were pushed back into the hinterlands eventually assimilating with the Celtic tribes who ventured into modern day Scotland.

Recently it seems to be de rigueur to categorise The Picts as some early Celtic invaders.

There is still much we don't know about the Ancient Britons who preceded The Celts.

reply to post by beansidhe




Looking at the above old map we can determain for sure that Thule is not the Orcades (Orkneys), not the Insulae Hebrides ( Hebrides Islands) and not the Hetlandia (the Shetlands).

Tile (Thule) is shown as being northwest of the Orkneys whilst the island of Fare is shown to be northeast of Orkneys. At first we might think Fare refers to the Faroes islends but we know that in reality the Faroes are Northwest of the Orkneys. The Island referred to as Fare on the map must therefore refer not to the Faroes Islends but to Fair Island which is indeed northeast of the Orkneys. Tile on the map must therefore refer to the Faroes which until the sea level increased was part of Iceland.

Early in the fifth century CE Claudian, in his poem, On the Fourth Consulship of the Emperor Honorius, Book VIII, rhapsodizes on the conquests of the emperor Theodosius, declaring that the:

"Orcades [Orkney Islands] ran red with Saxon slaughter; Thule was warm with the blood of Picts; ice-bound Hibernia [Ireland] wept for the heaps of slain Scots."

reply to post by LUXUS


Could be, after all.

The Faroes were the first stepping stone beyond Shetland for the dispersal of European people across the North Atlantic. The findings therefore allow speculation as to whether Iceland, Greenland, and even North America were colonised earlier than previously thought.

Mike Church from the University of Durham said he and his research partner, Símun V Arge from the National Museum of the Faroe Islands, had not expected to find such evidence.

“Símun and myself sampled the site in 2006 to take scientific samples for environmental archaeological analysis from the medieval Viking settlement,“ he said.

“We uncovered some burnt peat ash containing barley grains under the Viking longhouse. It was not until we had it dated that we realised what we had found.”

It was a common practise across the North Atlantic for peat to be burnt for warmth, before being spread on fields and grasslands to improve soil stability and fertility. Barley is not indigenous to the Faroes and so must have been either grown or brought to the islands by humans. Their findings are therefore conclusive evidence that the Faroes were colonised in pre-Viking times... There is not so much evidence of sails in Norway until as late as 700 AD. It is therefore more likely that these early Faroese settlers came from the British Isles.

Source article

So, presumably the Picts moved up to the Faroe Islands at some point before the Vikings arrived. Sounds plausible, and so your theory about the Faroes being Thule has a lot of weight.

Even giving Claudian his poetic licence (he was, after all a poet and essentially a spin doctor for the Roman Empire) and given that he himself did not visit Scotland, there may just be enough truth in his panegyric for us to work with.

reply to post by Flavian


Thank you Flavian, I'm glad you're enjoying it!
And here's a thing that might interest you..
McHardy postulates that Agricola's testimony was overstated, and that the battle of Mons Graupius was, if not fictitious, hugely exaggerated. Tacitus was Agricola's son in law, and as is far as is known, was never in Scotland. Political propaganda being as it is, it is not unreasonable to think that he wrote favourably of his father in law, back in Rome. Even today there is dissension about where the battle was fought.
Thinking about this, McHardy has a point. I can trace both paternal and maternal lines to around 1200AD, more or less. Paternal family almost certainly came from Ireland and maternal family was a well established northern clan when the first records begin.
No where in oral history is there a story of a massacre by Agricola. We know that women pass on oral history well, and this seems like a story that would have survived through generations. 10,000 slain Picts would have left behind 10,000 widows and grieving mothers. Their story should be somewhere, but it is strangely absent.
The Antonine Wall certainly tells us that something happened, but as our written records are Roman in origin, we can't realistically expect them to be purely factual.

Yes, I wonder too how many other Britons ended up living in Pictish lands. The Brodie's, for example, just sort of appear in the Pictish heartland, and little is known about their origins. It's probable, I guess, that the Picts would have taken in refugees from Roman fighting, that travellers would marry into families and forge new allegiances, etc.
All fascinating stuff!

Flavian
reply to post by beansidhe

 

Given that the Picts were good at "absorbing" other peoples', i do wonder how many other Brits ended up in "Pictish" lands following the Roman conquest. I certainly wouldn't rule it out......

These northern armies that resisted the Romans were almost certainly made up of folks from all over Britain. Maybe even a large contingent from Ireland. As some of you may know a large army from Ireland launched an invasion into the mainland by ship and defeated the Romans there after they had pulled out of Britain. Just imagine the large amount of people that fled Britain into Ireland to escape the Romans.


As far as the Pict being distinguished for body painting Roman sources have the whole of the Island being made up of painted and tattooed people. Not only that but none other than Tacitus recorded that parts of Germany were indistinguishable from the Brit in manner, custom and language.

Another point to consider......it is known that the inhabitants of Britain "fled" southwards to southern Europe as the last ice age seriously kicked in (circa 20'000 BC, give or take). It is also "known" that Celtic peoples, including the Beaker people, came from Iberia. Is it possible they were simply migrating back to ancestral lands, rather than settling new lands? This would certainly make sense to me but unfortunately there is a dearth of evidence to support it. At present anyway!

reply to post by Flavian


Oh I love that! That is really turning history on it's head! I need to think about that for a while, but I think you might be on to something.

reply to post by beansidhe


The Romans certainly exaggerated successes but they also documented failures so whilst bias by Tacitus is almost certain, his testimony also most definitely shouldn't be discounted.

One thing is for certain, Britain held a fascination for Rome. As a province, it had up to 4 Legions for its defence. This is significant when you consider that Judea, for example, only ever had one Legion (or even just a few cohorts) and that the Rhine Frontier had 2 Legions, sometimes 3.

Clearly, therefore, Britain had something crucial for Rome. I am really not sure what though!