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This chapter examines the doubtful issues in Bede's account of the pre-Viking history of Britain and Ireland in his Historia Ecclesiastica (HE). It focuses on the section of the HE where Bede attributed the conversion of the Picts to the work of Columba and the Christianisation of the southern Picts to one Nynia episcopo reuerentissimo et sanctissimo uiro de natione Brettonum. The chapter explores the origins of the cult of Saint Martin of Tours and considers what evidence it might offer about the nexus of influences operating upon Bede's account of the conversion.

This chapter reviews the formation of the northern frontier of the kingdom of England from the eleventh to the later sixteenth century. Through a study of the physical and symbolic roles of the Wall, it explores the origins of the concept linking this Roman monument to the delimitation of the northern boundary of England. This theme draws upon a significant location along the Wall's line, Lanercost Priory (Cumbria). Lanercost is a medieval religious house that was founded during the later half of the twelfth century, in the contested borderlands between England and Scotland. The construction of the Priory drew both physically and conceptually upon the remains of the Picts' Wall located 700 metres to the north. During the late sixteenth century, the buildings of the converted Priory were to become the home of Christopher Dacre, one of the Elizabethan gentlemen responsible for the maintenance of order along England's northern frontier.

The Picts' Wall was a focus of considerable interest during the late sixteenth century and the first decade of the seventeenth. Late in the reign of Queen Elizabeth and during the succeeding reign of King James, playwrights, poets, historians, antiquaries, and mapmakers were intent on exploring the character and history of England and establishing an identity for the English. In this context, William Camden's influential volume Britannia used classical texts to construct an ancestral geography for the kingdom. This chapter focuses on Camden's image of the character of the Picts' Wall and compares this with the creation of a living spirit for the monument in ‘Song XXIX’ of Michael Drayton's poetical work, Poly-Olbion (1622). The chapter explores the relationship of these works to the Wall's function in bounding contemporary England, and makes some observations on the relationship between history and story in the writings of Camden and Drayton.

In 1695, a new edition of Camden's Britannia was published. Although there was little additional information on the Picts' Wall, antiquarian interest in the monument increased significantly during the early decades of the eighteenth century. This chapter explores the new interpretations of the Wall that developed during the first half of the eighteenth century, up to the Jacobite uprising of 1745–6. It examines the conceptual role of the Wall with regard to the unity and disunity of England and Scotland, the results of the Act of Union of 1707, and the concomitant revival of interest. George Smith's particular interest in the Roman fort at Castlesteads (Cumbria), exemplifies a new approach to the Wall's remains.

The story of the excavation and what it unearthed, and how. On the site of St Colman's – a sequence of nine churches from the 8th to the 20th century; in the Glebe Field, a paved road leading to a mill with workshops on either side; in the south field, a large, beautifully symmetric, bag-shaped building housing metal-workers.

This chapter is all about Pictish sculpture, one of the unsung glories of early Europe. The Picts were expert fashioners of stone and masters of line in both incised and relief carving. They had their own distinctive symbolic written language, consisting of rods, discs, crescents and animal shapes. Here we explore the form of the original monuments found broken into pieces at Portmahomack, their ornament and where they originally stood.

This chapter examines the archaeological evidence for the Early Medieval period of the historical Picts and Scots. It examines the rich archaeology from sites like Eilean Olabhat and the Udal in North Uist, exploring the cellular building forms that replace the earlier monumental roundhouses.

This chapter focuses on the close political, social and literary relations that bound the Celtic-speaking regions of Ireland and Scotland in the late Middle Ages and early modern age. It discusses the political history of Scots and Picts, early Christianity in Scotland and the languages of Scotland in the Middle Ages.

The year 839 was marked by the defeat of the men of Fortriu and the killing by the heathens of Wen son of Onuist, king of Fortriu, his brother Bran and Áed son of Boanta, king of Dál Riata. The following sixty years would see the disappearance of the Picts from the historical record but how and why they disappeared is far from clear. This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the source material for this key period in early Scottish history. It then discusses the manuscript known as the Chronicles of the Kings of Alba; accounts of the death of Cinaed son of Alpín, rex Pictorum, under the year 858; the translation of the relics of Columba; Cinaed's war; Domnall, son of Alpín (858–62); Constantín, son of Cinaed (862–76); Áed, son of Cinaed (876–8); and Eochaid and Giric (878–89).

This chapter reviews the changes in Scotland between the mid-eighth and the mid-eleventh centuries. The most obvious change in the political landscape of northern Britain in the period under discussion was the disappearance of the Picts and their replacement as the dominant people of the region by the Scots. No contemporary source describes the events surrounding this transformation, but they do seem fairly consistent in describing Cinaed son of Alpín's sons as rulers of the Picts (862–78) and his grandsons as rulers of the Scots (889–943). The chapter also discusses language and culture in the Scoto-Pictish kingdom; the Gaelic conquest of Pictavia; and Albanian society in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

The story of Columba and the Picts is nothing like as straightforward as conventional narratives have long held. Its place in Scottish history requires careful rethinking. A fine scholar, a committed advocate of a certain kind of monastic life, and a close relative of mighty kings, Columba may have visited Moray. He may have founded monasteries there. He may have evangelised in their neighbourhoods. On balance, however, the thin evidence is rather better that Columba went to Atholl and that he behaved there much as Columbanus did in Burgundy. There can be no doubt that he consorted with kings, and that he did have a strong message for Pictish ears, if monastic ones.

This chapter argues that another explanation is available to the meaning of Alba: one in which the Britishness of Alba is fully acknowledged without supposing that this meant a claim to be the predominant king of the whole island, and in which continuity with the Picts is seen not as a historiographical device, but as a fundamental facet of the kingship's identity. It notes that Alba was originally a Gaelic word for ‘Britain’, and that it acquired its modern meaning of ‘Scotland’ through its use as the Gaelic term for the kingdom of the Scots since the tenth century. What lies at the heart of both is the compelling logic of the landmass between the Forth and the north coast as a concept that could legitimise the kingship's claim to be the highest secular authority in northern Britain.

This chapter scrutinises the role of the unfortunate Picts, who were as much of an embarrassment to medieval historians as they have proved a ‘problem’ to their modern successors. When Scots were content to trace their origins to Ireland the Picts were useful as the objects of conquest, but by the later thirteenth century they had to be integrated into the proto-history of Scotland, a feat ultimately accomplished by John of Fordun using materials assembled a century before he wrote.

This chapter explores ideas about the Picts over some three hundred years. It shows that Pictomania has claimed many victims not only in Scotland but in modern Ulster. Picts were viewed as the autochthonous people of northern Britain and that, as a consequence, any claim to aboriginal authority must confront an ancient Pictish presence. The argument that each generation recreated the Pictish past to meet its own ideological needs tells only half of a fascinating story; for there are consistent threads which join the various episodes studied. In each case the Picts — representing a suppressed aboriginal truth — were deployed to unmask a form of false consciousness about national origins. Moreover, in almost every case the ideological error to be exposed was a myth of Gaelic origins.

Scotland’s first appearance in the historical record comes through its international trading links, and is seen initially through the eyes of those who write about it: traders, and then Roman writers in the context of Roman invasion and imperial administration. This chapter stresses the ambiguities of the experience of Empire among native societies of Scotland, negotiating ‘between fear and desire’. We therefore cannot present this period as a straightforward conflict between ‘Celt’ and ‘Roman’. The various processes of ‘Romanisation’ (or acquisition of romanitas) by native societies are discussed, not merely in terms of the ebb and flow of colonial reach, but in terms of the active agency of native communities in taking what they wanted from the repertoire of romanitas – which in itself was a soup of very varied cultural practices from all over the Empire (including, ultimately, Christianity). The motives and perceptions of all participants in this process are examined critically.

This chapter examines the evidence of Norse administrative structures and thing sites in Norse Scotland. This area, unlike Iceland, Greenland and the Faroes, had been populated since the Mesolithic period, and the Norse therefore interacted with existing populations. In this area, the Norse expressed themselves just as in Scandinavia, through the appropriation of monuments, above all large mounds. The other assembly site features are similar to those found in the other Norse settlements as well as Scandinavia, although some influence from the Picts and Gaels of Scotland is seen.The nature of the evidence of law and assembly varies across Norse Scotland, partly as a result of the different political situations. The most detailed evidence relates to Orkney and Shetland, where Norse rule lasted the longest.