Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 18 on 8/1/2005.

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Wild Celts from the North

Pictish influence can be felt all over the north and east of Scotland. But who were they? Roger McCann reports

The Picts were Celtic peoples who inhabited the east and northeast of Scotland. Tantalisingly little is known about them. Their history can be likened to a mystery story with 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.

Ancestors of the Picts probably migrated from north Germany along trade routes that were developed in the early 1st millennium BC. They brought know-how of building timber-laced forts, the style of fortification most closely associated with the Picts.

From behind the walls of such hill forts, fearful eyes would have watched as Roman soldiers, under imperial governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola, marched northwards in AD 79.

The scanty evidence of this advance comes from the writings of Agricola’s son-in-law, Cornelius Tacitus. Later, the geographer Claudius Ptolomaeus (Ptolemy), in the second century AD, recorded the names of 12 Celtic tribes living north of the Forth and Clyde rivers.

Through time these separate tribes combined to form a confederacy as a means of combating the superior military might of the Romans.

By the early third century, further amalgamation strengthened two larger groupings, the Caledonii and the Maetae. In AD 297, the Romans were referring to both, as “Picti,” the “painted ones.” The Picts were thus descendants of indigenous Celtic tribes, given a new name.

Our most important source of information about the Picts c.....

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By Roger McCann

Section : Scottish People

Page number : 24