Picts, Gaels and the making of Alba
Picts, Gaels, Britons and Northumbrians share the land north of Hadrian's Wall until a Gaelic-speaking kingdom of Alba emerges in the ninth century, the seed of Scotland.
- From Caledonia to Pictland: Scotland to 795 — James E. Fraser, Edinburgh University Press (2009)
- From Pictland to Alba, 789–1070 — Alex Woolf, Edinburgh University Press (2007)
- The Oxford Companion to Scottish History — Michael Lynch (ed.), Oxford University Press (2001)
The Romans never conquered the far north of Britain. They built Hadrian’s Wall in the 120s CE and the short-lived Antonine Wall further north, and called the peoples beyond Caledonians and, later, Picts, the “painted ones”. The Picts left little writing but extraordinary carved symbol stones across the north-east.
- From Caledonia to Pictland: Scotland to 795 — James E. Fraser, Edinburgh University Press (2009)
- The Oxford Companion to Scottish History — Michael Lynch (ed.), Oxford University Press (2001)
In the west, Gaelic-speaking Scoti linked to Ireland formed the kingdom of Dál Riata in Argyll; the name “Scotland” eventually came from them. In 563 the Irish monk Columba founded a monastery on Iona, which became a great centre of Christian learning and missions. Britons held Strathclyde, and Angles from Northumbria held the south-east, including Edinburgh.
- From Caledonia to Pictland: Scotland to 795 — James E. Fraser, Edinburgh University Press (2009)
- Scotland: A New History — Michael Lynch, Pimlico (1992)
Tradition says Kenneth MacAlpin, king of the Scots, united Picts and Scots around 843. Historians now see a slower process, shaped by Viking attacks, in which Pictish identity faded and a Gaelic kingdom called Alba emerged by about 900.
- From Pictland to Alba, 789–1070 — Alex Woolf, Edinburgh University Press (2007)
- The Oxford Companion to Scottish History — Michael Lynch (ed.), Oxford University Press (2001)
Why it matters today
Scots like to say theirs is one of Europe's oldest nations, and this is where that story starts. The mixed origins, Pictish, Gaelic, British, Anglian and later Norse, are a source of pride in a nation that defines itself more by place than by blood, and Gaelic's survival in the west is a living link to this age.