History - The Rough Guide to Scottish Highlands and Islands - page 404

Romans, frustrated by the inhospitable terrain of the Highlands, largely gave up their
attempt to subjugate the north, and instead adopted a policy of containment.

The Dark Ages
In the years following the departure of the Romans in 410 AD, the population of
Scotland changed considerably. By 500 AD there were four groups of people, or
nations, dominant in different parts of the country. The Picts occupied the Northern
Isles, the north and the east as far south as Fife. Today their settlements can be
generally identified by place names with a “Pit” prefix, such as Pitlochry, and by the
existence of carved symbol stones, like those found at Aberlemno in Angus. To the
southwest, between Dumbarton and Carlisle, was a population of Britons . Many of
the Briton leaders had Roman names, which suggests that they were a Romanized
Celtic people, possibly a combination of tribes maintained by the Romans as a buffer
between the Wall and the northern tribes, and peoples pushed west by the Anglo-Saxon
invaders landing on the east coast. Both the Britons and the Picts spoke variations of
P-Celtic, from which Welsh, Cornish and Breton developed.
On the west coast, to the north and west of the Britons (in what is now Argyll), lived the
Scotti , Irish-Celtic invaders who would eventually give their name to the whole country.
The first Scotti arrived in the Western Isles from Ireland in the fourth century AD, and
about a century later their great king, Fergus Mor, moved his base from Antrim to Dunadd,
near Lochgilphead, where he founded the Kingdom of Dalriada. he Scotti spoke Q-Celtic,
the precursor of modern Scottish Gaelic. On the east coast, the Germanic Angles had sailed
north along the coast to carve out an enclave around Dunbar in East Lothian.
Within three centuries, another non-Celtic invader was making significant incursions.
From around 795 AD, Norse raids began on the Scottish coast and Hebrides, soon
followed by the arrival of settlers, mainly in the Northern Isles and along the Caithness
and Sutherland coastline. In 872 AD, the king of Norway set up an earldom in
Orkney , from which Shetland was also governed, and for the next six centuries the
Northern Isles took a path distinct from the rest of Scotland, becoming a base for
raiding and colonizing much of the rest of Britain and Ireland - and a link in the chain
that connected the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland and, more tenuously, North America.
The next few centuries saw almost constant warfare among the different groups. The
main issue was land, but this was frequently complicated by the need of the warrior
castes, who dominated all of these cultures, to exhibit martial prowess. Military
conquests did play their part in bringing the peoples of Scotland together, but the
most persuasive force was Christianity . Many of the Britons had been Christians since
Roman times and it had been a Briton, St Ninian, who conducted the first missionary
work among the Picts at the end of the fourth century. Attempts to convert the Picts
were resumed in the sixth century by St Columba, who, as a Gaelic-speaking Scot,
demonstrated that Christianity could provide a bridge between the different tribes.
Columba's establishment of the island of Iona (see p.82) as a centre of Christian
culture opened the way for many peaceable contacts between the Picts and the Scotti.
Intermarriage became commonplace, so much so that the king of the Scotti, Kenneth
MacAlpine, who united Dalriada and Pictland in 843, was the son of a Pictish princess
- the Picts traced succession through the female line. Similarly, MacAlpine's creation of

410 563 795 843

The Romans
withdraw
from Britain

St Columba founds a
monastery on Iona and
begins to convert the Picts

Viking raids on the
Scottish coast and
islands begin

Kenneth MacAlpine
becomes the first
King of the Scots and
the Picts