A Pictish Panorama

Survey chapters analyse advances in studies of Pictish culture during the last fifty years. Inter-disciplinary case studies cover archaeology, place-names, history, liturgy, and history within a wider European framework.

A British historian explores the mysterious Scottish culture of the Iron Age and Early Middle Ages whose enigmatic symbols adorn standing stones. The Picts were an ancient nation who ruled most of northern and eastern Scotland during the Dark Ages. Despite their historical importance, they remain shrouded in myth and misconception. Absorbed by the kingdom of the Scots in the ninth century, they lost their unique identity, their language and their vibrant artistic culture. Among their few surviving traces are standing stones decorated with incredible skill and covered with enigmatic symbols. The Pictish Stones offer some of the few remaining clues to the powerful and gifted people who bequeathed no chronicles to tell the sagas of their kings and heroes. In this book, Medieval historian Tim Clarkson pieces together the evidence to tell the story of this mysterious people from their emergence in Roman times to their eventual disappearance.

When the Romans withdrew from Britain, the north of the country was ruled by the most mysterious of the ancient British races, the Picts. Much of what is known about these “painted” warriors, comes from the remains of the fortifications that they left scattered around Scotland. Although the Picts are famous as sea raiders, they were also subjected to attacks from a number of opponents. To their south, the Romano-British reoccupied the abandoned Roman fortifications and hired Saxon mercenaries to strike against the Picts. Meanwhile, from the west a new group, the Scoti, attacked from Ireland. This book covers the fortification of the ancient Picts in all their conflicts and discusses the importance of these sites as religious centres and seats of power, while using the latest archeological evidence to help unravel the mystery of this ancient race.

Few problems in British history have proved as intractable as that of the origin and ethnic associations of the Picts. For although we may find numerous references to them within Roman and Celtic sources they have left us no historical texts of their own. So often we find the early Picts mentioned within histories of Roman Britain as mere opponents of Roman arms -- but who these tattooed barbarians were remains a mystery. First published in hardback 1998 now also available in Kindle hard and soft editions Modern opinion holds that the Picts were Celts, like the Scots and Welsh. This book seeks to demonstrate the scarcity of evidence for this common assumption and follows instead the evidence of native tradition. In a stimulating new study the author offers a view of the Picts that is certainly not the current text book standard. It concentrates on the very oldest traditions of Pictish origins, which together with early historical sources, would suggest that the Picts were not Celts at all, but ‘Scythians’. It will put an alternative case that the Picts were Finno-Ugrian immigrants from the Baltic coast. The author provides an investigation which subjects the traditions of Pictish origin to thorough scrutiny and by offering a viewpoint that does not commence from a Celtic bias, thereby offers some new ideas on a much neglected subject.

First mentioned by name in AD 297, the Picts inhabited Northern Britain from the end of the 3rd century AD to the 9th. They rose to power in the devastation following Emperor Septimus Severus's repression of the Caledonians in AD 208, and dominated Northern Britain for over 500 years, before vanishing mysteriously. The Picts represent a high point of Celtic civilisation, remaining free and unconquered beyond the borders of the Roman world, and rising to become the first barbarians to form a recognisable 'nation'. This title takes a detailed look at their origins, and examines Pictish heroic and warrior society, covering education and training, appearance and equipment, the status of women, and the experience of battle.