Origins Of Pictish Symbolism

Stuart McHardy examines the Pictish symbols which have been discovered on various items across Scotland. The book sets out a cohesive interpretation of the Pictish past, using a variety of both temporal and geographical sources. This interpretation serves as a backdrop for his analysis of the symbols themselves, providing a context for his suggestion that there was an underlying series of ideas and beliefs behind the creation of the symbols.

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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. Amongst their few surviving traces are standing stones decorated with incredible skill and covered with enigmatic symbols - vivid memorials of a powerful and gifted people who bequeathed no chronicles to tell their story, no sagas to describe the deed of their kings and heroes. In this book Tim Clarkson pieces together the evidence to tell the story of this mysterious people from their emergence in Roman times to their eventual disappearance.

A fascinating new study into the Picts, one of Europe’s most enigmatic peoples.

The 50 or so mysterious Pictish symbols and the stones displaying them have become central to all discussion of the Picts. Generations of scholars have sought to interpret the symbols with little agreement. This book takes an indirect approach to the situation. The present layout of Class I stones hints at an arrangement in chains in which adjacent stones in a chain are linked by a common symbol. This is investigated and the chains identified. Between the River Tay and the Dornoch Firth, virtually all stones belong to a chain and the chains seem to be practically complete. The chains appear to have superseded stones created and positioned independently. The stone pattern is more complicated than isolated chains of stones and special junction stones are used to register the crossing of two or more chains. Auxiliary stones are also identified, which give information about a chain or chains. The identification of the chains and the conventions used in junction and auxiliary stones permit the meaning of more than 20 symbols to be understood as they are used in the chains. These are not suggested to be the original meanings of the symbols but they provide hints to assist in assessing what the original meaning of some symbols might be. This particularly applies to significant symbols called crescent and V rod, Pictish beast, and Z rod. The purpose of the chains can only be hinted at here but Pictish scholarship will soon clarify this.