As there are no original Pictish literary sources surviving[1] – or at least, none which have yet been discovered – the portrayal of the Pictish people which has been passed down the centuries comes from others.

This inevitably means that any such portrait will have an element of bias. Stories of the Picts were sometimes written by those who were their enemies, or by people who did not understand their language or customs, or who had never actually encountered them, and an air of mystery has often surrounded those stories. The enigmatic symbols on the stones have added to that, but we can also find evidence in external sources which help to build such a picture.

The earliest source we have seems to be from a speech made in the year 297 far away in the German city of Trier (near the border with Luxembourg) – then known as Augusta Treverorum. This was an important speech (recorded for future reference), in which one of the four leading men in the Roman Empire, Constantius Chlorus, was praised for his military victories in Britain.

Part of that speech notes that when Julius Caesar had fought the Britons some 350 year earlier:

“The Britons were a primitive nation, accustomed only to the hostilities of the half-naked Picts and the Hibernians and they easily yielded to the arms and standards of the Romans”

(“Ad hoc natio etiam tunc rudis et solis [Britanni] Pictis modo et Hibernis adsueta hostibus adhuc seminudis, facile Romanis armis signisque cesserunt”[2])

Constantius would later become Emperor and die at York in July 305, having fought against the Picts beyond the Antonine Wall (Forth-Clyde).

A similar speech of praise – or panegyric – was delivered and recorded for the emperor Constantine a few years later in 310. In this one we are told that while Constantine had defeated the Britons, he did not think it necessary to extend Roman authority over the whole of Britain:

“For he did not deign to acquire, after having accomplished so many things, the forests and marshes of the Caledonians and other Picts, nor Hibernia (Ireland) nearby, nor ultima Thule, nor the Islands of the Fortunate, if they exist.”

(“Neque enim ille tot tantisque rebus gestis non dico Caledonum aliorumque Pictorum silvas et paludes, sed nec Hiberniam proximam nec Thylen ultimam nec ipsas, si quae sunt, Fortunatorum insulas dignabatur adquirer”[3])

So there we have the first (surviving) references to the Picts in history – they were apparently, like the Irish, half-naked, (presumably in battle) and lived among forests and marshes. There is some debate as to whether the text is saying that the Caledonians (a name found in early Roman sources) were one of the Pictish groups, or whether they were separate, as in “Caledonians, Picts and others” rather than “Caledonians and other Picts”.

The former reading seems to be supported by a document from around 314 known as the Laterculus Veronensis (Verona List) whose main purpose is to gives details of all 100 or so provinces of the Roman Empire. At the end of this document there is a further list of barbarian peoples under the dominion of the emperors[4]. This list of 40 begins with three names associated with the northern and western British isles, before moving on to Germanic tribes. The first six names are shown below:

• Scoti
• Picti
• Calidoni
• Rugi
• Heruli
• Saxones

The final Roman source to look at however takes us back to the suggestion that the Picts and Caledonians were – in Roman eyes – part of the same group (and problem). This is found in the history written by Ammianus Marcellinus which covers the period up to 378. Writing about the time at the very end of his history he says that the emperor Valentinian:

“was alarmed by serious news which showed that Britain was brought into a state of extreme destitution by a conspiracy of the barbarians”

(“nuntio percellitur gravi, qui Britannias indicabat barbarica conspiratione ad ultimam vexatas inopiam”[5])

This phrase has led to the episode being known as the Barbarian Conspiracy of 367 in which the Roman Empire was being attacked by a number of other groups:

“At that time the Picts, divided into two tribes: Dicalydones and Verturiones, as well as the Attacotti, a warlike nation of men, and the Scots, were ranging widely and causing great devastation. Meanwhile the Gallic regions, wherever anyone could break in by land or by sea, were harassed by the Franks and their neighbours, the Saxons, with cruel robbery, fire, and killing all who were taken captive”

(“eo tempore Picti in duas gentes divisi, Dicalydonas et Verturiones, itidemque Attaeotti, bellicosa hominum natio, et Scotti, per diversa vagantes, multa populabantur. Gallicanos vero tractus Franci et Saxones, eisdem confines, quo quisque erumpere potuit, terra vel mari, praedis acerbis incendiisque, et captivorum funeribus omnium violabant.”[6])

Elsewhere, Ammianus confirms that the Britons (i.e. the original inhabitants who were not the Picts or Scots) were being harassed “with continuing disasters” by the Picts, Saxons, Scots and the warlike race which has otherwise disappeared from history, the Attacotti.[7]

To the Romans then, the Picts were perhaps war-mongering savages – but to be fair, the Romans probably thought that about all so-called “barbarians.” A final piece of evidence which supports this view is the Roman dice tower discovered in 1985 in Germany. This artefact – an aid in dice games, with the die (or dice) allowed to pass through it and be expelled randomly at the bottom – was named after the two villages close to where it was found: Vettweiss and Froitzheim. Around the tower are two phrases. The first (UTERE FELIX VIVAS) means something like, “Use me and live luckily”. The second says:

PICTOS VICTOS HOSTIS DELETA LVDITE SECVR

This can be translated as “The Picts are defeated, the enemy destroyed, play safely”. Does this tower come from the British Isles or were the Picts just as well known on the continent at that time (sometime in the 4^th century, tying in with dates of the two panegyrics quoted above)? Did the Romans call a Germanic tribe “picts” too? Or was the name more generally used to refer to a hostile enemy?

The timeline that I am covering in these blogs begins long after the Roman period but it is clear that the Picts had been around for a while, and causing offence to the Empire. As we get closer to the centuries covered in the Northern Tapestry, we come across other external references to this people.

We know from Bede (see  The British Isles at the end of the 7th Century) that the Pictish language was distinct from others and Adomnan tells us that the Irish/Gaelic speaking Columba needed an interpreter for his diplomatic talks with the Pictish king Bridei in the latter part of the 6^th century[8] (see Iona and the Vikings).

There are, as we have seen, many references in the Irish Annals to the Picts or to members of their nobility or kingdoms, such as Fortriu (could this be the land of the Verturiones, mentioned by Ammianus above?).

However a far more entertaining, if somewhat suspect, description can be found in the text known as the Historia Norwegiæ. This is a short history of Norway written in Latin by an anonymous monk sometime in the late 12^th or early 13^th century, although its earliest manuscript is from the early 16^th century. The history is mainly concerned with events in Norway, but it also describes Orkney, which was under Norwegian control at the time of writing.

Chapter VI of the Historia Norwegiæ states that the Orkney islands were first inhabited by Picts and Papar. The latter are the clergy whom we have previously met  in The Islands of Sheep: Settlement of The Faroes. The Picts meanwhile are described as small people: “only a little bigger than pygmies,[9]” who “worked great marvels in city-building each evening and morning, but at noontide they were utterly bereft of their strength and hid for fear in little subterranean dwellings.”

(“paruo superantes pigmeos statura in structuris urbium uespere et mane mira operantes, meredie uero cunctis uiribus prosus destituti in subterraneis domunculis pre timore latuerunt.”).

We are then told that the islands had originally been called “the land of the Picts” and “the sea dividing them from Scotland was still called the Pictland Firth by the local people”.

(“Sed eo tempore non Orchades, ymmo Terra Petorum dicebantur, unde adhuc Petlandicum Mare ab incolis appellatur, quod seiungit insulas a Scotia…”)

Of their origin the writer is unsure: “We do not know at all where these people came from[10],” although seems convinced that the Papar were African Jews[11].

Within a few centuries then, we can see evidence which describes the mysterious nature of this people.  The myth of the Picts was beginning to grow, although like many myths, there may be some connection to reality. For example, it may be that the underground dwellings are describing the neolithic remains on Orkney, such as Skara Brae or Maeshowe.

Sadly we have been left with very few descriptions of what they were really like. The paucity, and sometimes colourful nature, of these references, together with the enigma of their unique stone and jewellery symbols, the lack of documentation about their origins[12], and the myths of their “disappearance” have left us with an air of inscrutability about this group of people, despite their significant place in post-Roman and early medieval history in northern Europe.

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[1] Other than the symbols on stones and other artefacts. The sources found in the Poppleton Manuscript, such as the Pictish King Lists and Pictish Chronicle, date from later centuries.

[2] The Latin text can be found here: digilibLT – Panegyrici Latini

[3] The Latin text can be found here: XII panegyrici latini : Internet Archive

[4] “Gentes barbarae, quae pullulauerunt sub imperatoribus”

[5] XXVII, 8.1

[6] XXVII, 8.5 The text can be found here L 331 Ammianus Marcellinus Roman History III: 27 31: Internet Archive

[7] “Britannos aerumnis vexavere continuis” XXVI, 4.5

[8] Vita Columbiae: I.33 “per interpretem” and II.32 “per interpretatorem”

[9] “paruo superantes pigmeos statura”

[10] “Qui populus unde illuc aduentasset, penitus ignoramus”

[11] “Sed ut per habitum et apices librorum eorum ibidem derelictorum notatur, Affricani fuerunt iudaismo adherentes.” (However, as the appearance and letter-forms of the books they left behind them evidence, they were Africans and adherents of Judaism.)

[12] But see Picts’ exotic origins a myth, say researchers – BBC News