Vanished Kingdoms

by Norman Davies

  One of the few hard facts in the story is that the surname of Wallace – Uallas in Gaelic – means ‘Welshman’ or ‘Briton’. Like the English name for Wales, it is a variant on the standard Germanic label for foreigner, and it was used by English-speakers both in the Welsh Marches and in Cumbrian districts further north. As a result, there were lots of medieval Wallaces, not only in English counties like Shropshire but also in parts of southern Scotland. At one time, the hero’s surname was explained by the ingenious notion that his forebears migrated from Shropshire in the retinue of the fitzAlans. But the supposition is entirely unsupported by evidence. It was the doyen of Scottish surname scholars, George Fraser Black, who first gave currency to the idea that William Wallace’s paternal family were Strathclyde Britons.79

  The geographical context is important. Wallace’s traditional birthplace at Elderslie, now close to Glasgow Airport’s southern runway, lies literally within sight of the Rock, and prior to the arrival of the fitzAlans in the 1130s, lay in the centre of the former British heartland. In any case, all the localities linked with the hero’s early life, whether Elderslie, Riccarton or Lanark (where he killed the English sheriff in 1297), are in the same post-Brythonic vicinity. Since Gaelic had supplanted Cumbric there, they add credibility to the report that Wallace was known to his Gaelic-speaking comrades as Uilleam Breatnach, or ‘William the Briton’. This does not prove that Wallace himself was a Cumbric-speaker. But it does hint at the slight possibility that the ‘Braveheart’ may have had a similar connection to Scottishness that St Patrick had to Irishness.80

  Similar questions surround the origins of the most powerful of the Highland clans, the Campbells. Their oldest known possessions were concentrated in the district of Cowal, immediately adjacent to the Kyles of Bute; and their subsequent heartland round Loch Awe and upper Loch Fyne lies within walking distance of Loch Lomond. Their Gaelic name of MacCailinmor derives from a famous thirteenth-century warrior, ‘Colin Campbell the Great’, but the MacArthurs of Strachur provide a parallel line of descent. Their sobriquet of Campbell comes from the Gaelic caim beil or ‘twisted mouth’, and is usually interpreted as ‘a person whose speech is unintelligible’. In other words, they were not Gaelic-speaking Scots. ‘Clan Campbell’, writes the latest historian of the clans, ‘probably originated among the Old Welsh kindreds of the ancient kingdom of Strathclyde.’81

  One would like to think, therefore, that somewhere in the shadow of the Rock the old ways lingered on. Perhaps, in some modest tavern or fisherman’s cabin, the old-timers might have chatted in the old Cumbric-Brythonic tongue, singing the old songs, and telling the old tales about Ceredig and St Patrick, about Mungo and the Salmon, about the great battles of Catraeth, Nechtansmere and the Seven Sleepers. They would have wondered about the fate of the kinsfolk who had sailed away into exile, never to return. And they would have taught their children to count on their fingers: yinty, tinty, tetheri, metheri, bamf…

  III

  The history of Scotland, like the history of England, has passed through several distinct phases, in which the cultural and linguistic shifts have been no less far-reaching than the political ones. One has to put aside the popular notion that language and culture are endlessly passed on from generation to generation, rather as if ‘Scottishness’ or ‘Englishness’ were essential constituents of some national genetic code. If this were so, it would never be possible to forge new nations – like the United States of America or Australia – from diverse ethnic elements. The capacity of human societies both to absorb and to discard cultures is much underestimated. In reality, just as individuals can go abroad and merge into a foreign community, so a stationary population, if subjected to a changed linguistic and cultural environment, can quite easily be persuaded to follow suit. Dominant cultures are closely connected to dominant power groups. As the balance of power shifts, the balance of cultures shifts as well.

  During the lifetime of the ‘Kingdom of the Rock’, the British population of the ‘Old North’ was repeatedly subjected to external cultural impulses. In the Roman period Latin was the challenger, together with the classical and later the Christian culture to which Latin gave access. In the ‘Dark Ages’ a double assault was mounted by the combination of Gaelic spreading from the north and west, and various forms of English moving in from the south. Pagan Norse culture made an impact during the Viking Age, just as Norman French did in the period following the Conquest. In the end, after a protracted struggle for survival, the Brythonic/Cumbrian language sank beneath the waves, and the ‘Strathclyders’ were transformed into a particular species of Scotsmen.

  In medieval Scotland, the Gaelic Scots, who had founded the united kingdom in the ninth century and had given it their name, were steadily elbowed out. Their ascendancy lasted for only 200 years or so,82 replaced by new, non-Gaelic power groups based in the southern Lowlands. They themselves were increasingly hemmed in, pushed back to their retreats in the Highlands and Islands. Having enjoyed their hour of glory by absorbing the Picts and the Britons, they were left facing the same prospect of slow annihilation that had once faced their rivals in Pictdom and the Old North. For a time, after Scotland reasserted its independence from England in the fourteenth century, a certain internal balance was maintained, but seen in the longer perspective the long rearguard action had already begun.

  In the early modern era, however, the position of the Gaeltacht began to slip again. Large sections of north-eastern Scotland were being Anglicized. The Lowlanders turned Protestant while many of the Highlanders, whose clans still lived from their age-old practices of seasonal raiding and cattle-rustling, remained Catholic. Most seriously, in 1603 a Stuart king acceded to the throne of England. This gave the Scottish Lowlanders and Protestants an external power-link that the Gaels could never match. Shortly afterwards, a plantation of militant Scots Protestants was established in Ulster, cutting the Gaels off from their Irish kinsfolk. Later that century Oliver Cromwell demonstrated with fire and sword that the three kingdoms in the Isles could no longer be regarded as equals. In 1707 a Protestant Hanoverian monarchy, subservient to a distant Parliament at Westminster, was imposed. From then on, from the Gaelic viewpoint, the last stand was only a matter of time.83

  The deep sense of injustice, and of gathering gloom, which beset the Gaels as they watched the failure of their Risings in 1715 and 1745 and the suppression of their way of life, must have echoed the feelings of the Britons of the Old North almost a thousand years before. Their warriors were no less brave. Their language was no less poetic. Their history was no less ancient. Yet they were succumbing to the bigger battalions and to political necessity. In the prelude to the decisive Battle of Culloden in 1746, the Gaelic clansmen recited their genealogies under cannonfire to give them purpose for the fight on the rain-soaked moor. The Britons at Catraeth or Nechtansmere might well have done the same. For the ill-fated Celts were imbued with a suitable spirit of fatalism. Things occurred because they had to. Nature was red in tooth and claw. Animals killed animals. Men fought men. Species became extinct, but life went on. Death was part of living.

  The difference between the fate of Gaeldom and that of the Old North lies in a series of reprieves from which the Gaels have benefited. After 1746, when the Highlanders were forbidden to carry arms, to wear their tartans or to speak their native language, tens of thousands were shipped off to Canada during the Clearances, and many of the glens were left with nothing more than sheep and desolation.84 In popular usage, ‘Scotland’ became near unmentionable and was replaced by ‘North Britain’. After the Napoleonic Wars, however, a conscious effort was made to reintegrate the Gaelic heritage into mainstream Scottish life. When George IV visited Edinburgh in 1822, Walter Scott, whose novels had immortally romanticized Scottish history, staged a great show, where kilts and tartans could be worn again. In a symbolic gesture of reconciliation, Queen Victoria established her summer residence at Balmoral, enhancing the Highlands’ romantic image. Ever since then, Scotland’s identity h
as fed on a fascinating symbiosis between the Lowland heritage of Robbie Burns and the Highland heritage of Rob Roy MacGregor. In the twentieth century, when Gaelic was dying its second death, it received eleventh-hour resuscitation by injections of educational support, Gaelic television and radio channels, and the status of an official language.85

  Strathclyde’s modern destiny has been deeply influenced by the Highland–Lowland divide. The Firth of Clyde formed a key sector of the frontline for centuries, like the Antonine Wall before it. Yet during the Industrial Revolution the Gaels came back in force. Together with the Irish from across the sea, they poured into Victorian Clydeside, to work the mines and to build the ships. They came, not as conquering heroes, but as penniless migrants and hungry job-seekers, begging for employment in a foreign land. They, too, had to assimilate, but they gave Glasgow a large dose of its inimitable modern flavour. They made Glasgow Celtic the equal of Glasgow Rangers. They ensured that the home of Harry Lauder and St Mungo is as different from Edinburgh as Dun Breteann would once have been from Bernician Dunedin.86

  Even so, the long-term prospects for the Gaelic world are precarious. Both in Ireland and in Scotland it still stands only one step from annihilation. One is reminded of the remarkable work of the Highland clergyman James Macpherson (1736–96), whose passion for the Gaels pulled off one of the great triumphs of literary fakery. His collection of poems, first published as Ossian, purported to be translations of works by an ancient Gaelic bard, fortuitously discovered in a dusty dungeon. They were nothing of the sort, the product, rather, of Macpherson’s own fertile imagination. But they fooled most of the eminent literati of the day. They convinced Goethe, won over Scott and enchanted Napoleon. And they show that Macpherson was well aware of the precedent of ‘The Rock’:

  I have seen the walls of Balaclutha

  But they were desolate . . .

  And the voice of the people is heard no more.

  The thistle shook its lonely heard;

  The moss whistled in the wind.87

  * The Romans gave this name to a branch of the Gaelic-speaking people of north-eastern Ireland who raided Britannia in the late fourth century and who later settled on both sides of the North Channel. The application of the ‘Scots’ label, however, expanded dramatically. Originally pertaining to the Gaels from Ireland who moved to Argyll, it was later used to refer to the ninth-century kingdom created by the fusion of Gaels and Picts, and eventually to all subjects of the Kingdom of Scotland irrespective of their linguistic or ethnic origin.

  * Lallans is the local name for the language of ‘Lowland Scots’ as spoken in the southern part of Scotland.

  * ‘The Isles’ became British by monarchical criteria in 1603 and constitutionally in 1801. They ceased to be British in 1949.

  * The Old Germanic walchaz, ‘foreign’ or ‘alien’, is similarly reflected in the Dutch waalsch, meaning ‘Walloon’.

  3

  Burgundia

  Five, Six or Seven Kingdoms

  (c. 411–1795)

  I

  Bornholm, ‘the Pearl of the Baltic’, is a small, lonely, Danish island in the middle of the sea. It lies 100 miles east of central Denmark, and halfway between Sweden and Poland. Its area measures about 700 square miles – similar to that of the Isle of Man or of Malta, and its population, which is slowly declining, stands at the latest official count at 42,050 (2009). Administratively, since 2007 it has been tacked onto Denmark’s Capital Region, and it lives from fishing, farming and mining, and in the summer from tourism. Traditional exports include granite, clinker and herrings.1

  One usually reaches Bornholm by ferry, three and a half hours from German Sassnitz, six from Copenhagen, six and a half from Świnoujście in Poland, and two by hydrofoil from Ystad in Sweden. One can also fly to the airport at Rønne, either by SAS Scandinavian or by the local carriers, Cimber Air and until April 2010 ‘Wings of Bornholm’.2

  The island’s landscape is pleasantly varied. The interior presents a mixture of lush pastures and dark forests. Some of the beaches are low and sandy, others lined with steep, volcanic cliffs. Many, like the favourite Dueodde Strand, are covered in superfine, bright white sand. There are a number of small towns, such as Rønne, Nexø, Allinge, Gudhjem and Svaneke. The highest point reaches 1,082 feet. But Bornholm’s most glorious feature arrives with the long summer days, which give twenty hours of bright skies, warm sun and Baltic breeze. The mild, sunny climate encourages gardens and orchards, and in sheltered spots an exotic display of flowering bushes and fig trees.

  Bornholmers speak a language, Bornholmsk, that differs both from standard Danish and Swedish; its grammatical features such as triple genders are similar to those in Norwegian or Icelandic and its phonetic patterns similar to south-Swedish Scanian.3 An organization called Bevar Bornholmsk is devoted to the language’s preservation, and several successful folk groups perform the island’s music and songs.4 Danes from Copenhagen can sometimes be seen consulting a Danish-Bornholmsk dictionary. In medical circles, the name of Bornholm is linked incongruously to a viral infection called epidemic pleurodynia, otherwise known as the ‘Devil’s Grip’, the ‘Grasp of the Phantom’ or, more prosaically, Bornholm disease. The malady was first described in 1933.5

  Nonetheless, tourist publicity eulogizes this ‘paradise for simple souls’, where all manner of open-air pursuits flourish. The brochures talk of the Østersøens Perle (‘Pearl of the Baltic’), Solopgangens Land (‘Sunrise Land’), maleriske fiskelejer (‘quaint fishing hamlet’), Pelle Erobreren (Pelle the Conqueror – the title of a popular novel6) and, of course, Velkommen til Bornholm. Biking, golfing, fishing, beach-walking, kite-flying, wind-surfing and a visit to one of the nature parks are all strongly recommended. There is a Birds of Prey Show and a Butterfly Park, and, in the long June days, festivals for rock-climbers and for the enthusiasts of the modern sport of ultra-running.7 Every year, the harbour at Tejn hosts the Bornholm Trolling Master competition, which involves sea-fishing in speedboats.8 Since bathing or sunbathing in the nude is legal throughout Denmark, Bornholm offers infinite opportunites for naturists.9 The area west of the lighthouse on Dueodde Strand is an old-established location. Bornholm also advertises itself as the ‘Bright Green Island’. Thirty per cent of the island’s energy is already generated by wind turbines in a project which aims to replace all petrol-driven cars with electric vehicles by 2011.10

  Holiday-makers are encouraged to explore Bornholm’s historical legacy, or at least parts of it. Topics not widely advertised include the lengthy refusal of the Red Army to leave after the Liberation of 1945, and the elaborate radio intercept stations which were installed by NATO during the Cold War. The main emphasis nowadays is on the enigmatic ‘round churches’, which the Knights Templar built in the late medieval period,11 and on the local patriots who fought for the island’s freedom from the Swedes in the mid-seventeenth century. Many visitors make for the spectacular cliff-top ruins of Hammershus Castle, the largest fortified building in northern Europe, which was built by a Danish king, Valdemar the Victorious, early in the thirteenth century and commands stunning views over the water to Sweden. An annual jousting tournament is held there, yet the view alone is sufficient reason to visit. On a fine summer’s morning, the shimmering light that hovers over the waves below the battlements produces magical moments. Time and space can merge; the imagination races. Viewed from the cliff top of ‘today’, the cliff foot becomes ‘yesterday’, the advancing lines of sea horses the centuries of history, and the far shore, barely visible, the Age of the Völkerwanderung.

  Investigations into Bornholm’s earliest history are no less rewarding. Local archaeologists have established that the sequence of prehistoric graves came to a sudden end, strongly suggesting that the inhabitants had either been wiped out by a natural disaster, like the plague, or had departed en masse. Here, the Old Norse form of the island’s name, Burgundarholm, is relevant. Alfred the Great, composing his translation of Orosius in the Viking Age, called it Burge
nda Land.

  Of course, when searching for origins, there is no need to assign one homeland to one people. Primitive tribes were mobile; they were all to some degree migrants or nomads. Even those who practised agriculture would stop for a season somewhere, and then move on. Their season might last for a couple of summers, a couple of generations, or even a couple of centuries. It came to an end when arable land was exhausted, when the climate changed, or when the next warlike tribe arrived to replace them. All in all, therefore, the traditional identification of Bornholm with the prehistoric wanderings of the Burgundians is entirely credible: by no means proven, but more than a mere possibility. Nor does it imply that Bornholm was the Burgundians’ only significant stop, or that other peoples did not stop there also. But the Burgundians must have been present for long enough and in sufficient numbers for early geographers to make a lasting connection.12

  It would be idle to suppose, however, that the average visitor worries about such matters. Only historical enthusiasts follow every turn in the fortunes of an island tossed around between successive Baltic powers. The Danes, when they think about the past, have their own priorities. They dream about Viking exploits; and they remember the time, not too long ago, when the far shore beyond Bornholm, now in Sweden, belonged to Denmark. Part of the action of the much celebrated Norse Jomsvikingesaga, which chronicles the wars of Vikings and Slavs, takes place on the island. Known history, the guidebook declares, began when Bornholm was the property of the medieval bishops of Lund. In modern times, the island was captured by Denmark in 1523, placed in pawn to the city of Lübeck, recovered by the Danes, occupied by the Swedes until 1648, visited by Peter the Great of Russia in 1716, seized by the Germans in 1940–45, and liberated by the Red Army.13 Aware, perhaps, of fragments of this story, the carefree tourists paddle in the seawater or take off their clothes, ride their bikes, fly their kites and sail their boats.