The Faded Map: The Lost Kingdoms of Scotland

by Alistair Moffat

  Petilius Cerialis and his staff officers were not entirely ignorant about what lay north of Carlisle. From Pytheas, his imitators and detractors, they knew that Britain was a large island and that another, smaller island lay to the west. More information had been compiled by a Spanish geographer, Pomponius Mela. Writing just before the invasion of Britain in AD 43 by the armies of the Emperor Claudius, he also produced a map which shows Britain and Ireland in schematic outline, just as Pytheas had described it and in roughly the correct place in relation to mainland Europe. Significantly, Mela was the first to plot the location of the islands named as the Orcas in On the Ocean. Using the slightly different form of the Orcades, he places the archipelago off the northernmost point of Britain. There are thirty islands in the Orcades, according to Mela, and, not far to the west, he sets the Haemodes, the Shetlands. There are only seven of these. The arithmetic is not unreasonable and speaks of enquiries made, perhaps even at first hand, of people who had been there.

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  Ultima Thule

  This was the phrase used by the Greeks, the Romans and Dark Ages’ scholars to mean ‘Farthest North’, the frozen edge of the known world. Pytheas reckoned Thule to be six days’ sail north of Britain and Pliny the Elder wrote that, in midsummer, there was no night and, in midwinter, no day. The word probably derives from the Greek tholos meaning ‘murky’ or ‘indistinct’. It all added to the sense of mystery about the far north. When Ptolemy made his famous map of Britain, he turned Scotland north of the Tay through a 90-degree angle so that it bent abruptly to the east. The problem for Ptolemy was that, if he had plotted the north of Britain correctly, it would have extended to a latitude of 66 degrees north and, from the vantage point of the sun-drenched Mediterranean, the Greeks did not believe that human beings could survive north of 63 degrees. The inhabitants of Scotland’s Atlantic coasts and islands were closer to the truth in every way. When they heard the call of the whooper swans and looked up at their V-shaped squadrons migrating north in the spring, they knew that there was land in the north. The great eighth-century historian, Bede, believed that Thule was Iceland and, a hundred years later, Dicuil, an Irish monk at the court of Charlemagne, described the long summers and winters of the north and the frozen seas beyond Iceland. Ultima Thule, ‘Farthest North’, turned out to be the vast subcontinent of Greenland and, when Viking longships sailed into its summer landing places, those classical writers who mocked Pytheas were once again proved wrong.

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  Pomponius Mela’s map turned out to have historical as well as geographical consequences. When the legions had defeated the British kings of the south-east in AD 43 and advanced to the Thames, the Emperor Claudius hurried north from Rome. At the moment when his soldiers marched in triumph into the Trinovantian town of Colchester, it was vital that their Emperor and Commander-in Chief led them and was seen to be at their head. It was said that elephants were brought across the Channel to add to the impression of imperial might.

  Political presentation had been at the heart of Rome’s invasion of Britain – the entire exercise had been designed as a handy means of attaching glory to Claudius’ name. Dragged on to the throne by the Praetorian Guard after the murder of Caligula, the new emperor’s grip on power had been shaky and dissent was rumbling. But, if Claudius could outdo Julius Caesar and actually conquer the wild and misty island that lay across ‘the Ocean’ and all its dangers, then there was surely nothing that such an emperor could not achieve. And, when discussions about the proposed invasion began, someone from the staff of Narcissus, the freedman who was Claudius’ Chief Minister, saw the map made by Pomponius Mela and the remote islands that lay far to the north in the sea beyond Britain, a propaganda coup appeared to present itself.

  Diplomats were despatched to the court of the King of Orkney, and they almost certainly took with them or sent on containers of a very fancy liqueur made in the Mediterranean. At the elaborate broch at Gurness on Mainland, archaeologists have found shards of a type of small amphora which had become obsolete by AD 60 and which had been used to transport an exotic sweet drink, a gift from Rome – and perhaps a lubricant for delicate negotiations. Nothing less than a place in history for the Emperor was at stake.

  When the fourth-century historian, Eutropius, listed as Claudius’ greatest achievement that he had accepted the submission of eleven British kings at Colchester in AD 43, he took particular care to emphasise that ‘he added to the empire some islands lying in the Ocean beyond Britain, which are called the Orkneys’. What transforms this detail from the incidental to something revelatory about the early kingdoms of Scotland was the logistics of the occasion.

  Claudius was in Britain for only sixteen days. There was simply not enough time for a diplomatic mission to travel to Gurness, negotiate a treaty and then return to Colchester with the King of Orkney so that he could formally bow to the Emperor. The deal had to have been done well in advance – perhaps three months in advance when the general, Aulus Plautius, landed the expeditionary force of legionaries and auxiliaries at Richborough in Kent. And more, it shows a previously unsuspected intensity of contact, a clear knowledge of European politics in Orkney and a degree of political sophistication on the part of the royal council at Gurness. The reality was that the king and his advisors had no immediate need to submit to Rome, the legions had only just landed and the outcome was, at least, in some doubt. And the fighting was 600 miles away, far to the south and across the sea.

  The journey of the Orkney king to Colchester was probably an eloquent comment on the relationship between the Orcadians and their neighbours on the Scottish mainland, in the northern Highlands. It is not stretching the significance of this submission too far to suggest that it was an attempt at making an alliance with the greatest military power in the world against the hostile kings of northern Scotland. For its part, Rome had played off many so-called barbarians against each other in the past and any such arrangement would have been well understood by both parties.

  But, for Claudius, the coup of counting the King of Orkney as a subject of the Empire was a tremendous fillip which would silence opposition and garner support. Claudius the Conqueror had extended the power of Rome to the ends of the earth.

  It became a famous achievement. When Britain’s first really great scholar, Bede of Jarrow, sat down to write his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the ‘annexation’ of the Orkneys into the empire was still seen as a signal moment. The islands ‘which lie in the ocean beyond Britain’ were witness to an imperial reach which knew no bounds.

  Historians disagree on the identity of the first Roman governor to lead troops into Scotland. Julius Agricola had been appointed commander of one of Cerialis’ legions, the XX Valeria Victrix, and, when he himself became governor of the province in AD 79 (or AD 78), it may be that he was indeed the first to enter what became Scotland at the head of a Roman army. Either way, intelligence about what lay in the north had greatly increased by the 70s AD.

  Pliny the Elder was a remarkable man. A soldier, politician and scientist, he was killed at Pompeii in AD 79 when a fatal curiosity drew him too close to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Pliny was a prolific author but only his encyclopaedic Natural History has survived. In an age when men thought it possible to know everything and that all knowledge could be written down, he crammed an immense density of material into thirty-seven volumes. Here is part of Pliny’s description of Britain, Ireland and the smaller islands off their coasts:

  Hibernia lies beyond Britannia, the shortest crossing being from the lands of the Silures, a distance of 30 miles. Of those remaining [islands] none has a circumference exceeding 125 miles, so it has been said. Indeed, there are 40 Orcades [Orkneys] separated narrowly from one another, 7 Acmodae [Shetlands], 30 Hebudes [Hebrides], and between Hibernia and Britannia [lie the islands of] Mona [Anglesey], Monapia [Man], Riginia [Rathlin], Vectis [Whithorn], Silumnus [Dalkey] and Ambros [Bardsey] . . .

  This is the first historical notice of
the Hebrides but what immediately catches the eye is that the list includes Whithorn or, more correctly, the Isle of Whithorn on the northern coast of the Solway. Vectis was also the Latin name for the Isle of Wight but, given Pliny’s sequence of names and the general accuracy of the information, the reference is almost certainly to Whithorn – another very early historical notice for a place which was to be of great significance.

  In Book XVI of the Natural History, Pliny shivered as he wrote of the far north, the land under the winter stars of the Great Bear:

  The most remote of all those [islands] recorded is Thule, in which as we have pointed out there are no nights at midsummer when the sun is passing through the sign of the Crab, and on the other hand no days at midwinter; indeed some writers think this is the case for periods of six months at a time without a break. The historian Timaeus says there is an island named Mictis [St Michael’s Mount] lying inward six days’ sail from Britain where tin is found, and to which the Britons cross in boats of willow covered with stitched hides. Some writers speak of other islands as well, the Scandiae [Denmark?], Dumna, Bergos and Berrice, the largest of them all, from which the crossing to Thule starts. One day’s sail from Thule is the frozen ocean, called by some the Mare Cronium.

  Thule was probably the name the Greeks and Romans gave to Iceland while Dumna, Bergos and Berrice may be alternative names for the Outer Hebrides, from Barra to Lewis.

  More writers added more mystery and foreboding about the far north. There was a great and dark forest, they warned, the Silva Caledoniae, and it was peopled by fierce warriors, the Caledonii. The Romans worried about a long tradition of danger in the depths of the woods. North of Rome the Ciminian Forest was ruled out of bounds for Roman armies by the Senate in the early days of the republic, and all their worst, visceral fears came to pass in AD 9 when Varus lost three legions in the Teutoberg Forest in southern Germany. To a man, they were slaughtered by the feral German warriors of the woods.

  The effect of these tales of the north on Cerialis’ soldiers cannot have been encouraging as rumours about what lay across the Solway flickered around their campfires. Others will have been more sanguine. What, wondered the more hardened veterans, did the Emperor want with such a cold, wet, difficult and useless place? What could it possibly be worth? Historians talked of the pretium victoriae, ‘the wages of victory’ earned by Rome’s conquering armies – slaves, booty, sometimes precious and highly portable objects and even land. But what lay in the north except a dark forest full of screaming savages, six months of darkness and a frozen sea?

  Glory – that was the answer to all the undoubted speculation in the ranks. Glory was what the Emperor sought – a stunning victory from his armies which had marched fearlessly to the ends of the earth that would translate into everlasting prestige in Rome and throughout the Empire. Legionaries would splash into the chilly waters of the Solway fords to keep the Emperor safe on his throne and to show that they and their comrades were the masters of the world.

  What the northern part of that world looked like was made clearer by necessity. As reports came in from scouts and diplomats, knowledge of geography and politics expanded. Names became known, native alliances and hostilities better understood and attitudes to Rome made plainer. Perhaps Petilius Cerialis or more probably Agricola and his officers began to plan their advance. It seems likely that the Emperor Vespasian wanted to see and celebrate a conquest of the whole island and, since he himself had been a legionary legate in Britain during the Claudian invasion, he did not merely wave a hand in the air and command that his will be done. He knew what was involved.

  The dates of events during his governorship are unclear but, some time between AD 71 and 74, Cerialis had successfully subdued one of the most powerful native kingdoms, the Brigantes. Almost certainly a federation of smaller kindreds, their territory straddled the Pennines and may have reached into the Cheviots and possibly Cumbria and the Eden Valley. Using the classical strategy of divide and conquer, Cerialis had his men build fortified roads through the hill, between the Parisii in eastern Yorkshire, the main Brigantian concentration in the Pennines, and the people known as the Carvetii in the Eden Valley and they created an important north–south split when they drove the Stanegate (‘the Stone Road’) through the Hexham Gap. He had large forts built at Carlisle and Corbridge to control the hill country around them. Similar tactics would work well in the north.

  Slightly later Roman sources talked of a kindred known as the Anavionenses who lived in Annandale, broadly, the area between the valley of the Nith in the west and the Moffatdale and Eskdale Hills in the east. The name is clearly cognate with the town of Annan, the northern terminus of the longest and westernmost of the Solway fords and the name of the river which flows into the firth. As seems fitting for the lands of the people of Maben, Annan is another sacred name. In an Old Welsh form recorded in 1124, the area was known as Estrahanent. The first element is from ystrad, Old Welsh for ‘strath or valley’, and the second is a rendering of Annan, an ancient Celtic goddess, sometimes seen as a mother figure. In the Ravenna Cosmography, the name of Anava is attached to the river valley and it seems close to Anavionenses.

  The name was unearthed at the site of Vindolanda, a fort near Hadrian’s Wall, in a long sequence of brilliant excavations by Robin Birley. He and his team have found many hundreds of letters and lists preserved in the anaerobic peat and they reveal not only facts but attitudes. To the Roman colonists, the natives were known as Brittunculi or ‘wretched little Brits’ and, in the same report, the officer noted: ‘the Britons are unprotected by armour. There are very many cavalry. The cavalry do not use swords nor do the wretched little Brits mount in order to throw javelins.’

  When Roman soldiers finally entered the territory of the Anavionenses, they came into a cleared landscape. There was no deep, dark Caledonian Forest. Analysis of ancient pollen samples shows that southern Scotland was largely deforested by the first century AD. For millennia, timber had been the source of firewood for heat and cooking, of most building materials, most tools and implements and, later, any form of wheeled transport. By the first millennium BC, there is widespread evidence of a marked increase in the use of stone for building work. And, by the time Roman commanders rode north, there were few trees to be seen, far less any sort of forest, and timber had become a resource to be carefully husbanded and protected.

  Apart from the lack of trees, either as the modern patchwork of densely planted evergreen forests, or shelter belts, or even small areas of wildwood, there were other ways in which the landscape looked different two thousand years ago. People had yet to raise pylons, criss-cross the countryside with overhead lines or the wide swathes of motorways and roads and the incessant hum of engine noise. From wherever the contours rose high enough, mounted Roman scouts looked out over a quiet scene, a hundred shades of green, brown, blue and grey, an entirely rural landscape of small farms, unbridged streams and rivers, lochs and distant hills. On still days many wispy columns of smoke rose into the air, seeping through the thatch of native roundhouses, themselves almost invisible, built from natural materials lying close to hand.

  Roads were tracks, no wider than a narrow footpath and used by walkers, riders and very occasionally by carts in places where the ground was better and flatter. Wide areas of the landscape were covered with willow scrub and tall stands of marsh grass, undrained bogs which could be very dangerous to those ignorant of the safe paths. Someone who took a wrong step could disappear, suddenly be completely submerged, sucked into a boggy oblivion if helping hands were not quick.

  In the first century AD, there was little or no traffic, at least in the modern sense. People moved much less, never for pleasure and only when they had to, and usually on foot. The land was quiet and only the lowing of beasts, cows at milking time, the bleat of ewes and the shriek of wildfowl were heard. Over many centuries, people had moulded where they lived, to be sure – clearing fields, husbanding and gathering a wild harvest of fruits, roots and
fungi, and hunting and snaring wild animals – but they had not yet overpowered their environment. Moonless nights were black dark and common sense as well as fearfulness will always have kept everyone inside, snug in their warm and dry roundhouses. Even on the brightest day, from a distance, a modern eye would have seen what seemed an almost empty landscape.

  The arrival of a Roman army in Annandale was a startling event. In the 70s AD, at least one legion, probably two, marched north and their appearance was unlike anything the native people had seen before. The sheer mass, such a huge number of men, 5,000 to 10,000, would have been dazzling – and terrifying. Roman soldiers did not wear uniforms, but rather a standard set of clothing and armour, and they carried similar equipment and a pack. Such uniformity would in itself have been disconcerting and the sight of a huge number of men marching in military order will have seemed like a giant, articulated animal snaking through the landscape.

  Contingents of cavalry generally rode on ahead, sweeping the planned line of march for hostile activity and ambush. The column was led by a vanguard of auxiliary troops, men who were not legionaries but had been recruited from Rome’s conquered provinces and sometimes those peoples whose territory lay beyond the boundaries of the Empire. They were expendable and would take the brunt of any frontal assault, preserving the more valuable, highly trained legionaries behind them. Batavians and Tungrians from what became modern Belgium and southern Holland were probably first across the Solway and into the Annandale Plain and they were led by their own aristocracy. Behind them came the command group with its bodyguard, the standard bearers and trumpeters. Following them were the legionaries who usually marched six abreast. Many armies sing or chant as they march but apparently the Romans moved in silence, accompanied only by the dull, rumbling thunder of their hobnailed boots thudding into the ground. Behind trundled the baggage train, carts, animals and slaves. And finally came the rearguard. Cavalry also rode out wide, protecting the flanks of the column. Even for a single legion on the move, its auxiliaries and baggage, the column could be more than two miles long – what must have seemed to those watching like an endless stream of men. And commanders expected a day’s march to achieve at least fifteen miles. The vanguard of a large army of four or five legions would reach the site of its next overnight camp before the rearguard had left the last one. It was an impressive display, designed to discourage opposition and instil fear. And it must have.