The Faded Map: The Lost Kingdoms of Scotland

by Alistair Moffat

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  Towards the end of his Life of Kentigern, Jocelyn inserts a detail that sounds authentic. Through age, the old man’s jaw had become slack and, to avoid unseemly gaping and perhaps drooling, his monks tied a bandage under his chin. There then follows an account of his death in a bath which sounds like a garbled version of Kentigern collapsing during a service of baptism. Whatever the truth of that, the likelihood is that the saint lived to a great age, almost a living relic.

  Throughout the seventh and eighth centuries, Alt Clut remained defiantly independent, resisting the tide of Bernician arms and defeating Dalriadan armies. The names of vigorous kings like Beli (died 722) and Teudebur (died 752) appear in the chronicles and, despite a lack of detail, the overall impression is one of stability, certainly survival.

  In the spring of 870, everything changed. Lookouts on the ramparts of Alt Clut must have turned to each other in disbelief. Rowing up the Clyde straight towards them was a vast fleet of warships, perhaps as many as 200 keels. On the prows of the leading longships stood two Viking kings, Olaf and Ivar. They had sailed from Dublin, broken through into the upper Clyde and were bent on storming the impregnable rock. Here is the entry for 870 from the Irish annals:

  In this year the kings of the Scandinavians besieged Strathclyde, in Britain. They were four months besieging it; and at last, after reducing the people who were inside by hunger and thirst (after the well that they had in their midst had dried up miraculously) they broke in upon them afterwards. And firstly all the riches that were in it were taken; [and also] a great host [was taken] out of it in captivity.

  The Annals of Ulster offer a little more detail on the aftermath of the fall of the Rock: ‘Olaf and Ivar returned to Dublin from Scotland with 200 ships, bringing away with them in captivity to Ireland a great prey of Angles, and Britons and Picts.’

  A four-month siege was unheard of in the Dark Ages and it speaks of tremendous determination and organisation. It seems that the vast war fleet had overwintered somewhere on the Clyde and, safe for the moment in his citadel, King Artgal of Alt Clut must have expected an attack to come. But the scale of it was astonishing. Slaves were the principal prize and, since the list in the Annals of Ulster does not include any mention of Dalriada Scots, it must be suspected that the Vikings’ siege was undertaken with the help of Alt Clut’s neighbours. A year later, apparently at the request of King Constantine of Alba – the name given by the Dalriadic dynasts to their expanding realm – King Artgal was killed in captivity in Dublin. It appeared to be a sorry end for the continued independence if not the identity of the last of the Old Welsh-speaking kingdoms of southern Scotland.

  Viking longships had been seen in the Irish Sea for most of the ninth century and the sea lords left their mark on the geography of its coasts and islands, especially in the northern basin. Seamarks were important navigational aids in the age of pilotage and the most striking and lofty of the hills and mountains around the Solway acquired Norse names for that reason. The practice of aiming off needed clearly visible fixed points on the horizon. When a sea lord wanted to beach his craft at, say, the mouth of the Nith, he might aim his course at Criffel, the singular hill to the west. If the Solway tides were rising, then they would push the longship eastwards and, depending on the season and the time of day, Viking seamen knew that aiming off at Criffel would bring them to the outfall of the river. These prominent seamarks all changed their names in the ninth century – Criffel is from Kraka Fjall or ‘Raven Hill’, Snaefell on the Isle of Man means ‘Snow Hill’ and Scafell Pike in Cumbria is ‘the Mountain Meadow’.

  More place-names confirm Viking settlement at the head of the Solway Firth especially where the suffix -by or -bie is found. It means ‘farm’ or ‘settlement’ and close clusters of ‘by’ names can be seen on road signs around Wiggonby, Thornby, Thursby and Oughterby, five miles west of Carlisle. And much closer to the city, on the east, are Botcherby, Rickerby, Harraby, Scotby, Aglionby and Corby. It seems likely that these dense concentrations were the result of enclaves established before the end of the tenth century.

  Perhaps one of the most spectacular legacies of Viking contact in north-west Britain is the collection of tombstones in Govan Old Parish Church in the heart of the old kingdom of Strathclyde. On the west bank of the Clyde, downriver from Kentigern’s monastery by the Molendinar Burn, the nineteenth century church stands on an ancient site. The original foundation certainly dates to the late ninth century and likely long before. The dedication was to St Constantine, probably a reference to the son of the famous King Kenneth MacAlpine, the instigator of the murder of Artgal of Strathclyde. This Constantine reigned between 862 and 878 but, if he had been culted, then any dedication would have taken place some time after his death.

  In the church lies a massive, richly carved sarcophagus which may have held the royal and sainted relics of Constantine. It is too narrow to have accommodated a recently deceased body but a set of disarticulated bones would have fitted in. On the sides of the sarcophagus (carved from an enormous single slab of sandstone, presumably in situ), there are hunting scenes interspersed with beautifully worked panels of interlace. It may be that the single block of stone was a conscious imitation of Roman sarcophagi – the sort of thing fit for emperors and therefore suitable for a king who bore the hallowed imperial name of Constantine. In any event, the depiction of a mounted huntsman in pursuit of deer with a hound running beside him is almost always applied to a royal subject which is another imitation – this time of the Old Testament King David. It was a particularly attractive association often found in Pictish art, most notably on the St Andrews sarcophagus of the mid eighth century. King David was seen as a holy warrior, dignified and severe, but from humble beginnings as a shepherd boy, and a defender of his people against mighty attackers. Most of all David was pious, a constant servant of God. Europe’s greatest monarch of the Dark Ages was the Emperor Charlemagne and his nickname was said to have been David.

  At Govan Old Parish Church, there are fragments of two high crosses, probably dating to the tenth century. They may have marked the entrance to the sacred precinct. Much worn after ten centuries of use and abuse, one cross shaft carries more allusions to King David. The carving has lost most of its definition but a standing figure with an arm outstretched over a seated figure can be made out. This is thought to be Samuel anointing the young King David. The other cross has a mounted huntsman riding across one face.

  Two cross-slabs have also survived and one has an unusual motif. It is a boss, like a shield boss, with four stylised snakes curling outwards from it. This is an early metaphor for redemption. Snakes cast their skins and slither out of them renewed.

  These fascinating Christian monuments are at the very least testament to Govan’s importance as a prestigious, probably royal religious centre. Where patronage of that calibre left Kentigern’s foundation upriver can only be a matter of conjecture. Some time after the fall of Alt Clut in 870, the sarcophagus, the crosses and cross-slabs were joined by a set of Viking tombs. Known as ‘hogbacks’ because of their humpbacked shape, five of these massive monuments are to be found in Govan. Taking the form of longhouses complete with wooden roof tiles clearly picked out by the sculptor’s chisel, this group dates to the tenth century. Like Norse place-names around the Irish Sea, the Solway and the Clyde, these houses of the dead plot Viking contact and were probably monuments made for wealthy traders rather than the rulers of colonial settlement. They must have nevertheless been powerful, with enough local control to see their tombs made in the likely burial place of Strathclyde kings.

  Twenty years after the siege and destruction of Alt Clut, a Welsh text, known as the Brut Y Tywysogion, the Chronicle of the Princes, marked an important cultural transmission: ‘The men of Strathclyde, those that refused to unite with the English, had to depart from their country and go into Gwynedd.’

  This seems confused. Union with or subjugation by the expanding kingdom of the Scots of Dalriada was the is
sue. By 890, the Bernicians were not only in retreat but the chroniclers mention that there were English people amongst those enslaved after the fall of Alt Clut. Perhaps it was simply the sense of the word sais to denote foreigners that was intended and the Dalriadic Scots may have been seen in that way in Wales. Whatever the interpretation, the traditions and some of the history of Strathclyde did linger in Welsh sources long enough to be written down in the medieval period. And the Gwyr Y Gogledd, the ‘Men of the North’, held an honoured place.

  Artgal was not the last king of Strathclyde and it appears that, for 200 years after the siege of Alt Clut in 870, the kingdom continued to be seen as separate from Alba, what was becoming Scotland. Outsiders certainly made a clear distinction. In 924, Athelstan succeeded as king of Wessex and Mercia and almost immediately began to extend his power. Here is an entry from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

  In this year fiery lights appeared in the northern quarter of the sky and Sihtric died and King Athelstan succeeded to the kingdom of the Northumbrians; and he brought under his rule all the kings who were in this island; first Hywel, king of the West Welsh, and Constantine king of the Scots and Owain king of the people of Gwent, and Ealdred, son of Eadwulf, from Bamburgh. And they established peace with pledges and oaths in the place which is called Eamont, on 12th July, and renounced all idolatry, and afterwards departed in peace.

  Eamont Bridge has long been a liminal place and it must have seemed appropriate for this important meeting. Close by are three prehistoric stone circles at Mayburgh, King Arthur’s Round Table and the Little Round Table and, in the haughland where the Rivers Eamont and Lowther run parallel before meeting, there was a tall standing stone until the early eighteenth century. And, until the later twentieth century, Eamont Bridge stood directly on the old county line between Cumberland and Westmoreland.

  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is almost certainly incorrect when it lists Owain of Gwent as present at the parley with Athelstan. The medieval chronicler, William of Malmesbury, identified him as another Owain, king of the Cumbrians and it seems that the ancient prehistoric landscape at Eamont Bridge was the widely recognised southern boundary of his kingdom. The takeover of Bernician territory on the Solway and in Cumbria by the Strathclyde kings is nowhere clearly documented but it certainly took place sometime in the latter half of the ninth century and before 924. King Owain, son of Dyfnwal, ruled this very substantial part of Britain in the 930s and he was obviously thought sufficiently powerful to be summoned to his borders to a meeting with the mighty Athelstan.

  When, in imperial mode, the king of Wessex and Mercia demanded the presence of the king of Cumbria, he meant the ruler of the expanded kingdom of Strathclyde. Although decapitated by the Vikings (with the probable collusion of the Scots), it still compassed the Clyde Valley, ancient Rheged, that is, Galloway, Dumfriesshire, the old Roman city of Carlisle and Cumbria down to Eamont Bridge. In the ninth and tenth centuries the names of Strathclyde and Cumbria appear to have been interchangeable but the latter was probably more familiar to Athelstan and the clerks of his fledgling civil service. As has been noted, Cumbria derives from the same root as Cymru, the Welsh word for Wales. Both are from combrogi, the Late Latin term meaning ‘fellow countrymen’ and, by extension, the native British, the Cymry, the Northern Welsh as well as the West Welsh ruled over by Hywel. There is a sense of common cause against the Sais in the name even though the political realities were quite different. As Gildas complained in his ‘On the Ruin of Britain’ in the sixth century, the British kingdoms fought each other as much as they confronted the Sais and, as historians have shown, they also fought alongside the invaders against native British kings. The Cumber have left their name in more places than Cumberland and Cymru but many are now obscure – Cumberbatch, Comberton, Cumberlow, Camberwell and scores of others. The impression is of small communities clinging on to Old Welsh, Yr Iaith Hen, long enough for their places to be included in the Domesday Book of the 1080s.

  For the year 934, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded:

  King Athelstan, going towards Scotia with a great army, came to the tomb of St Cuthbert, commended himself and his expedition, and conferred on him many and diverse gifts befitting a king, as well as estates, and consigned to the torments of eternal fire any who should take any of these from him. He then subdued his enemies, laid waste Scotia as far as Dunnotar and the mountains of Fortriu with a land force, and ravaged with a naval force as far as Caithness.

  The expedition appears to have been punitive but it also had motives of conquest behind it. It seems that Constantine of Scotland and Athelstan had disagreed about the future of the old kingdom of Northumbria. Deira and York had fallen to the Vikings in the ninth century but, although much reduced in the west, Bernicia had continued with a measure of independence. When an unnamed Bernician king died in 934, Athelstan moved north a year later to establish his overlordship there and to beat Constantine into submission.

  The expedition far to the north was a complete success. In September 935, Athelstan held court at Buckingham and, when he issued a land grant to one of his courtiers, it was witnessed by Constantine of Scotland. While the Wessex king styled himself Rex et Rector Totius Britanniae, ‘King and Governor of all Britain’, Constantine was relegated to the status of subregulus and ‘under-king’ or, worse, ‘underkinglet’. Submission clearly involved a great deal of wearisome travel up and down the length of Britain and, a year later, at the old Roman city of Cirencester, Constantine was again in attendance. Five kings acknowledged Athelstan’s overlordship in what was almost certainly a public ceremony. In the tenth century, the Roman amphitheatre was still standing in Cirencester and it would have enhanced the imperial swagger of the king and governor of all Britain to imagine the province recreated under his governorship in such atmospheric setting. As it did with the Bernicians, the long echo of the Empire lent grandeur.

  For the fragmentary story of Strathclyde, the Cirencester submissions are important. First in the order of precedence for the five underkings was Constantine but second was Owain of Strathclyde, coming before Hywel Dda, the greatest Welsh king of all. It seems that not only was Strathclyde seen as independent of Constantine and his Gaelic-speaking kingdom but the men of the Old Welsh-speaking north were seen as the leading native British nation, more powerful than their cousins in the west.

  At Christmas 935, another court was held at Dorchester, also a Roman city whose civic buildings were not all ruinous and whose amphitheatre was probably still usable, but, this time, Constantine was absent. Orders of precedence were not mere ceremonial frippery in the tenth century. They mattered and reflected political reality in a public context. Owain of Strathclyde was placed first and that meant Athelstan believed him to be the third most important monarch in Britain. And the choice of Roman cities for these state occasions can have been no accident. A clear point was being made.

  A year later, all of this pomp and circumstance was forgotten and the diplomacy of the amphitheatres lay in ruins. Olaf, king of the Dublin Vikings, had been campaigning and making conquests in Ireland. It may be that he had a claim on Northumbria and resented Athelstan’s takeover. At all events, an alliance was brokered with Constantine of Scotland and the king of Strathclyde. Doubtless both had tired of dancing attendance amongst the Roman ruins.

  Vast armies were mustered. It was said that Olaf sailed with a huge fleet of 615 longships and they clashed in 937 at a place called Brunanburh. The name is lost but two locations have been advanced and each seems equally plausible. The Dublin fleet may have sailed due east and made landfall to fight at the Wirral, on the northern borders of Athelstan’s kingdom of Mercia. Or they may have struck north-east to the head of the Solway and met the southern army at Burnswark, the old prehistoric hill fort and the site of Roman siege camps. Toponymic evidence leans towards a great battle at Burnswark but, wherever it took place, Brunanburh was an emphatic victory for Athelstan and the English. Its importance lay not in its immediate effects but rather in t
he battle lines drawn. On one side stood the Celtic nations of the north and west with their Viking allies while on the other were the ranks of an Anglo-Saxon army. The Welsh bards saw Brunanburh as a disaster, the last realistic hope of driving the Sais back into the sea and the turning historical moment when Celtic Britain was divided. Perhaps it was.

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  The Battle of Brunanburh

  By the tenth century, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was becoming poetical, something of a welcome departure from its customary terseness. Here is the text of a beautifully written piece of alliterative verse about the great battle:

  Here King Athelstan, leader of warriors,