Ancient Alba

After the battle of Mons Graupius in 83AD, the Romans withdrew to the territory of the Boresti, where they took hostages. Historians have suggested that the Boresti were based in Fife. However, the Boresti may have been based in the area of Dundee. The Venicones were probably based in Fife. The name Venicones means the ‘bright hounds’. There are examples of a dog’s head carved on items of Pictish silver found in Fife, a carving at the Weymes caves and a Pictish stone at Strathmiglo. As I have explained in a previous blogpost, the 63 acre Roman marching camps seem to withdraw from Keithock down to the area of Dundee and across the River Tay into Fife. The name Carnoustie, a town on the coast to the east of Dundee, may have something to do with the name Boresti. The etymology of Carnoustie is unclear. The Gaelic is supposedly Carn Ustaidh, which is simply a Gaelicisation of Carnoustie. The earliest record of Carnoustie is Carnowis in a royal charter in 1510. However, there are other spel...

In a previous blogpost, I explained that the Pictish symbols might be symbols of identity like symbols of tribes or kingdoms. However, they might represent the name of the ancestor figure of a tribe as opposed to the name of the tribe itself. In this blogpost, I’ll focus on the four abstract symbols, the double disc and Z rod and the crescent moon and V rod etc. According to the legends, the first king of the Picts was called Cruithne. The seven Pictish kingdoms were named after his sons. The name Cruithne means the ‘pattern’ or ‘shape’, which is thought to be the Pictish symbols. However, there’s an alternative ancestor figure called Cathluan, found in the Irish recension of Nennius’s Historia Brittonum. In this legend, Cathluan travels to Caithness in the far north of Scotland from Ireland to the ‘land of Ile’, which would be Strath Ullie on the boundary between Caithness and Sutherland. From there, Cathluan conquers all the land from ‘Catt to Forchu’ with his two sons, Catmolodor an...

One of the provinces or kingdoms of Pictland was known as Fortrenn. It was also the name for the whole of Pictland. However, the location of this kingdom is unknown. The traditional idea is that it was Strathearn and Menteith in southern Pictland. However, historians have recently suggested that Moray was Fortrenn. Moray would have been a province in northern Pictland. By the late 7 th century, Pictish kings were being referred to as kings of Fortrenn. Bridei Mac Beli was the first Pictish king to be referred to as a king of Fortrenn. The name Fortrenn is supposedly derived from Verturiones, the fortress people, a Pictish tribe mentioned alongside the Dicalydones in the late 4 th century. However, they’re only mentioned once in the historical sources. The Caledonians are mentioned on several occasions. According to Ammianus Marcellinus,   “At that time the Picts, divided into two tribes, called Dicalydones and Verturiones, as well as the Attacotti, a warlike race of men, and ...