timeline

600 - 800



Defending and expanding Pictland: the Golden Age
Date Key events
617 St Donnán, a missionary to the western and northern coasts of Pictland, is burned to death with 150 of his followers in his chapel on Eigg by a Pictish queen.
638 Din Eidyn (Edinburgh, capital of the Gododdin tribe) falls to advancing Angles from Northumbria, who eventually rule as far north as Strathtay.
672 Angles quell a Pictish uprising in a massacre near Grangemouth.
681 Forts at Dundurn and Dun Fothar (possibly Dunnottar) besieged.
683 Dundurn under siege by the Northumbrians.
685 Battle of Dún Nechtain, in which Pictish king Bridei son of Beli (r. 672–93) decisively defeats the Angles, killing their king Ecgfrith.
710 Pictish king Nechtain son of Der-Ilei (r. c. 706–24 and 728–9, d. 732) accepts the Northumbrian form of Christianity; crosses begin to appear on Pictish stones.
717 Nechtain son of Der-Ilei expels Columban priests from Pictland.
early 8th century                Nechtain son of Der-Ilei overruns Dál Riata.
724 - 8 Nechtain son of Der-Ilei abdicates (possibly under duress) and becomes a monk; he resumes power after four years to resolve a dispute over the succession.
729 Onuist son of Uurguist (r. 729–61) is elected king of the Picts and later, with a relic of St Andrew, refounds the church at Kilrymont (modern St Andrews).
c.735 - 41 Onuist son of Uurguist wages a series of campaigns against Dál Riata, sacking its capital Dunadd.
750 Battle of Mugdock (north of Glasgow), in which Picts are defeated by the Britons of Strathclyde.
756 A joint Pictish and Northumbrian campaign brings Strathclyde eventually under Pictish hegemony.
late-8th century Construction of the St Andrews sarcophagus, probably for Onuist son of Uurguist.
789 Constantín son of Uurguist (r. 789–820) comes to power, known as king of the Picts and the Gaels.
795 First Viking raids on Iona, which eventually force the Christian community of Iona to flee to Kells in Ireland.