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The symbols carved on the Picts’ stones – their most visible legacy – are unique and beautiful. But for many years there was very little understanding of their meaning. This mystery gave rise to some fanciful ideas about the Picts.
Early antiquarians developed notions of the Picts as primitive heathens. The 6th-century British historian Gildas described the Pictish forces as ‘foul hordes’, and that barbarian label stuck. In fact they were probably no more or less barbaric than other peoples of the time. The lack of surviving Pictish documentary sources and the disappearance of the Pictish language have created a vacuum into which imaginative historians could pour speculation about the Picts. Much of this amounted to a general sense that the Picts were somehow different from their neighbours, a people in isolation who ultimately disappeared. Detail of roadside stone at Aberlemno, Angus |
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| Modern study no longer accepts these theories. The notion that they spoke some extraordinary non-Indo-European language has been firmly dispelled, in favour of a more logical and identifiable Celtic connection. Pictish royal succession through the matrilineal line, another widely held ‘truth’, seems to have been an exceptional solution rather than the universal rule which Bede described. Above all, the Picts did not suddenly disappear. Their culture and language eventually died out, overtaken by a tide of political and social changes. But that tide had ebbed and flowed for many centuries before. Ordinary Picts and Gaels must have had a great deal in common with each other (and with other post-Roman peoples). Today this is particularly obvious in their shared artistic repertoire. In the 10th and 11th centuries, there were many developments in secular and religious organisation, artistic forms and land tenure. During this period the Pictish language disappeared. Norse was adopted in the far north and west; Gaelic in the east and south. |
