The original name of the Irish settlement in north western Scotland was Dalriada, centred on the hillfort of Dunadd, sited on a rocky outcrop surrounded by boggy land. The Scots and Picts fought each other for hundreds of years. Based on the evidence of inscribed stone monuments, especially that in the churchyard of Aberlemno, the Picts fought in a distinct manner. They favoured both square and round shields, the square shields being decorated with swirling Celtic patterns, and when faced by cavalry, they formed into a kind of phalanx in which men armed with long spears or pikes protected warriors in the front line armed with shields and swords. The use of long spears carried by soldiers in dense formations became a characteristic of Scots warfare and reoccurred in the later Middle Ages, when the formation was known as a schiltron.
The Picts defended their land with tall stone chimney-like fortifications called brochs. These had no windows, only a door, but were perfect for herding one’s livestock and family into at a moments notice when Scots raiders were sighted. The Picts were not always on the defensive and in 740, the Annals of Ulster record a major assault on Dalriada when the Pictish warlord Angus mac Fergus captured the stronghold and drowned the Scots commander, forcing others to row back to northern Ireland. Eventually, the close contact between the Picts and Scots blurred relations and periods of peace saw intermarriage between the aristocratic families of both sides. In 843 the Scots king Kenneth mac Alpin succeeded to the throne of the Picts. Elsewhere in Britain, the line between Celt and Saxon was still strong and in the 8th century Offa, Saxon king of Mercia, gave physical reality to the cultural divide by erecting a massive earth rampart that ran the length of the Welsh border from Treuddyn to Chepstow. It was not a fortified barrier like Hadrian’s Wall but served more as a boundary marker discouraging cattle raiders. Today, it is called Offa’s Dyke.
POETIC WARRIORS
English poems and Celtic myth cycles provide a remarkably intimate view of what it was like to be a warrior. Take for example The Wanderer, an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poem, which opens with the image of a man sailing alone, across a winter sea.
‘As I recall the slaughter of my comrades, there is no one I can open my heart to. The man mindful of his reputation does not reveal his sadness. Ever since I buried my lord, ever since I lost my companions, I must mourn alone. Now I have left my home land, I sail the icy seas in search of a new lord. A generous giver of gold. A lord who will welcome me into his drinking-hall and divert me from grief.’
He lists the virtues a good, mature warrior should possess, but above all, he must accept the passing of time. ‘Wealth is fleeting, comrades are fleeting. Man is transient.’ It is an enormously melancholic poem and one can imagine that it was written to be recited to older warriors, seated around a table crowded with drinking cups, expressing their own feelings of sadness at the end of their youth and the onset of uncertain middle age.
The spectacle of warfare is captured vividly in the 8th century epic Beowulf, the longest surviving poem written in Old English. The hero is a Geat, an inhabitant of either Denmark or Sweden, and he battles against a monster called Grendel, but the context is one of raids and counter-raids, the very stuff of early medieval combat. The Geats arrive by boat: ‘Boar-heads glittered on glistening helmets Above their cheek-guards, gleaming with gold.’ Animal ornaments were believed to confer special powers on their wearers and the helmets described are typical of types found at Coppergate in York and at Sutton Hoo, known as a Ridge-type helmet based on Late Roman models. The Geats are welcomed by a friendly warlord, giving the poet ample opportunity to describe their equipment: ‘Bright were their byrnies, hard and hand-linked; In their shining armour the chain-mail sang … The sea-weary sailors set down their shields, Their wide, bright bucklers along the wall … Their stout spears stood in a stack together Shod with iron and shaped of ash.’ A byrny was a shirt or tunic of mail, the poet drawing attention to the hand-linked rings that made it up, and this was the principal form of armour worn at this time by professional warriors. They also carried broad, wide round shields with a protruding metal boss in the middle which could be used as an offensive weapon in the crush of hand-to-hand combat. Spears were the most common of weapons, swords being more costly and the sign of higher status.
Recreated battle group of Picts with wardogs. Dominating most of Scotland until the arrival of the Irish Scots, they fought many successful campaigns against the Angles of northern England. [Dan Shadrake/English Heritage]
Beowulf triumphs over his monstrous enemies, but eventually he too faces death and is given a warlord’s burial. His followers ‘fashioned a mound Broad and high on the brow of the cliff, Seen from afar by seafaring men. Ten days they worked on the warrior’s barrow Inclosing the ash of the funeral flame … They bore to the barrow the rings and the gems, The wealth of the hoard the heroes had plundered’ [Translation of Beowulf is by Charles W. Kennedy, first published 1940]. Over a thousand years later, just such a funeral barrow was excavated at Sutton Hoo near Woodbridge in Suffolk and inside was found the helmet, armour, weapons and gems of a 7th century Saxon warrior. This, the most famous archaeological discovery of this period, now lies in the British Museum and provides solid visual evidence for what a warlord such as Beowulf would have looked like.
Either side of Offa’s Dyke, Northern Wales was dominated by the principality of Gwynedd, with Powys lying to the northeast next to Mercia. In the south of Wales, Dyfed covered Pembroke and the west coast, while Gwent included the south-east. Cornwall remained an independent Celtic realm. In Saxon England, the two dominant powers were Mercia in the midlands and Wessex in the south. The original Germanic settlements of Sussex (south Saxons), Essex (east Saxons), and East Anglia (east Angles) lay on the east coast, while the north of England was under the control of Northumbria. The Saxons had won the better land from the Celts, commanding the great lowland areas of rich agriculture and the major trading centres and this, in the long run, would see the Saxon kings become stronger and richer, while the Celts never possessed the resources to challenge them. Both Celts and Saxons, however, were challenged by a new force which entered Britain in the 8th century AD: the Vikings.
In 793, the Laud Chronicle, one of the famous Anglo-Saxon chronicles, records strange events.
‘In this year, terrible portents appeared over Northumbria and miserably frightened the inhabitants. There were flashes of lightning and fire-breathing dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine followed these signs and a little after that raiding heathens destroyed God’s church in Lindisfarne by rapine and slaughter.’
The Vikings had arrived. According to later historians, this was the beginning of the Viking age in Britain, but what is puzzling is why the arrival of these Scandinavian raiders should be considered different from the Danish and Germanic raiders who had appeared before?
Array of recreated weapons of the Dark Ages period in Britain. From left to right: Saxon seax with bone handle; seax with copper alloy fittings; Pictish sword; two Roman spatha-style swords; broad-headed spear. [Derek Clow]
The first answer, of course, is that they were not; they were just given a different name by later historians. But from the point of view of their contemporaries, these later Scandinavian warriors were different in one important respect: they were pagans. Saxon and Celtic Britain was Christian. The Vikings came at first as raiders, seizing treasure and slaves. Their ships would land on a beach and with horses, either brought with them or stolen, they would ride into the hinterland until they had gathered more goods than they could carry. Why the Viking raids expanded into wholesale wars of conquest is still the subject of intense historical debate. The political cohesion of many kingdoms was eroded by years of Viking attacks, the Vikings enjoyed certain strategic and tactical advantages, and there were probably events within Scandinavia that helped precipitate a dramatic change in the scale of Viking incursions. The Laud Chronicle recorded in alarm,
‘And the heathen stayed in Thanet over