Empire: World History - 386. The Picts: Scotland’s Tattooed Warriors (Ep 4)

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

Who were the mysterious peoples who ruled parts of Scotland for 500 years? What is the true origin of the Loch Ness Monster? Is there a secret code behind the Pictish carved stones? What do recent excavations at Rhynie tell us about the Picts? William and Anita are joined by Professor Gordon Noble, Director of the Northern Picts Project and co-author of Picts: Scourge of Rome, Rulers of the North, to uncover the hidden world of the Picts. Summer sale is here: get an annual Empire Club membership for an extra 20% off with code SUMMER26. That's ad-free listening, early-access, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over.   For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Imogen Marriott Editor: Bruno Di Castri Social Producer: Charlie Johnson Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mptopopuuk.com. I'm Derimple. And I'm Anita Arnan. And in today's episode, we're going to be exploring the Picts, the mysterious painted people who ruled parts of Eastern Scotland for five. 500 years. And with us today, we have somebody who's done more than anybody in recent years

to recover the Pictish world from complete obscurity. He's professor of archaeology at the University of Aberdeen. He's director of the Northern Picts Project and co-author of the King in the North, the Pictish realms. Gordon Noble, welcome to Empire. Thanks so much for having me. Very nice to meet you. Gordon, very nice to see you. We had a lovely trip together to Berghead last summer and I've been trying to get you on the show ever since. So it's very good to see you here in your new dig at East Lomond. Let's just start with the simple question that most people who don't live in Scotland will be asking. Who were the Picks?

And what era are we talking about? So it's a name that's first introduced by the Romans in AD 297. It's in a praised poetry to an emperor of Rome mentioning a group called the Picks. And essentially it means the painted people. So it's a Roman nickname. and for whatever reason that nickname seems to stick for many centuries and as people occupy North East Scotland ruling over what was a really extensive kingdom for the time period and disappear around about 900 AD.

Dastal authors maintained it that they went into battle covered in tattoos and war paint. But Anita's going to be very excited because they were also matrilineal. Kingship passed through the first. female line rather than the male, which is unusual in any society and particularly unusual in the British Isles. I never knew that. I mean, it's school here in Britain. I think many people who are my age will remember the first thing you do in history is you

colour in sort of a paint by colour, Pictish person, you know, and sort of the winding tattoos on their bodies. But why didn't they tell us about the matrilineal succession? So, I mean, almost every other political system, as everybody knows, who's listened to this, a podcast and particularly in the British arms ran through the male line. Why did the Picts do something so very different? Well, it's a subject of a great debate that one.

In fact, Bede actually says it's only at times of stress really that they might actually inherit through the female line. Having said that, you know, Pictish succession does look quite complicated and it says very rarely father to son at least until the later period. So there does seem to be a real period of flux in terms of actually how Pictish succession was made up. But to be honest, you know, our sources are so vague really that we don't even know if there was always a single Pictish king,

how often there were sub-kings or sub-rulers, and certainly Pictish rule seems to be divided at certain times throughout the history of the picks. It's not categorically that it was matrilineal. It just sometimes when they felt like it might have been. Is that what we were saying? Yes, absolutely. That's what Beed seems to suggest.

So unless we get much, evidence would be hard to say more about that. But certainly it seems rare as far as we can tell in terms of this session of the Pictish kings. Gordon, you mentioned bead twice, as if we're all mates. You're talking about a man that we at school learn as the venerable bead. One of Britain's earliest historians. By the way, Willie, you'll love this.

I got into so much trouble once, the first essay. I wrote the venereal bead, and they thought I was taking it. Did it really? No, I couldn't spell. Anyway, could you tell us more about the venerable bead? I mean, the venerable bead? Well, he's this great English historian who's writing about the, well, mainly the ecclesiastical history of England, or what became England.

And he mentions the picks at various times, but obviously that information is filtered through the sources that he's able to access. So as well as the kind of matrilineal aspect, he also talks about the picks coming from Scythia, which is, you know, a modern day area of places like Ukraine. That's probably because he's able now to access classical sources that talk about, you know, tattooed warriors, bothering the Roman Empire. And he's putting two and two together and suggesting that the picks came from Scythia. another noted origin point for an enemy of Rome, really. So there's lots of misinformation, I guess, fluctuating and being communicated through authors like beads. So it really adds to the kind of mysterious air of the picks in terms of we have lots of snippets about them,

but that's clearly not always right in terms of what's communicating about these people who are living north of the Roman frontier. Gordon, before we leave women, I know Anita will be very keen to pursue this. One of the most famous, possibly the largest, the most famous, Pictish stone does have a Pictish queen or a large image of a Pictish aristocratic woman of some sort, riding side saddle with warriors around her and hunting dogs and a huge penangular brooch on her front, the Hilton of Cadbull slab now in Edinburgh. So that again is a little bit of evidence that when you don't see in English, sculptures of the same period, any pictures of women. But you do see it very prominently on the

biggest ever Pictish lab. In the burial record, you know, places like London, Lakes and Fife, we have burial monuments that are full of the burials of women. So there's clearly something interesting going on there in terms of pictures society. But it's probably things like archaeology and genetics is going to tell us more about the relationships between people in the picture period than our traditional historical sources, perhaps. Let's start, Gordon, with what your excavations have actually found, because particularly Riney is a discovery that really began to change everything. That's when I first heard about you.

Where is it? And what is it about that excavation that began to change, or how we looked at Pictish symbolstones, but also the picks in general? Yes. So Rine is fascinating. And it's amazing that, you know, I didn't myself know much about this, or indeed know anything about the picks, really, until I went to university. It's quite embarrassing how little we teach our kids in Scotland about the picks.

Anyway, I started this, what I thought was going to be a sideline project, to look at Pictious Society through this place called Rainey. And it's a place that's about 40 miles west of Aberdeen, the city of Aberdeen, where I'm a professor at. And it's got this really interesting place name, which comes from this early Celtic word, re for king. and it seems to mean a place associated with a great or a sacred king. But we don't have any historical sources to this place.

But that's not surprising. We only have a handful of pictures places actually mentioned in our sources. And from Riney, there's this whole series of carved stones, so that the picks are famous for their carved stones. And probably the most impressive one is this carving called the Riney Man. And this was found by the farmer in 1978, plowing his field. He hit this big stone, probably broke his plow, and he turned the stone over, and there was this figure carrying this axe over his shoulder with big pointy teeth. Such an arresting image.

And the question was, you know, what earth is this stone doing in this arable field, just the south of this very small village of Rainey? And so we set out to find out more. And in the same year that Rainey Man was found, they flew over the site and they recorded these crop marks on top. top of this glacial knoll, so this kind of naturally prominent place and landscape. And to cut a long story short, that series of enclosures that were identified from there turned out to be this really wealthy Pictish settlement, befitting of that title, you know, a place associated with a great king. So we had large timber buildings, some sort of rampart or enclosure, and inside we find

all the kind of material you might associate with elite places of this time. So they were importing wine amphra from the eastern Mediterranean, glass from Western France, from drinking goblets. So it's a kind of thing we associate with courtly society in the early medieval period. And this material has never been found this far north or east before. So this was really exciting. Hang on. Hang on. Mediterranean wine. Now, wait a minute.

Because that wasn't in my Pictish colouring book. So I mean, that would suggest that if you're finding eastern Mediterranean wine in Aberdeenshire, the picks what trade is? I mean, is that too much of an influence in the 5th century that they were doing foreign trade? Absolutely. I mean, this material seems to be coming up the west coast of Scotland and Britain more generally. It's probably associated with the metal trade in places like Cornwall. So this material is coming in as part of early Christian networks and early trading networks

in this post-Roman period in the so-called dark ages. And it's finding its way all the way up to Riney, which is 40 kilometres away from the coast. Brilliant. So it's amazing this material found its way there. And it just shows you how powerful these people were at Riney that were able to tap into those trade networks.

And we would never have guessed that. We had these amazing carved stones from Riney, but we had no clue that this really, really wealthy settlement was located there. And then that just turned out. be the tip of the iceberg. So we started working in the wider landscape. And there's this huge hill fort that overlooks Rhinie called Tapanoth. And it's got this 17 hectare enclosure. It's a huge, huge hill fort, one of the largest known from Northern Britain. And this was always thought to be,

you know, a prehistoric monument. But we excavated it and dated it to the Pictish period. And it's got something like 800 houses inside it. So this was a huge community. And they kind of scale of society, there had no idea existed in the Pictish period. So, you know, almost overnight, we've overturned so many things about Pictish society and really showing it's way more complex than we perhaps assumed. We had a series on Gaza last year and those torpedo-shaped jars from Gaza, the sweet wine. Was it one of those? Was it the ones with the kind of little thing at the bottom? Was it Gaza wine or Alexandrian wine? They seem to come from various locations in the in the Eastern Med train.

It's hard to tell from the tiny shares that we found exactly where it might have came from. But yeah, it was just so remarkable to find that material. And we found it within, you know, the first few days of excavating at Rainey in 2011. And I was able to phone up, you know, one of my friends who is a specialist in these imports and say, well, we've got this very strange looking pottery and we've got this glass with white trails. And he was like, well, you've got an import site here. And that's just amazing.

just amazing. And it was just meant to be a sideline project. I was doing prehistoric archaeology, but I've always been interested in the picks. But I'd never really pursued that because people were like, well, don't bother doing the archaeology of the picks because there's nothing to find out and you'll just get lost in the symbols and their lives, their lies madness, essentially. Many fine scholars have gone down that way far, exactly. Gordon, last summer, I drove up to see you in Berghead, which is another spectacular site. We always knew that Berghead was there with this mysterious well system down at the bottom. But you were the first person, again, that firmly dated that to the picks.

You've suddenly given the picks a whole range of sites and a whole load of Pictish fortifications and towns, which we didn't know existed. Yeah, absolutely. So this is a slightly different kind of site. So it's a promontory force that sticks out into the Murray Firth, this amazing kind of connected area of sea. And it's this huge fortification. And it was first identified in modern period in the 19th century, and they did various excavations after the modern town of Burghead had to be built over around about half of the Pictish Forks there and destroyed a huge chunk of the site. And again, people are like, well, you know, don't really go to Burkhead because there's nothing to find out. But in those 19th century excavations, again, they found some of amazing carvings, carvings of bulls, about 30 individual monuments with bulls.

with bulls on them. There's only six surviving today, sadly. One in the British Museum, one in the National Museum and others held locally. One in Elgin, isn't there? Yeah. And what are these carvings? What do they denote?

And what we've got there is really a fortress and settlement that dates to when the Pictish kingdoms are at their height in the 7th and 8th centuries. So this is really when the over kingdom of the Picts is established. and they're creating these huge fortresses with walls that are eight metres thick, six metres high. It's like, you know, kind of castle architecture in the Pictish period. And then a huge settlement inside with these long-distance connections being demonstrated through the material culture. So again, it's really, really overturning what we thought we knew about the picks.

Do you know, there's something else that's going to overturn the peace and quiet of Burkhead. I'll tell you that for a fact, because I think it's the site where Christopher Nolan filmed part of The Odyssey so just expect lots of people in Tabarts taking little visitor groups up there I mean it's just a crazy thought isn't it?

You know, Bronze Age epic being filmed in the largest Pictish fort in Scotland. I kind of find it delicious. Let's talk about it. I mean, I'm just keen to get a little more meat on the bones of this very sort of scanty history that we were always given,

which was, you know, just basically nothing deeper than skin deep, than the tattoos. And Willie, I mean, you've been really into the stones rather than the skin, haven't you? I am obsessed with, like many people, because despite many, many works coming out on them and generations of scholars looking at these stones,

starting with a man called Romilly Allen who went around the Highlands with a horse and cart photographing every one of these pictures of stones. And I bought, I got a copy of this fantastic, fat, leather-bound volume that he did in the 19th. And his work really has not been improved upon as a record of these beautiful, beautiful carvings. But give us an idea because, as you say, it's something that's driven generations of scholars bad because they come up with elaborate theories.

And there's actually, there's very little to prove what is true, what isn't. Yeah, there are amazing things. And it's why I got interested in the picks, you know, and I was studying art history. And my lecturer put up some slides of some of these symbol stones. And again, I grew up in North East Scotland, I'd never seen any. And I was just like, my goodness, what are these? And why aren't they better known? So the early examples are often just the symbols on large boulders or standing stones.

And there are things like abstract symbols, things we call double discs and crescents, but also these amazing animal carvings. The picks are so famous for being amazing craftspeople. So we've got things like wolves, bulls, other animals. and they're so well represented. Salmon, snakes. Yeah. And so, yeah, what do they mean?

And so that's been one of the big things that's trying to crack the code. And certain stones give us a few clues. So you mentioned Willie Dunferlandi. And you can see that there's people on chairs, maybe even thrones, and they're labeled with these symbols, often in pairs. So the most likely explanation is that some sort of naming system.

So the symbol, represent sounds or words almost like, you know, kind of hieroglyphic or logographic kind of representation. But unless we find a Rosetta stone, we're not really going to be able to say more. But this is where archaeology comes in. And so one of the other big mysteries was, you know, how old were they? What contexts are they in? So excavations at a place like Rainey shows that Riney man and one of the standing stones with two symbols on, a salmon and a Pictish beast, They stood at the entranceway into what was probably this royal complex at Riney. So you can see the advertising at the front door essentially, you know, that people of high status and people with influence are located at site.

And we're also finding stuff at Riney in the ground, which resembles what you see on the stones. So you can begin to date the stones through these archaeological associations. So we found a little miniature axe that looks like the Rinyman carries. We found these amazing clay molds for making animal figurines, which resemble the animals you see on the stones. And you can date those archaeological layers. You can actually see that the stones date back to the third, four centuries, perhaps, and certainly the fifth, sixth centuries. It's a bit earlier than people maybe had generally assumed. You mentioned this extraordinary find of Eastern Mediterranean wine in the middle of Aberdeenshire,

But the symbols themselves have many echoes to very distant art networks, don't they? There are clearly Byzantine borrowings. There's images that we know are Coptic monks from Egypt. And there's even monsters and images that appear to sort of be echoes of stuff coming out of Sasanian Persia. I mean, these are very, very far away places to be influencing carfsmen sitting outside Aberdeen and Inverness and Perth. Gordon, I want to talk about something shiny and exciting, the silver, because the Gaul Cross Horde is one of the great stories of your project. Tell us a little bit about it. Yes, so we don't have an awful lot of actual complete pigtish objects are often not in context, certainly. So as archaeologists, even at places like Rine, we're generally finding what people throw away, so the bits and pieces scrap and the like.

So it's amazing to find more complete objects, but often they don't have context because they were found in the 19th century. So in the 19th century at Golcross, an improving farmer had blown up a stone circle with dynamite to remove it from his land. And during that process of destruction, he'd found these silver objects. But unfortunately, only three objects were retained. And one was a beautiful silver hand pin, which is a style of dress pin that ultimately goes back to Roman style. A bangle and a piece of silver chain. So we went back to the fine spot to say, well, not really thinking we'd find anything else. But we involved a local metal detectorist and the National Museum of Scotland, my colleague Martin Goldberg.

And we started scanning in the field around about where we thought this destroyed Stone Circle was, which was a prehistoric monument, so earlier than the picks, but clearly they'd buried their silver next to this ancient monument, presumably to go back and get it, or maybe a gift to the gods, perhaps. But anyway, we started scanning the field, and we very quickly began to find silver object after silver object, and eventually we recovered over 100 pieces of silver. Good day's work.

Yeah, it was not bad. Some of it was Pictish in style, and some of it was Roman. So we had things like clipped Roman coins, bits of Roman weaponry and jewelry and tableware and the like. And this is an example of how picks were getting a hold of Roman material, things like silver and glass, melting it down, reworking it, and creating objects and fashion that was very much in the pictures style, but also perhaps relating to Roman military traditions, for example. So it just shows you, you know, revisiting some of these early fine spots can really uncover so much more. And again, we were able then through all this new material culture to begin to actually reassess

the chronology of some of these early Pictish objects and again relate them to the Pictish stones. So some of the material culture we find at places like Gold Cross and Norwich Law, you get, you know, for example, symbols incised onto silver objects. So again, it shows you that the symbols on the stones were just, you know, part of a wider Pictish culture and the symbol system has had a wider currency, essentially. And I'm desperate to ask you this. There's a charming TV series called The Detectorists. I don't know whether, you know, something they're all archaeologists watch religiously.

It's very lovely. It's a drama. I mean, it's fabulous. But these two people who sort of tirelessly go. looking at farmers plowed fields, looking for something. And I just want to know from you, when you pick up something, an object, that has not been touched by human hands for thousands of years. I mean, you sound like a cool customer when you're chatting to us, but what was going on in your heart and your head at the time?

Oh, it was absolutely incredible. It was, I think it was, for some reason we chose to do it in December, and it was like snowing and it wasn't a pleasant experience. But when you begin to find that sort of material culture, it's just incredible. And the same with Riney. As I say, we had no idea we're going to find all this, you know, objects from far-flung places and really uncover this Pictish world. So it's hugely exciting.

And even as an archaeologist, it's still amazing to me that, you know, you can take the turf off, like this site at East Lomond where we're working on just now. And you're straight down on to buildings and structures and finds from the Pictish period from, you know, 1,500 years ago. That's just an incredible thing, really, isn't it? This material is still there. That's literally what you're doing this morning. Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Colomber is also, you know, a fantastically interesting character. You may know him as Saint Columba, the monk Columbar, but, you know, not so well known beyond the British Isles. Just give us a little, you know, summary of who Colomber was. So he is the man credited with converting the picks, and he left Ireland under something of a cloud. Gordon, he was accused of murder, wasn't he? Well, I think so, yes.

And he goes across, escapes to what is now Scotland. And he sets up this famous monastery at Iona, which is still the major place of pilgrimage, a little offshore island just off the island of Mull on the west coast of Scotland. Like many regions in the world, the only way we tend to know about the pagan religion is through the eyes of, you know,

Roman sources and laterally Christian, sources. So in Pigland, there's the life of Colombo who's credited with converting the northern picks. And in that life, they talk about Colombo going to the fortress of Brothé, who's a really powerful king in late 6th century. And this is a documented figure, so he appears in other sources. He's a real king. And Colombo goes to his fortress, which is roundabout Loch Ness. above him and he talks about the court of the king

and in the court of the king is a figure called a magi a wizard or a druid perhaps it's amazing because Colomba and the magi begin to have battles to court the king's influence so they're both like

trying to control the weather they're both blessing or cursing wells for example so you get this insight into this pagan world. But how true is it really in terms of it's hard to know in this Christian world whether they're deliberately creating this

binary opposition between the pagan magi and the more successful early Christian saintly figure? But it gives you some clues about things like wells and natural places seem to be important to the picks. From the archaeological record we know that caves are important in terms of places of death and transformation.

And we also get insight in things like quartz stones, which seem to be healing stones. And we find these on archaeological sites are called painted pebbles. And we find a few at Burkhead last year. So these might be charm stones or healing stones. So there's clues, small snippets, about what the pre-Christian religion might have been.

I mean, the clues are so teeny, tiny tantalizing. It just sort of builds up this really mysterious, picture that surrounds these painted people. There is another mysterious thing we're going to talk about after the break. You're going to love it, don't miss it. The first sighting of the Loch Ness monster. Join us after the break. Welcome back.

Now, Gordon, I sort of talked about Nessie before the break. I want to talk about Nessie now. Tell us a bit more about this first sighting. Yes, so this is another episode in the life of Colomber, where Colomba is again battling with the Pictish Magi over various other episodes. But at one point he goes to Loch Ness and he tries to cross the lock, but the Magi whips up the winds and a storm and creates all sorts of havoc. And at one point, they encounter this monster on the lock,

which, you know, is it nessy? Who knows? It's definitely nessy. It's got to be nessy. It's not a thing. Nita, you and I will have words about this after. We'll fall out about this. It's not nessy.

Okay, but something. And the story goes that something is conjured up in the chaos. Columber, what, he raises his hands and what sort of calms the storms? I mean, it's all miracle versus miracle at this time, isn't it? It is. It is, yeah. So it's probably quite fascinating to think about. about what early Christian religion looked like

and what these magi were doing wasn't actually that dissimilar in many ways. So it's really, really fascinating to get a glimpse into that world. But obviously, these stories are kind of fantastical, really. But it is this really interesting mention of this monster in Loch Ness. Gordon, I'm very disappointed to see you take Anita's

rationalist view of these things. Do you mean it's the same view? Yes, I know. It's odd. Well, I'm an archaeologist rather my story instead. Well, I mean, you know, also you don't listen to fairies. But the thing is, okay, you know, what it tells us is that, you know, whoever wants to win hearts and minds has to also win the imagination.

And this is a real battle of the imagination between, you know, the Pictish world and then this new faith that Colomber is bringing. It isn't about salvation. It's about I can do the bigger miracle. And because healing the sick and talking to animals, you know, Dr. Dooletling it, all of this is part of the Colomber mythology, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. So it's great to get these insights into these figures.

Again, how much weight can we put in these sources? I think it's certainly very possible that, you know, Brothé, this powerful king, did have some sort of magical druid-like figure in his court. You know, this would have been largely a pre-Christian context. And on some Pictish stones, you actually see these really interesting figures, like the Rainey Man, who seem to be part human, part, you know, animal. So, you know, are these kind of shamanic figures, are they actually magi we see on some of these stones? So it's really, again, interesting to think about how the imagery you see on the picture stones might be grounded in, you know, everyday belief. and some of that is almost certainly kind of a pre-Christian character.

So the Rhinely Man, for example, is carrying this axe that is very, very similar to the axe found in the famous Sun Who ship burial, buried next to the king, who many people assume is Redwald. And it's an axe type that's associated with slaughter of animals. And this is the kind of thing that early pagan sacral kings might be associated with. So again, we have these historical sources, but hopefully the archaeological record will begin to tell us more and more about these early Christian figures, but also maybe these pre-Christian magi or druids within Pictish society. Now, Gordon, one thing that's very important to explain people, perhaps, is that when the picks are converted to Christianity, we begin to see signs of Christianity in Pictish art. They don't drop the symbols, these mysterious figures, the V-rods and the crescents and the Zos and the Zos.

redrogs and the double discs and the famous swimming elephant symbol, which if you haven't seen it, go and Google it now. It's one of the most beautiful of all the Pictish symbols. These continue on into early Christian art. So you get this weird conjunction of different worlds. Take us there for a minute. Yeah, absolutely. So we often think of, you know, this conversion point and then everyone's Christian. It's all, you know, a complete transformation within society.

But as you say, we see things like the Pictish symbols continue on to these monuments. we see some of these mask-wearing or animal head figures appear on Christian cross-slabs. So it may well be that some of these monuments are kind of broaching two-face, really. They're putting weight on both religions, I guess. So yeah, you get this continuation of the symbol tradition. And you see some of these Pictish animals appearing in the early Celtic manuscript. So one of the figures in the Book of Daro, the evangelist, symbol of the lion's state mark is very similar to a Pictish animal. And this has led lately

to a wonderful new academic battle between Scotland and Ireland, because my old teacher of history of art at Cambridge, Isabel Henderson, 20 years ago put forward this idea that the closest thing you get to the Book of Kells is nothing in Ireland. It's actually the Niggstone, one of the Christian Pictish stones in a place called Nigg in the Black Isle north of Invennes. And this has heated up lately because we've had a new book published this year that has angered the Irish and put their backs right out because the book of Kells is usually said to me the ultimate symbol of Irish civilization. But it's now being seriously mooted that not only are many of the evangelist

symbols and so on that you see in the insular manuscripts, the Celtic-style gospel books from this period, very like Pictish animals. But there's now actually a very well-documented scholarly argument that the Book of Kells itself may have been produced in Pictland. The Book of Kells is so supremely important to the Irish sense of itself, if you like. And just for those of you who may not know, sometimes it's known as the Book of Colomber. and it's this beautiful illustrated manuscript, the Celtic gospel, if you like. It's an absolutely exquisite and priceless thing. And for, you know, the Irish to be challenged that theirs wasn't first and theirs wasn't the most important,

I would put it to you, Gordon, that's quite a lot. I mean, if you're going to suggest that actually the picks were responsible for it, you're going to start a fight, aren't you? Well, maybe a fight, but probably a very gentle academic debate is the case. in this case. I've tried bringing this up in Dublin and it wasn't that gentle. Yeah, maybe it depends on the context. No, this is a wonderful book by Victoria Whitworth

who's looked at the Book of Kells and one element of that study is looking at the possible origin points for this amazing manuscript. And, you know, one of the perplexing aspects of the picks is, you know, why do we have so few surviving sources or illuminated books, for example. And back in the day when we had no or very little archaeology,

there wasn't really a strong case to say the pics were particular innovators in some of these wonderful works of art. But that's, again, hugely transformed in recent years. So major excavations at Port Mahometh, which is on the Tarbert Peninsula, north of Inverness, has identified this monastery of the Picts, where we again we have carved stones which resemble some of the beautiful illuminated pages in the book of Kells on the sculpture. So this is why Isabel Henderson suggested, well, there could be a link here. And the excavations uncovered amazing evidence for vellum productions,

so they were producing books there at Port Mahomet. And huge amounts of sculpture and other material culture, which is rich in imagery. The pics were amazing at carving and making objects with animals and people on them. They're some of the best artists really in Western Europe in this time period. So it really begins to add weight to, well, major works of art like the Book of Kelles could conceivably have been made in Pickland. You brave man, conceivably. Are you frit, Gordon? Are you frit for saying it?

Claim it, man. Claim it if you want to start a proper fight. Yeah. No, I mean, they think it's really, really interesting. It's probably not resolvable unless, you know, can we trace the origins of the vellum of the Book of Calhals? You could probably do that, couldn't you know? Yeah. I bet the Irish wouldn't let you take a sample, though. They're too worried. Well, I think you can do it, you know, non-invasively these days. So, yeah, that would be one way to begin to settle the debate. Oh, I'd love that. I would love that. Trinity, we'd have to do one of those sort of, you know, colonial reclamation projects. demand that the Irish give back what is truly, truly the work of the Scots and the picks. Can I just say all I can see in my mind's eyes like a West Side Story jets and sharks with,

you know, sort of the Irish and the Scottish academics fronting up to each other and hitting each other with pencils. It's delicious. But what it does tell us, but apart from this controversy, you know, you were talking, I just want to go back to something that is still in my head, which is this international influence on the world. of the Picts. I mean, we talked about wine, of course we did. But we, you know, we should also talk about the art and the influence of, you know, sort of iconography and imagery. I mean, tell us a little bit about what you've seen and where you think those influences, how far away, how far they've travelled to come into that Pictish art language, if I can put it that way.

I think, as Willie was saying, you know, there was, you know, lots of assumptions about Pictish art and back in the 20th century there was this famous book, The Problem of the Picks. And some of the work on the art history then was very much suggesting the picks were late to the game. They were copying sources further south. Now all this new dating in places like Rhinni and places like Dunacare, another location with symbol stones, and were able to show that the Picks were major innovators in things like animal imagery. And so they themselves are clearly a major contributor to these insular art styles. So this, you know, Irish, English, Scottish, British art style. So they weren't late to the game at all. Clearly, they were major

innovators, which again gives ammunition to this idea that works like the Book of Kells could be produced in Pickland. But yeah, they've got all sorts of influences. They've got Roman influences. They've got Anglo-Saxon influences. And laterally, Scandinavian influences, you begin to see influences on Pictish art in the ninth century with the adoption of Scandinavian imagery and art styles as well. You introduced at the beginning this lovely idea of this eastern Mediterranean wine coming all the way to Aberdeenshire, but there's also Eastern Mediterranean monks depicted on Pictish terms. Very specifically, one of the most frequently depicted images that we know for shore is the monks, Paul and Anthony. And St. Anthony was the founder of Christian monasticism.

He lived in a monastery near the Red Sea. And I've been to St. Paul's monastery, also on the Red Sea, which was where his friend, St. Paul lived. And there is a little scene of two monks breaking a host, which is exactly the same as one of the stones at St. Vigians and Persia, one of the great Pictish museums. If you're coming to Scotland this summer, if you live here already, there are two wonderful Pictish Museum, St. Vigians and Meagel, and you can just lose yourself in these Pictish stones for a whole day in either of those. But they have these incredibly wide sources, these monks from Egypt and the middle again of Persia. It does my head in, just thinking of it. While your head is done in, I'm just, you know, on the sort of Scandinavian influence that

Gordon, you were talking about, I mean, that has to be with the travels and adventures of the Vikings. And we should say, you know, that this beautiful fight that I have in my head between Scottish and Irish academics over the Book of Cal's, you know, the Book of Cal's may not even have survived because of the Vikings. I mean, we should sort of tell the story of the near destruction of Iona. So, I mean, what happened? We're talking about around 795 to 810 AD. I mean, those are the dates that we're talking about. Yeah. So famously, there's various attacks on Iona by the Vikings.

and that would have been in the kingdom of Dariada, which is this kingdom of the Scots-Galic speakers. But that seems to be partly controlled by Pickland at various points in the 8th and 9th century. Probably less well known is that the Vikings were also being major problems for Pictish kings as well. So some of the Dainlow armies, for example, descend upon Pickland and they overwinter in Pickland in the 9th century.

They kill various Pictish kings. And this is probably the roots of, or one of the roots of the demise of the Pictish kingdoms, which, you know, disappear from view around about 890s, 900 AD. And major sites like Berghead, so far, you know, all our radiocarbon dating, adds up to this major destruction and abandonment of this huge settlement, this northern Pictish powerhouse, in the same time period in the kind of 880s, 890s, 900s. And at Berghead we've got material that's coming from the Dane Law that we found in our excavations. Dan law being the bit of Northern England that the Vikings had seized,

bits of Yorkshire and, and Timeside and so on. Yeah, that's right. So again, it's amazing to begin to find in our Pictish sites material that talk about these connections and this major period of strife in this time in which all these Pictish kings are going into battle and being killed by Vikings. And very close to Burkhead is this amazing monument called the Swaino Stones. It's named after a Scandinavian king, but it's a Pictish monument. It's a wonderful, wonderful stone. Huge tall thing.

That's right, but six metres high. And on the back is this incredible battle scene, which may well be a battle between the picks and the Vikings. And it's almost, you know, like a capstone to this Pictish period. And there's a brooch, isn't it? there's one of these tolls toll towers yeah well yeah it's lots of a debate about some of the imagery there but I think it's you know Professor Jane Geddes for example has recently interpreted it as a major battle between the pics and the Vikings love it and we've also been able to date date the stone through archaeological association archaeological association to round about 900 AD so it matches the end date of burgh heads so is it actually showing

the demise of Burkhead, perhaps. Gordon, you've been absolutely fantastic. And my visit last summer to Burkhead with you was one of the highlights as I've been looking out from this fantastic promontory with the sun setting and your diggers finding extraordinary finds just behind me on the hill. It was one of the most wonderful days. We're going to be going back to the Vikings in the next episode. We've got the wonderful Eleanor Baraklough, our favorite Viking expert returning to this series to take us on two episodes into what the Vikings did in the first and then what the Vikings thought and then mythology and religion. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful stuff in the second to wrap up. And you know what? If you don't want to wait and you want to listen to

Eleanor right this second, all you have to do to access all our exclusive bonus episodes, join Empire Club. Follow the link in the episode description. Till the next time, we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arndh. And goodbye from me and with many thanks to Gordon, William Duremberg.