Fortriu
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Map of part of Pictish Moray, the core of Fortriu. Covesea is the name of a cave containing Pictish art inside. |
Fortriu or the
Kingdom of Fortriu is the name given by historians for an ancient
Pictish kingdom, and often used synonymously with
Pictland in general. It was almost certainly located in around
Moray and
Easter Ross in northern
Scotland, but has traditionally been located in and around
Strathearn in central
Scotland.
The word itself is a modern reconstruction; it is the hypothetical
Old Irish nominative form for a word that occurs only in the
genitive or
dative cases, as
Fortrenn and
Fortrinn respectively. The reconstructed Pictish form would be
Uerturio, and indeed one of the two main Pictish tribes recorded by Roman writers is the
Uerturiones. The change occurred because
Goidelic speakers almost always render what in
Brythonic is either
U/
V,
W or
Gw with an
F; compare for instance the
Scottish Gaelic Fionn with
Welsh Gwyn, both meaning
white.
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Sueno's Stone Located in Forres, this gigantic post-Pictish monument marks some kind of military triumph. |
Traditionally the
kingdom has been seen as centered on central Scotland, equivalent to the
Kingdom of the Southern Picts, with a heartland perhaps in
Strathearn. Over the last century or so this has become a scholarly consensus. However, new research by Alex Woolf seems to have destroyed this consensus, if not the idea itself. As Woolf has pointed out, the only basis for it had been that a battle had taken place in Strathearn in which the
Men of Fortriu had taken part. This is obviously an unconvincing reason on its own, because there are two Strathearns - one in the south, and one in the north - and, moreover, every battle has to be fought outside the territory of one of the combatants. By contrast, a northern recension of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes it clear that Fortriu was north of the Mounth (i.e. the eastern
Grampians), in the area visited by
Columba. The
Prophecy of Berchán tells us that King
Dub was killed in the
Plain of Fortriu. Another source, the
Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, tells us that King Dub was killed at
Forres, a location in
Moray. Moreover, additions to the
Chronicle of Melrose confirm that Dub was killed by the men of Moray at Forres.
The large poem known as the Prophecy of Berchán, written perhaps in the
twelfth century, but purporting to be a prophecy made in the
Early Middle Ages states that
"Mac Bethad, the glorious king of Fortriu, will take [Scotland]." As
Mac Bethad was
Mormaer of Moray before he became
King of Scots, there can be no doubt that Moray was how Fortriu was still understood in
High Middle Ages. Fortriu is also mentioned as one of the seven ancient Pictish kingdoms in a
thirteenth century source known as
de Situ Albanie.
There can be little or no doubt then that Fortriu centered on northern Scotland. Indeed, other Pictish scholars, such as James E. Fraser are now taking it for granted that Fortriu was in the north of Scotland, centered on Moray and
Easter Ross, where most early Pictish monuments are located. Hence, it is in these areas that the united kingdom of the Picts came from, perhaps acquiring southern Pictland after the expulsion of the
Northumbrians by King Bridei at the
Battle of Dunnichen.
Relocating Fortriu north of the Mounth increases the importance of the
Vikings. After all, the Viking impact on the north was greater than in the south, and in the north, the Vikings actually conquered and made permanent territorial gains. So the creation of
Alba or
Scotland from Pictland, traditionally associated with a conquest by
Cináed mac Ailpín in
843, can perhaps be better understood in this context.
# Watson,
History of the Celtic Place-Names, pp. 68-9.# see virtually any work dealing with the Picts before
2005.# Woolf "Dun Nechtain, Fortriu and the Geography of the Picts."# A.O. Anderson,
Early Sources, Vol. I, p. 474.#
ibid, p. 473.#
ibid, p. 473-4.#
ibid., p. 601.# for instance, in the
Pictish Course at the
University of Edinburgh.
* Anderson, Alan Orr,
Early Sources of Scottish History: AD 500-1286, 2 Vols, (Edinburgh, 1922)
* Hudson, Benjamin T., Kings of Celtic Scotland, (Westport, 1994)
* Watson, W. J.,
History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland, (Edinburgh, 1926), reprinted, with an Introduction, full Watson bibliography and corrigenda by Simon Taylor (Edinburgh, 2004).
* Woolf, Alex, "Dun Nechtain, Fortriu and the Geography of the Picts", (forthcoming)
*
Mormaer of Moray
