Pictish invasion of "BRITAIN"?

Question

Ok I've been studying the Pictish invasions of Roman/Post Roamn Britain and I've come to a bit of a road block. Looking at a map, it would appear as though, throughout the period during which they are said to have occurred (400-500AD), there were other kingdoms, such as the Alt Clut region which was independently British and in no way I can see connected politically to the Romano-British. Also GALWYDDEL which was a "semi-pictish" kingdom that was cut off from pictland with the creation of Alt Clut. Then there were the Independent regions of North and South Rheged. Wouldn't these have acted as Buffer States Between the Picts who seem to be Isolated to the FAR north of the Island, and the Romano-Brits to the south? I'm sure there is more to it and maybe I'm just reading into it wrong. If anyone has a good explaination that could clear things up a bit I'd appreciate it. What I'm looking for is a somewhat detailed description of the often spoke of Pictish Invasions in the 5th Cent.

Answer 1

Yes, it's a mess. When the Romans decided to totally abandon Britain, which actually began in the post-Constantine era, around 310, there was a vacuum of power formed and as we all know, nature hates a vacuum, whether it is political or in science. So small semi-nation-states, or tribal areas, or areas of influence developed, which filled that vacuum. But not very well. Soon enough the Picts, Angles, Saxons and Jutes were all carving up the country-side. As you rightly pointed out, it wasn't an easy process for the Picts to invade south because there were buffer states, local chieftains or lords, that controlled areas. Their movement south was constantly blocked, which is why they didn't get very far.

Answer 2

The origins of the Picts are clouded with many fables, legends and fabrications, and there are as many theories as to who the Picts were (Celtic, Basque, Scythians, etc.), where they came from, what they ate or drank, and what language they spoke, as there once were Pictish raiders defying the mighty legions of Rome. Legend tells us, perhaps incorrectly, that Rome's mighty Ninth Legion, the famous "Hispana" legion, which had earned its battle honors in Iberia, conquering Celtic Spain for Caesar is never heard of again when faced against the Picts (they actually surfaced years later in Israel). We do know that the Picts may have spoken a non-Celtic language, (although many Celtophiles feel the Picts spoke a Brythonic-Gaulish form of Celtic language) as St. Columba's biographer clearly stated that the Irish saint needed a translator to preach to the Pictish King Brude, son of Maelchon, at Brude's court near the shores of Loch Ness. At other times the Pictish king lived at Scone, and we know there often were two separate Pictish kingdoms of Northern and Southern Picts. We know that they were mighty sailors, for the Romans feared the Pictish Navy almost as much as the wild men who came down from the Highlands to attack the villages along the wall. We also know that as far as the 9th century they wrote in stone a language which was not far in design from the Celtic "Ogham" script but was not Celtic in context, although Prof. Richard Cox thinks that it is Norse, which has really turned the carefully galvanized world of Pictish academic opinions upside down. By the legacy of their standing stones, we know that they were great artists as well. It is also well known that the Picts were one of Western culture's rare matrilinear societies; that is, bloodlines passed through the mother, and Pictish kings were not succeeded by their sons, but by their brothers or nephews or cousins as traced by the female line in (according to the scholar Dr. Anthony Jackson) a complicated series of intermarriages by seven royal houses.