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Fortriu: The Lost Heart of Pictland

Fortriu: The Lost Heart of Pictland

For more than five hundred years one name runs through the sources for the Picts: the Verturiones of a Roman historian, the Fortriu of the Irish annals. Its kings fought the Northumbrians, the men of Dál Riata and the Vikings, and for a time they ruled most of the north. Yet nobody is entirely sure where Fortriu was. This article, part 3 of our Picts series, follows the name through the real sources and through one of the biggest rethinks in early Scottish history. History, legend and scholarly debate are marked separately.

History (A Name in a Roman History)

The earliest clue comes from Ammianus Marcellinus, a Roman soldier turned historian who wrote in the late fourth century. Describing what he calls the barbarian conspiracy of 367, when Roman Britain was attacked from several sides at once, he writes that "the Picts, divided into two peoples, the Dicalydonae and the Verturiones" (Picti in duas gentes divisi, Dicalydonas et Verturiones), were roaming and causing great devastation, together with the Attacotti and the Scotti. Order was restored by Count Theodosius.

This is one of the very first times the Picts are named as more than one people. Ptolemy's map of the second century, two hundred years earlier, shows no Verturiones at all. Most scholars accept that the name Verturiones lies behind the later Gaelic Fortriu, through the regular sound changes that turned an early Brittonic V or W into a Gaelic F.

History (Fortriu in the Irish Annals)

In the Irish annals, kept at monasteries with close links to Iona, the name appears as Fortriu, genitive Fortrenn. The annalists use it for a Pictish kingdom, and sometimes almost as a name for the Picts as a whole.

The 866 entry matters for the whole story of the Picts. Cruithentúath means the people or land of the Cruithni, and Cruithni is the Gaelic form of the old Pretani name, the name that Greek travellers first heard for the peoples of Britain. It is the same word the Irish used for the Cruthin of Ulster.

History (Beyond the Mountains)

Bede, writing at Jarrow in 731, says Columba came from Ireland in 565 to preach to the northern Picts, "who are separated from the southern parts by steep and rugged mountains". The southern Picts, he says, had been converted long before by Bishop Ninian. Adomnán's Life of Columba, written on Iona about 700, sends the saint to the fortress of King Bridei son of Máelchú, close to the River Ness. Bede calls this Bridei "a most powerful king".

After 900 the name Fortriu fades. In that year the Annals of Ulster call the dying king Domnall son of Constantine rí Alban, king of Alba, and the new name takes over.

Legend (The Seven Sons of Cruithne)

The Pictish origin legend survives in Lebor Bretnach, the Irish version of the Historia Brittonum, and in the Pictish Chronicle preserved in the fourteenth-century Poppleton manuscript. It says Cruithne, father of the Picts, had seven sons: Fib, Fidach, Fotla, Fortrenn, Cait, Ce and Circin. The land was divided into seven parts, and each part took its name from one son.

Some of these names can still be found on the map: Fib in Fife, Fotla in Atholl, Cait in Caithness. Fortrenn is Fortriu. This is legend, not history, but it shows that people in the Middle Ages remembered Fortriu as one of the old divisions of Pictland.

Legend (Columba at the Gates)

Adomnán tells how Columba climbed to Bridei's fortress and found the gates barred against him. He made the sign of the cross and knocked, and the bolts drew back by themselves and the doors swung open. Bridei came out to meet him and honoured him for the rest of his life. In the same book Columba outwits Bridei's druid Broichan, and on the way he faces the beast of the River Ness. These are saints' wonders, written to glorify Columba, but they place the court of a great Pictish king in the far north.

Debate (Strathearn or Moray?)

For more than a century the standard answer was Strathearn and Menteith in Perthshire. Scholars set the seven sons of Cruithne beside the seven provinces listed in De Situ Albanie, a twelfth-century description of Scotland whose informant was Andrew, bishop of Caithness, and matched Fortrenn with Strathearn and Menteith. The royal centre at Forteviot in Strathearn seemed to fit: the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba says Cináed mac Ailpín died in the palace there in 858.

In 2006 Alex Woolf challenged this in the Scottish Historical Review, in his article Dún Nechtáin, Fortriu and the Geography of the Picts. He argued that Fortriu lay north of the Mounth, the mountain barrier of the Grampians, around Moray and Easter Ross. His points included Bede's northern Picts beyond the mountains, Bridei son of Máelchú's fortress near the Ness, and his case that the battle of 685 was fought at Dunachton in Badenoch. James Fraser adopted the northern Fortriu in From Caledonia to Pictland (2009), and most historians now follow it.

Not everyone is fully convinced. Some argue that Fortriu's borders may have changed over five centuries, or that its power shifted south after the Viking attacks, which would help explain why Forteviot became so important in the ninth century. The question is still open.

Debate (What the Ground Says)

Archaeology has been added to the argument:

For many scholars this rich northern landscape, with its sea power and great coastal forts, is just what the heart of Fortriu should look like. Archaeology alone cannot put a name on a map, though, so the case still rests on the written sources.

Debate (Fortriu and the Ulster Connection)

The annalists who wrote about Fortriu also wrote about the Cruthin of Ulster, using the same old name, Cruithni, from the Pretani. Whether the Picts and the Cruthin were one people, or simply both descended from the older Pretani name for the peoples of the islands, is still debated. What the sources show is connection: kings, saints and stories moving back and forth across the narrow sea. It's history shared by everyone who calls these lands home, on both shores of the sea.

Sources

Primary sources:

Modern scholarship:

History, legend and scholarly debate are marked separately in the headings above.

First shared on X @dalriada36963.

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