Early Scotland

Picts, Romans, Gaels and Vikings. History, archaeology and art. Pictish symbols and sculpture. See more at the Senchus blog.

[earlyscotland]

Published in 2007, this is the printed version of Dr Fraser Hunter’s lecture at Groam House, a museum of Pictish sculpture in Rosemarkie, Scotland.

[earlyscotland]

Two of the monuments in the fine collection of Pictish sculpture at St Andrews Cathedral Museum in Fife, Scotland.

[earlyscotland]

Victorian illustration of a Pictish warrior, from Cassell’s Illustrated History of England.

[earlyscotland]

The Neighbours of the Picts by Professor Leslie Alcock, published in 1993 by Groam House Museum Trust.

[earlyscotland]

Dun Carloway broch on the Scottish island of Lewis is a huge stone tower built in the Iron Age. Photograph by James Valentine, 1871.

[barbarianconspiracy-deactivated]

Rear of a reconstructed Pictish cross-slab from Meigle, Perthshire

c.8th-9th centuries CE.

[wanderthewood]

St Andrews, Fife, Scotland by Dave Cleghorn

[vikingstrathclyde]

Front cover of the published version of Professor Barbara Crawford’s 2004 Govan Lecture on hogback tombstones of the Viking Age.

[vikingstrathclyde]

The English king Athelstan meets the kings of Alba and Strathclyde, together with the lord of Bamburgh and the Welsh king Hywel the Good, beside the River Eamont near Penrith on 12th July 927. Illustration by Archibald Webb (1887-1944).

[earlyscotland]

St Columba embarking from Ireland to Scotland in 563 AD. Illustration from The Church of England by H.D.M. Spence (1898).

[letsliveinpeace]

Callanish standing stones, Isle of Lewis 2015

[barbarianconspiracy-deactivated]

Brooches and Pictish symbol-inscribed plaques from a silver hoard found on Norrie’s Law, Fife, Scotland.

c.7th century CE.

[earlyscotland]

Pictish symbols, a hunting scene and other figures carved on a Dark Age stone at Aberlemno in Angus. Illustration from John Stuart’s Sculptured Stones of Scotland (1856).

[earlyscotland]

View of the River Add from the summit of Dunadd hillfort in Argyll. The fort was a stronghold of early Scottish kings in the Dark Ages.

[earlyscotland]

Pictish symbols (a salmon and the mysterious 'Pictish beast') on the Craw Stane at Rhynie in Aberdeenshire. Illustration from The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland (1903).

[earlyscotland]

David I, king of Scotland, on a Mitchell's cigarette card from c.1930.

[vikingstrathclyde]

Govan and its Early Medieval Sculpture, edited by Anna Ritchie (published in 1994). A collection of papers on the historical and archaeological significance of the 31 carved stones of the Viking period at Govan Old Parish Church in Glasgow.