Iāve always loved ancient Celtic culture. Or at last, I love what I know of it, which is admittedly not all that much outside of a profound love for āCelticā music and deep reverence for the landscapes of Ireland and Scotland. Something in those tunes and sights has always stirred something in me, going back to my earliest memories. To my knowledge, there is no inciting incident that began this association. Itās just always been pat of me.
One example of this that stands out in my memory is from when I was a teenager, young and shallow enough to think that āKing Arthurā with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley was a legitimately good movie. The movie is set during the Roman Conquest of the British Isles, and the titular King Arthur is a Roman cavalry soldier charged with... something or other. Defending Hadrianās Wall, I think? Maybe pushing Roman holdings out past Hadrianās Wall? (Itās been a long time since Iāve seen the movie.)
However, the group of soldiers that āArthurā commands are not Roman Roman. They are Sarmatian, and Arthur is half-Sarmation, half-Roman. They have been conscripted into the Roman Army, and long to go home to Sarmatia when their tour of duty is over. This is highlighted in a scene where they all join together in a mournful song around the fire: āWe will go home, we will go home, we will go home across the mountains.ā
When I first heard this song in the theater, I practically cried. Later, when I bought the DVD, I rewound and replayed the song more times than I can remember. It never occurred to me to buy the soundtrack, for reasons that escape me today. The reason for my obsession with this song was that it was so beautifully, sorrowfully, soul-touchingly CELTIC, in the way that I have so much reverence for.
And yet... despite sounding to me like one of the most beautiful Celtic melodies Iād ever heard, the logic behind it didnāt track. These Roman soldiers were not Celts. They were from somewhere in Europe, and Celtic cultures are unique to the British Isles. Hell they were fighting AGAINST the Picts, one of the most well-known Celtic groups in those isles. How could they possibly have such Celtic customs and airs? What was I missing?
Well, #TodayILearned the answer. My guess is that if anyone ever reads this, many of you already know the answer, have known it since some high school history class, and are chuckling at my ignorance. Believe me, Iām just as flabbergasted at myself as you are.
Celtic culture does not have a āuniqueā origin in the British Isles. The Celts were a widespread cultural group across vast swathes of Europe who fought against encroaching Roman forces on many fronts. They had many cultural hallmarks of what most people know associate with the Scottish/Irish Celtic traditions: a warrior culture, Druidic religion, bards, etc. Part of their warrior tradition was to fight with each other as much as any outside threat. This prevented them from uniting against the Romans until it was too late. The Romans did to the Celts what they did to so many other cultures: conquered them and absorbed them.
However, some Celts had migrated much earlier to the British Isles, and the English Channel offered them far more protection from Roman invasion than their southern counterparts. Obviously the Romans did eventually cross the channel in force, but not until much later. This allowed Celtic culture to flourish and develop, giving rise to the well-established Celtic traditions of Ireland and Scotland that we see today. Celtic traditions in mainland Europe, while not entirely absent, are far less evident because of their absorption into the Roman culture.
Which brings us back to the the movie. This answers my question of how mainland Europeans could be bringing Celtic cultural attributes on a military expedition into Celtic territory. But it also leads to a new question: the movie calls these Roman cavalry conscripts āSarmatiansā, not Celts. So are Sarmatians Celtic? #TodayILearned the answer to that as well.
The answer is:... no. But for the purposes of my personal query about hte subject... kind of. The Celts descended from the Halstatt culture, and the Sarmations are part of a larger group called the Scythians. While the Halstatts and the Scythians were not one and the same, they were contemporary Indo-European cultures, intermingled with each other freely, and had many cultural similarities across a variety of areas. This might explain why the Sarmatian soldiers brought with them a style of music not unlike the music we now associate with Celts in the British Isles: the two groups descend from two OTHER groups who had significant cultural exchange and cultural similarity.
...Or maybe King Arthur is just a movie with a ton of fictional elements and its presentation of āSarmatianā music is incredibly inaccurate.
