The Picts: The History of the People Who Inhabited Scotland in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Shortly after Emperor Hadrian came to power in the early 2nd century CE, he decided to seal off Scotland from Roman Britain with an ambitious wall stretching from sea to sea. To accomplish this, the wall had to be built from the mouth of the River Tyne – where Newcastle stands today – 80 Roman miles (76 miles or 122 kilometers) west to Bowness-on-Solway. The sheer scale of Hadrian’s Wall still impresses people today, but as the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the late 5th century, Hadrian’s Wall was abandoned and Roman control of the area broke down.

The reason Hadrian’s Wall existed in the first place was because the Romans quickly discovered that while the British Isles were populated by an assortment of Indo-European groups with many cultural similarities and affinities, the groups also had differences that often led to violent conflict. After initial conflicts, the Romans and Britons more or less worked together to build a Romano-Briton society in what is today England, especially around London, but to the north, in what is today Scotland, another Celtic group known as the Picts made most of that land their home along with Irish/Gaelic immigrants who became known as Scots. 

Among all of the late ancient and early medieval people in the British Isles, few were as influential as the Picts. First mentioned in Roman sources as one of the primary groups north of Hadrian’s Wall, the Picts became known as barbarians who routinely raided the Romans and later the Britons, taking what they pleased and often returning to their mysterious land north of the wall. Unlike the Britons, who worked with and accepted many elements of Roman culture and society, the Picts were content to remain apart and be “barbarians,” at least while the Romans remained in Britain.