LAND OF THE PICTS

New excavations reveal the truth behind the legend of these fearsome northern warriors

- Kate Ravilious

Creeping silently, the warriors emerged from the cover of the trees and made their way toward the fort. Minutes later the fort’s guards were surrounded by semi-naked men, their faces concealed by bushy beards, their bodies covered in tattoos. Some guards were dragged from their posts while others were dispatched with long spears. The warriors then surged over the wall and plundered and laid waste to the town beyond, leaving a trail of death and destruction. Once again, the Picts’ guerrilla tactics had caught their enemies by surprise. At least this is what the Romans, who occupied much of Britain from A.D. 43 to 409, would have the world believe. Given the name Picti— meaning “painted ones” in Latin— these people inhabiting northern Britain stood up to the Roman legions and, against all odds, prevented them from seizing their land.

The Picts emerged some 1,700 years ago in what is now northeastern Scotland—known in some sources as Pictavia, or Pictland—and left virtually no written records of their own and very few traces on the landscape they once inhabited. The handful of Pictish dwellings that have been discovered suggest they were a thinly spread population of farmers living in simple turf-walled houses, not the ferocious barbarians the Romans portrayed.