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Scotland, the country where I was born and still live.

I've spent years as an archaeologist, unearthing all sorts of treasures from her past.

For me, it's an ancient and magical place, and I always find the beauty of this country

overwhelming, even humbling.

I've often thought that Scotland's popular history is a bit like that landscape. Always

changing, impossibly romantic, often hidden by mists and low cloud, and above all packed

with legends and heroic characters.

But that's not history, it's mythology.

And it's cursed Scotland's past and present.

How we think about the past shapes our view of today.

So I want to look beyond the legends to find the real story of Scotland.

And it's every bit as thrilling.

The first episode is about the birth of Scotland, a birth that was far from inevitable.

For many centuries, the mountains and logs behind me were home to a patchwork of disparate

peoples and tongues.

It was a land invaded again and again.

So how was it that a loose collection of tribes living in the northern third of Britain came

together and built a kingdom with its own distinct culture and identity?

A kingdom that would change the shape and the destiny of Britain forever.

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So, where to begin?

The first people of Scotland to be described in the written record are the tribes of the

Caledonians.

Two thousand years ago, they joined forces to defend their homeland from a Roman invasion.

In the shadow of a great glen, they faced the Roman army.

The Caledonians fell silent. From their ranks outstrewed the earliest named character of

Scottish history, Calgacus the swordsman.

He is the first to speak to us from the past.

Colgacus was the chosen one.

He was the warrior whom the Caledonian tribes of Northern Britain hoped would lead them to victory.

Defiant, proud, unbowed, he struck the first blow against Roman tyranny.

He made a speech.

We, the choicest flower of Britain's manhood, were hidden away in her most secret places.

Out of sight, we were kept from the defilement of tyranny.

We, the most distant dwellers upon earth, the last of the three...

There's just one problem. They're not his words.

They were put into his mouth by a Roman historian, Tacitus,

writing 20 years later.

Even if someone like Colgach has ever existed,

he would have spoken a language similar to Welsh,

and certainly not in the measured Latin phrases of a Roman.

This is where the mythologising of Scottish history starts.

Be warned, almost everything recorded from those early times

is seen through the eyes of others.

Tacitus had an agenda.

General Agricola and his three Roman legions had marched into North Britain in the late summer of AD 84.

But to make Agricola appear as brave and heroic as possible, it was important to give him a formidable foe, which Tacitus duly did.

At a battle site in the Grampian mountains, he described the Roman encounter with the Caledonian hordes and their fierce leader, Calgacus.

The fighting began with exchanges of missiles,

and the Britons showed both steadiness and skill

in parrying our spears with their huge swords,

or catching them on their little shields

while they themselves rained volleys on us.

He called it the Battle of Mons Graupius,

though beyond his account,

there's no other record of it ever taking place.

But I think there was a battle in the Scottish Highlands

because of one telling detail that Tacitus couldn't have invented.

Agricola was given a triumph back in Rome, the bombastic welcome for a victorious general.

And one other thing we know for certain, the Caledonians lost.

The next day, an awful silence reigned on every hand.

The hills were deserted, houses smoking in the distance, and our scouts did not meet a soul.

Most of the Caledonians, including Calgacus, survived and escaped into the trackless mountains.

The Romans failed to tame the elusive warriors of North Britain.

Frustrated by their hit and run tactics, the Roman legions withdrew to the south.

By the next century, Hadrian's Wall, built from coast to coast, had become the line in

the sand.

To the south lay Romanised Britain.

Roads, towns, villas.

To the north, a myriad of tribes like the Caledonians.

The wall wasn't just a simple stone boundary.

It was an ideological frontier.

It was the end of the world.

It drew the line where civilisation ended and barbarism began.

Not that the Caledonians were very interested in the so-called benefits of Roman rule.

To them, it represented tyranny.

They had their own civilisation.

For over three centuries, the Caledonians kept their independence secure and the Romans

at bay. Then, in AD 409, as the Empire collapsed, they helped expel them from British shores

altogether. The Romans left behind crumbling ruins, and a new name for the Caledonians.

The Pictae.

We know them better as the Picts.

The word means "the painted ones",

for these were the last of the peoples of Britain

to cover their bodies with tattoos.

The term started as a nickname, but came to mean much more.

A powerful northern people, synonymous with pride.

The

Picts tattooed themselves with the same designs and symbols used on their jewellery and stones.

skills that showed them to be no wild barbarians.

More evidence of early Pictish culture has come from the peaty waters of Loch Tay.

Here, four metres down, archaeologists came across the remains of an ancient stronghold,

Fragments of a thatched roof and stumps.

They were the stilts of a building that once stood above the water.

A dwelling in which people loved, lived and fought.

By reconstructing the Cranog, as it's called,

Archaeologists realised just how skilled and well-organised Pictish society must have been.

How do you build one of these?

We had to learn from scratch because obviously we hadn't cut a tradition of building like this handed down to us from generation to generation.

So you've got to line up your supplies, you've got to know how to cut down the trees, you've got to know how to get them in the right place,

you've got to have the right manpower and skilled labour workforce.

The people who built Crown Oaks like this were affluent, they enjoyed a great diet.

Probably communicating and trading further afield.

Some of the little objects that we found do not come from here, such as jet,

which is commonly found from Whitby, northeast England.

So, and one of the theories is it's a big house, this house could sustain maybe a family of 20 or even up to 40 people.

So maybe if there were times of trouble, any other people supporting the community who were living on the shore

in less secure housing could all come in and be secure in what effectively is a water castle.

Cranogs have been found all over Scotland, many from the Pictish period.

Their civilisation had put down roots.

But then, centuries later, the Picts become the subject of one of the most intriguing mysteries

of Dark Age Europe.

They seem to disappear from history forever.

This vanishing act has given the Picts an aura of romance.

They've become a legendary, almost alien people

inhabiting a limbo world,

part historical and part mythological.

But like any good mystery story, there's a twist.

the pits seem to disappear at the exact moment when the Kingdom of Scotland is born.

Understanding why the pits vanished will give us the answer to how Scotland was created.

Back in the 5th century, this is what Scotland looked like.

A patchwork of disparate ethnic groups.

The Picts dominated the north and east.

Welsh-speaking tribes called the Britons lived along the River Clyde and the south.

And to the west, a new people had arrived.

The Gaels.

They were seafarers, originally from Ireland, who stayed and carved out their own territory.

The Gaels are the other key player in the birth of Scotland. The turbulent relationship

between them and the Picts, sometimes allied but more often at war, form the backbone of

our saga. Right at the heart of the Gallic Kingdom was the spectacular hill fort of Dunad,

rising up out of the great flatness of Monevore, which means the big bog. Brooding, menacing

provided the perfect site for defending against attacks from the sea.

This is the entrance to the fort,

and once upon a time this place was defended by walls 10 metres thick.

It wasn't just one wall.

There was a ring of four, each protecting the rising tiers of the fort

up to a stone citadel at the top.

Though the Gaels were as warlike as the Picts, there were clear differences.

They had a separate culture and spoke a different language.

And something even more striking.

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Gallic art had a distinctive and delicate beauty all of its own.

At Dunad crucibles for melting gold have been unearthed,

along with the moulds to cast brooches.

The abundance of such fine jewellery could mean just one thing.

Dunad was home to the kingdom's elite.

The Gaelic kingdom was run from here and its kings were inaugurated in this place in a

ceremony that literally married them to the land they ruled.

For the crowds gathered below, the king would appear in silhouette against the sky and then

And at the appointed moment he would place one foot into this rock-cut footprint,

demonstrating to his subjects that this land was both his servant and his master.

It's the end of the sixth century, and this royal inauguration is unlike any that have gone before.

Although the Picts continue to worship pagan gods, the Gaels have turned to Christianity,

A spiritual invasion driving a wedge between them.

And the monk who ordains the king?

Colombo.

Colombo, son of an Irish chieftain, had travelled from Ireland ten years earlier.

For his support of the Gaelic leaders, Colombo was gifted a small but very beautiful island to the west of Dunad.

It's called Iona, and here Colombo was to found a monastery.

Saint Colombo is widely credited as the first missionary to bring Christianity to Scotland.

And from here, on his new base, on Iona,

he's supposed to have converted all the peoples of this land and beyond

to the new religion.

But was it really that simple?

What we know about Columba has come down to us

from a later abbot of Iona, a rovnin,

who wrote a hagiography entitled "The Life of St Columba",

about 100 years after his subject died.

His book is more fairy tale than history, and it has to be taken with a very large pinch of salt.

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The Gaels were Christian long before Columbus arrived.

The hard graft had been done by numerous missionaries who travelled from Ireland and the Roman Empire.

They remain unheralded and largely anonymous.

But Columbus Monastery on Iona, then just a collection of timber huts,

soon became one of the most important Christian beacons in the whole of Dark Age Europe.

The stability that he brought to the region, the fact that Christianity began to spread

quite quickly through Scotland, I think was testament to the fact that he had friends

in high places and he could also convey to the King and to other clan chiefs not just

that his new religion was important, but the benefits of it were worth having. The benefits

of writing, this new technology, the benefits of scholarship, and that if the king embraced

this then there was something in it for him.

So you think the pure ability to write would have been a magic that would have been central

to what they were able to do?

Well it might have attracted, you know, your clan chief, yes, okay, here is this guy wanting

to talk about the new religion. But if you've got writing, if you can actually articulate

in a more permanent way what you've said or what you've agreed, you've got the basis of

a legal system, you've got the basis of treaties with neighbouring clans or kingdoms, you've

got a clarity about thought and about what you want. And again it's about a power thing.

If you say something, here it is, it's in writing. So I don't think it's quite as simple

simply saying that he was going on a penitential journey.

There was something in it for Colombo,

but there was something in it for the people of this part of the world as well.

It sounds so opportunist in a way.

I think it was. I think it was.

Far from being an isolated island on the fringe of Europe,

Iona lay at its spiritual heart.

At its zenith, the monks of Iona created

The Book of Kells.

The workmanship was exquisite.

Over 10,000 tiny red dots around a single capital letter.

And the dyes came from halfway around the world.

The blue of lapis lazuli from Afghanistan.

Yellow ornament from the Mediterranean.

A 12th century scholar praised the artistry of the Book of Kells.

He wrote, "You might believe it was the work of an angel rather than a human being."

Not everyone was so impressed by the Word of God.

While the Gaels had embraced Christianity even before Colombo,

their Pictish neighbours had remained resolutely pagan.

They put their faith in druids rather than monks,

and relied on an oral tradition rather than the written word.

Cue the most famous of Adivnan's tales,

the account of St Columba's epic journey into the heart of darkness

to convert the Picts.

The Picts were notorious for headhunting.

Columba must have known he was risking his.

Undeterred, he made the perilous journey up the Great Glen and Loch Ness to meet one of

the Pictish kings.

A Dovnan notes that Columba needed an interpreter even to speak with them.

A battle of supernatural wills followed.

On one side, Columbo and his powerful voice, said to sound like thunder.

In opposition, the Druid of the Pictish King. It proved to be an uneven contest.

Columbo brought the Druid close to death, and then in true Christian fashion, relented.

Adolf Nann tells us that the Druid lived.

What he doesn't make explicit was that the Picts stubbornly clung to their pagan beliefs.

It would take many decades and many more missionaries before the Picts would begin to accept Christianity.

The progress of their conversion can be read in their stones.

Some of the best Pictish carvings have been taken to a research building in Edinburgh.

Here they're being preserved and studied using the latest technology.

Individual marks on the stone can be isolated, telling us more about how they were carved,

the technique and the tools used.

The symbols on one stone are particularly fascinating for what they reveal about their

changing beliefs.

You can see how the stone carver has taken tremendous care, not just in the accurate

modelling of the animals, but the way that they're coming out at us in sharp relief

as well. So he's done this. This is by working away at the stones to reduce the background

and to bring the figures out into the front.

Just look at this hind here,

with the fawn interwoven through the legs.

And he didn't have to do that, you know,

he made it very difficult for himself in doing that.

But it gives it a little bit of perspective.

And this is something that they were very skilled at doing,

and they obviously took great pleasure in doing it.

And what about the other side then?

Well, this is...

This carver didn't confine his work to the secular.

He also demonstrated his love of God.

Well, this is really, to my mind, this is the front,

the cross representing the embodiment of Christ,

the promise of salvation as the key central messages

of Christianity being broadcast.

So we have this wonderful interlace decoration

filling the body of the cross.

How unusual is it to get a stone

that has everything in one package?

You know, there's the classic Pictish symbols,

there's the hunting scenes and all the rest,

and the cross.

By this period, we're getting into later Pictish period, we've had maybe three or even four

generations of large scale conversion to Christianity by this time. Christianity was reasonably

well embedded, so we do see this quite happy combination of, yes, the pure central message

of Christianity in the cross coupled with the everyday scenes, with the animal scenes,

with the images of people and symbols as well, of course.

Christianity was the one invader that not only succeeded,

but that outstayed all the others.

The Gallic religion now spanned northern Britain

and acted as glue, bringing together disparate peoples under the umbrella of the Christian

religion. St. Columba's biographer Adolf Nann spotted an opportunity. He succeeded in winning

agreement from over 50 kings from Pictland to Ireland for an ambitious new law called

the Law of the Innocents. It was a Geneva Convention for the Dark Ages, protecting women,

children and monks in times of war.

Women may not be killed by a man in any way, neither by slaughter nor by any other death,

nor by poison, nor in water, nor in fire, nor by any beast, nor in a pit, nor by dogs,

but shall die in their own lawful bed.

Life remained nasty, brutish and short, but Adovnan's rules on warfare were proof of

the civilising influence of Christianity.

For the first time, the Picts had embraced written laws within their society.

The Pictish tribes had it all - a sophisticated culture, powerful trade links and the bread

basket of North Britain.

Their fertile, low-lying homeland provided better harvests and more fighting men, but

it also attracted the attention of others.

By this time, the Angles dominated Middle Britain. They were a Germanic people who'd carved out

a powerful kingdom between the Humber and the Forth Rivers. But now the Angles decided

to push north. Rather than confront them immediately, the Pictish army drew the angles further and

further into hostile territory. The two forces clashed at Dunechton along the River Spey.

The battle is commemorated here on this Pictish stone. It's a sort of bayou tapestry. The

The fight was between bareheaded, long-haired Pictish warriors

and Angles wearing distinctive metal helmets.

It was a one-sided encounter.

The ranks of Pictish spearmen drove the Angles into a loch and slaughtered them.

The final relief shows a raven pecking at the dead face of a fallen prince of the Angles.

To defeat this new enemy from the south,

The Pictish tribes had been forced to unite under the leadership of one king.

The confederation also had a new name - Pictland.

By pinpointing the location of all the Pictish stones,

it's possible to map out the territory of this young kingdom.

The Picts had successfully driven the Angles back south,

and one by one they defeated their other neighbours.

In the West, both the Britons and the Gaels were overwhelmed.

Although they retained their identity, they were forced to pay homage to the Pictish king.

By the middle of the 8th century, Pictland was the dominant kingdom of Northern Britain.

It seemed invincible.

But the next wave of aggressors was a league apart.

Warriors with no time for Christian niceties.

They worship the gods of war, Odin and Thor.

There's a trend among some modern historians to portray the Vikings as a misunderstood bunch.

Instead of bloodthirsty killers, think peaceful traders and farmers in search of new lands to colonise.

But I don't think so. Not all of them and certainly not all of the time.

Accounts by British survivors of Viking attacks are unequivocal.

These guys were after treasure and slaves.

The pagans came with a naval force to Britain and spread on all sides like dire wolves,

robbed, tore and slaughtered not only beasts of burdened sheep and oxen,

but even priests and deacons and companies of monks and nuns.

That description was a contemporary account of a Viking attack on a monastery in England,

But the Vikings weren't choosy. They went wherever the treasure was.

And although the monastery here on Iona was looted on three separate occasions,

it was the Northern Isles that bore the brunt.

There's a treasure trove from AD 800 that tells its own story.

These beautiful, pittish bowls and brooches were found under the floor of a medieval church on St Ninian's Isle in Shetland.

Archaeologists believe that monks probably buried the silver in haste to hide it from a Viking raid.

That no-one returned to retrieve them is a sobering clue to what befell the monks.

Vikings shipped their captives back to Scandinavia and then on to Constantinople

where the slaves were exchanged for silver.

As the Vikings grip tightened there were fewer smash-and-grab raids.

They came to stay.

They colonised parts of Ireland, Northumbria and further north the Hebrides and the territory of the Gaels.

On Orkney and Shetland, it's believed they exterminated the Pictish men.

This was ethnic cleansing, 9th century style.

Many of Shetland's inhabitants are proud descendants of the Vikings.

At an annual boat-burning ritual called Up Hell They Are, they still celebrate their bloody heritage.

This is what people living in Shetland today like to imagine their Viking ancestors look

like - fire-wielding, pagan barbarians. And of course, if you believe the words of the

Viking sagas, it's clear to see where they got that impression. But take away the air

of celebration and the pageantry and consider the horror of waking up one morning and watching

this howling horde unload themselves from their dragon-headed longships onto the beach

below your little stone cottage. This is what the end of the world looks like. This is the

end of everything you've ever known or held dear, unless of course somebody somewhere can

find a way to stop it.

In rides Kenneth McAlpin. He's one of Scottish history's great heroes. The champion who in

AD 840 is supposed to have driven off the Vikings.

This brave war leader appears to come from nowhere, stepping into the power vacuum created after the existing royal line is massacred by the Vikings.

So it is that Kenneth McAlpin unifies Scotland and is famously crowned her first king.

If only history was that simple.

The idea that Kenneth MacAlpin was the first King of Scotland

is a myth that's persisted for centuries,

and it's certainly one that I remember hearing at school when I was a wee boy.

But the historical records tell a different story.

At the time of Kenneth MacAlpin, Scotland did not exist.

It remained five separate peoples, the Angles, the Vikings, the Gaels, the Britons and the

Picts. Each retained their own distinctive culture.

What is more, records tell us that Kenneth MacAlpin and his immediate successors were

described as kings of Pictland, not Scotland. It's not until 40 years after Kenneth died

that we find the first mention of the Kings of Scotland.

So how did we get from Pickland to Scotland?

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There's one document that reveals the secret.

It's one of the most precious manuscripts of Scottish history

and it's the only contemporary Scottish chronicle that covers the period.

Historians feel that much of the document can be trusted

because it can be cross-referenced with chronicles from other kingdoms.

I'd expected to find it in an archive in Scotland.

But I was wrong.

Why is the manuscript here in Paris?

The archivist, Madame Lafitte, told me that a French courtier brought a collection of important historical papers back from London in the 17th century.

Is it widely known that the manuscript is here?

No, the manuscript is not very well known.

It is known by specialists in the history of Scotland.

It's not very well known that only people who come

and search for this topic matter specifically come.

And she says it's even been put on slides so people can look at it.

I see. What are the chances of it going to Scotland?

Oh, absolutely no.

[Music]

The Chronicle is basically a list, a list of twelve kings of the house of Alpen from the 9th to the 11th centuries.

It's a complex document because it's been compiled and copied and added to over the years by several unknown hands.

It's important because it covers the moment of transition, the ten or so years from 878 to 889,

when all references to Pictland disappear and the Kingdom of Scotland appears.

This is Scotland's lost decade.

Look at these two names, Eath and Curriculum, or Gyrick.

These characters are going to be key to the formation of Scotland.

Eath was Kenneth MacAlpin's youngest son.

He'd inherited a kingdom in crisis.

At the point he became king, the Vikings conquered Pickland.

For two years they took cattle, slaves and tribute.

Aeth did little to stop them.

When there was no more booty to be had, the Vikings moved on.

Aeth's kingdom lay in ruins.

The writer of the Paris Chronicle described his short reign as bequeathing "nothing memorable to history".

A damning indictment indeed.

So no surprise then when his own followers took action.

This is where Gyrick comes into the story.

Gyrick was one of a number of Gallic refugees who'd fled from the Vikings and headed east into Pictland.

Now he'd climbed his way up into Aeth's favour.

Gyrick was not of royal stock, but what he lacked in blue blood he made up for in ambition.

Events come to a head at a sacred site in Perthshire.

sight in Perthshire. The year is 878. Aeth is slain by his own henchmen. All the evidence

points to Gyrick as the killer. Gyrick was on the make. His goal, the takeover of the

Pictish kingdom. And if that meant taking out the useless Aeth, then so be it.

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>> Gyrick instigated a regime change.

He rid the court of his Pictish rivals and replaced them with his own men.

Then he took control of the Pictish church by appointing a Gallic bishop

to reform it.

This was a coup.

Gyrick, a Gael, was turning the Kingdom of the Picts into a Gallic kingdom.

To reinforce his political takeover, he rewarded his Gallic followers with Pictish land.

But Gyrick's position was far from secure.

Although he'd eliminated Aerith, the two legitimate heirs, Aerith's six-year-old son,

and his teenage cousin Donald still lived.

Geryk knew his kingship was unsafe

while the two young boys remained potential rivals.

[Music]

But Constantine and Donald were far beyond the reach of Gyrick.

The protectors had escorted them safely to Fort Uliach in the north of Ireland.

It might seem strange to send two Pictish princes to a Gaelic country like Ireland,

especially given Geryc's Gaelic connections,

but they met a warm welcome at Uliach from their aunt.

She was married to a powerful Irish king, and for her, this was a matter not of politics, but of kin.

They grew up in the royal household. It was a Gaelic court and they became steeped in its

culture and language. They were educated at a nearby monastery and attended the Gaelic

Too young to challenge Gerych, too young to be King of the Picts.

The changes taking place in their homeland must have felt like a world away to the cousins.

But as each year passed and adulthood approached, the moment to avenge the murder of Constantine's

father edged ever closer.

In the year 889, after a decade in exile, the two cousins were finally old enough to

challenge Geryc.

Donald and Constantine sailed homeward. Revenge was in their hearts. To win back their kingdom,

they knew they'd have to depose the usurper.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Gerec had seen it coming.

So had his supporters.

He fled to his stronghold here at Dundurn in Perthshire.

In its day, this was a mighty hillfort

with huge fortifications, but not enough

to deter the cousins.

The Chronicle tells of an eclipse, an ill omen of the times.

Typically, the historical records are vague on what happened next.

One chronicle reveals, "In Dundurn, the upright man was taken by death."

The archaeological evidence suggests a more violent end for Gyrick.

Burnt timbers and arrowheads were found here in Dundurn,

and it's tempting to imagine that Gyrick died here in that moment,

killed by Donald and Constantine.

The kingdom was at a crossroads.

It could have gone either way, Pictish or Gaelic.

Culture, language and church, everything was at stake.

The Picts must have expected Donald and Constantine to reverse the Gallic takeover.

After all, Gyrick's rule had lasted just ten years.

But the royal heirs had changed.

Donald and Constantine left as Pictish boys.

They returned as Gallic princes.

Now Donald and Constantine viewed their homeland through different eyes.

The Chronicle of the Kings shows us which way the wind is blowing. This word here is

Albanium, a Gaelic word meaning Scotland, a brand new name for the kingdom and of immense

significance. With this one word right here, Scotland is created. This is Scotland's birth

certificate. This crucial moment of transition is backed up by the Chronicle from Ireland.

In the year 900, it has an entry recording Donald's death.

He is King of Alba, the first king ever to be described as such, and he's followed by

Constantine, also described as a Scottish king.

Scotland became a Gaelic kingdom.

Over the next few generations, the Pictish way of life,

the way they practiced their religion, the stone carvings,

and even their language, fell out of favour.

Gaelic was the new language of power.

There was no sudden genocide,

but the cultural takeover was just as complete.

In 906, Constantine arrived in Schoon, near Perth, for an important new ceremony.

'Scoon's a Gaelic word, and what happened here would form the basis of all future coronations.

Blessed by a Gaelic bishop, Constantine sat on a block of stone. It no doubt harked back

to the footprint ceremony of Dunad from long before.

It's better known as the Stone of Destiny.

For centuries afterwards and right up to the present day,

it's been used in the inauguration of monarchs.

Now the original is on display in Edinburgh Castle.

It's just a simple block of red sandstone,

and yet it's been fought over, mythologised and romanticised,

and it will crop up again and again in Scotland's story.

[Music]

Although Constantine now appeared to hold sway over most of North Britain,

the Young Kingdom's survival was touch and go from the outset.

For just as Scotland was forming, another power block to the south

come of age at almost exactly the same time.

This kingdom would prove to be Scotland's most persistent foe of all.

Angleland was ruled by an Anglo-Saxon king called Athelstan.

He'd driven the Vikings out of Northumbria and by incorporating this territory

had secured a new northern boundary.

But Angerland, or England as it became known, was not enough for Athelstan.

Admire of the Romans, he aspired to rule the whole of Britain.

He decided to carry on where the Romans left off.

He marched north.

Like Kalgakis, nearly 900 years before,

Constantine faced a stark choice -

tackle Athelstan in battle and risk annihilation

or surrender the kingship of Scotland.

Neither outcome was acceptable,

but Constantine came up with a third option,

and this is it - the awesome rock fortress of Dunauta.

Here, Constantine and his war band were hemmed in, but Athelstan couldn't capture the stronghold

itself and so he and Constantine came to terms.

He could keep his status as King of Scotland,

but Athelstan would be his overlord.

In agreeing to this, Constantine saved Scotland and his own neck,

but to the young aspiring leaders at his court, he'd sold out.

So the next time Athelstan commanded him to submit,

he refused to obey.

Subservience wasn't Constantine's style, particularly when both he and the young kingdom of Scots

had come so far.

What he did next would have been unthinkable a few decades previously.

He made peace with the pagan Vikings.

Partly motivated by a sense of united we stand divided we fall, more importantly, the Viking

king had lost territories to Athelstan and he wanted them back.

Together they forged a Northern Alliance, and in 937 Constantine headed south for a decisive

confrontation.

At stake was the very future of the island of Britain.

On one side advanced Athelstan, the Anglo-Saxon ruler of all England.

On the other, the Northern Alliance.

The King of the Britons, the King of the Vikings from across the Irish Sea, and the King of Scotland, Constantine.

The many armies, tens of thousands of warriors, clashed at a site known as Brunnenborough, where the Mersey Estuary enters the sea.

For decades afterwards, it was simply called the Great Battle.

This was the mother of all Dark Age bloodbaths

and would define the shape of Britain into the modern era.

An Anglo-Saxon account of the Battle Reeds.

They clove the shield wall,

hewed the war lindens with hammered blades.

The foe fell back,

the folk of the Scots and the ship fleet fell death-doomed.

The field was slippery with the blood of warriors.

The West Saxons in companies hewed the fugitives from behind,

Cruelly with swords mill sharpened.

The fighting went on from dawn until dusk.

When it was over, the field was littered with the dead and the dying,

picked over by wolves and carrion crows.

Vikings, Saxons, Britons and Welshmen, Gales from Ireland, Northumbrians, even Icelanders.

Amid the corpses of the men of Scotland was Constantine's eldest son, all slain to settle

the matter of Britain.

Although Athelstan emerged victorious, the resistance of the Northern Alliance had put

an end to his dream of conquering the whole of Britain.

Constantine meanwhile escaped back to his homeland with the remains of his battered army.

This had been a battle for Britain, one of the most important battles in British history,

comparable to Hastings, and yet today few people have even heard of it.

937 doesn't quite have the ring of 1066,

and yet Brunnenburg was about much more than just blood and conquest.

This was a showdown between two very different ethnic identities,

a Norse-Celtic alliance versus Anglo-Saxon.

It aimed to settle once and for all whether Britain would be controlled

by a single imperial power or remain several separate independent kingdoms,

a split in perceptions which, like it or not, is still with us today.

And as for King Constantine,

From exile to Ireland as a young boy, the murder of Gyrick at Dundurn, his crowning at Scoun,

his short subservience to the English King, the Battle of Brunnenborough and the saving of Scotland.

There was much for the battle scarred warrior to reflect upon.

Kenneth MacAlpin founded the Scottish Royal Line as an opportunistic Pictish warlord,

But it was his grandson, Constantine, who secured the kingdom

and, during his long reign of 43 years, ensured its survival.

Scotland stands as testament to Constantine's political astuteness

and staying power.

And then, remarkably, he relinquished his kingship.

In an age characterised by brutal murders and takeovers, he retired.

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Religion had always played an important part in his life as king.

Now Constantine, sharing the name of the Roman Emperor who'd first embraced Christianity,

moved it centre stage.

St Andrews had become the religious capital of his new kingdom,

And so he came here in AD 943, just six years after the greatest battle of his life.

He ended his days leading a humble, almost hermit-like existence in a cave near St Andrews as a holy man.

And what of the Picts?

An English historian, the Archdeacon of Huntingdon, writing just 200 years later in 1140, commented that,

"We see that the Picts have now been wiped out and their language also is totally destroyed,

so that they seem to be a fable we find mentioned in old writings."

The Archdeacon was wrong.

As we've seen all along, so much of these early years was seen

through the eyes of others.

The pits weren't wiped out.

With the Gaels, they fused together in the fires of adversity

and rebranded themselves as Scots.

The hybrid kingdom of Alba was now home to our restless people.

And as for the fully formed country we would recognise as

The story had only just begun.

begun.

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