Carved in Stone
Who were the Picts? That’s a question that has puzzled many a student of Iron Age Britain. They left very little writing, and they had far less interaction with the Romans than their cousins further south in the island. Those of us who take an academic interest in the issue have learned publications that we can peruse. If you have access to History Hit, Tristan Hughes has a new TV documentary covering the latest research on the Picts. But most people, I suspect, see the Picts through a combination of the Roman depiction of painted barbarians, and Robert E Howard’s brutish savages from the deep mists of time. Thankfully there is now a new source that can do away with these erroneous views. Remarkably, it is intended for use by story tellers and game players.
Carved in Stone
We now know, contrary to Howard’s wild speculation, that the Picts were a British people. That is, they spoke a form of Old Welsh that would have been understandable to their cousins further south in the same way that someone from Aberdeen is understandable to someone from London. Sadly they did not paint themselves with woad. It blisters the skin. But they may well have used body paint derived from hematite (iron oxide) that is a nice shade of blood red.
Pictish society was in place before the Romans came, and continued on after they left. Eventually they seem to have been swallowed up by the Gaelic-speaking Scots (immigrants from Ireland), and the Vikings, but there were functional Pictish kingdoms around as late as the 9th century. The historical Macbeth began life ruling over the province of Moray, which appears to have been a descendant of the Pictish kingdom of Fortriu.
Carved in Stone is set in the 7th century. The various Pictish subkingdoms have been united under the rule of Bridei III. He’s a fascinating chap. His father, Beli, was king of the British kingdom of Alt Clut, which included Glasgow and Dumbarton. His mother was probably a daughter of the Anglian king, Edwin of Northumbria, making him a fairly close relation of Hild of Whitby, who was Edwin’s niece. Northumbria, Alt Clut and the Scottish kingdom of Dál Riata are the Picts’ main neighbours. The Picts are nominally Christian, but significant pockets of pagan belief still exist, and the Vatican has yet to exert much authority over their Christian practice.
The book is essentially a worldbuilding bible. It has sections on politics, religion and belief, where people lived, what they ate, what they wore, and how they entertained themselves. The information is backed up by an impressive list of academic advisors, including Dr Adrián Maldonado who you may have seen on TV talking about the Galway Hoard. While the focus of the book is very much on the Picts, much of what it says is probably useful for other parts of Iron Age Britain too.
I should add that the book is beautifully illustrated throughout. It has both images of the Picts going about their daily life, and recreations of the beautiful Pictish art style. The book is very accessible for children, and indeed one of its purposes appears to be to instill youngsters with a love of history and archaeology as well as a love of Scotland.
The book is published by Stout Stoat, an Edinburgh-based games company run by Brian Tyrrell who got his start in the business by running a Dungeons & Dragons fanzine. Brian describes himself as ‘neuroqueer’, and Carved in Stone is unashamedly queer-friendly in all sorts of ways. After all, being straight hadn’t been invented back then.
I am seriously impressed by this book. It is a magnificent blend of cutting edge academia and creative storytelling and game playing. Given that FantasyCon is in Glasgow next year, I think I might just start a campaign to get this book nominated in the non-fiction section of the British Fantasy Awards.
Title: Carved in Stone
By: Brian Tyrrell & Lizy Simonen
Publisher: Stout Stoat
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
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Bookshop.org UK
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