8 - Rethinking Scottish Origins

Summary

For those kingdoms, countries or nations which can claim to have had a continuous succession of kings from the Middle Ages, it is natural and superficially straightforward to explain their origins by describing the beginnings of the line of kings itself. This optimally may also involve some account of how the kingdom first expanded to an approximation of its modern borders. For those countries that lack such a continuous royal history, the search typically focuses on when the country’s name first came into being, or at least was first noted in historical record. These are the dry bones of what may be described as a standard modern view of a nation’s origins, brought to life in the mind’s eye through the historian’s narrative. The starting point is the country as it is today. A discussion of origins, however, can also mean engaging closely with a time when the country barely existed at all. What happens when, instead of providing a reassuring account of kings, battles and territorial expansion, the historian’s focus tightens on the most basic sense of country and kingdom?

In the case of Scotland, this takes us back before Barbour. When we read his description of the country as extending Fra Weik anent Orknay/ To Mullyrsnwk in Gallaway (‘From Wick opposite Orkney to Mull of Galloway’), we recognize it at once as mainland Scotland as we know it today. Barbour’s Scottish identity was not, of course, identical to ours. For example, in The Bruce, a knight was Scottish or English according to his allegiance to Robert I or Edward II, which could change. This is rather more flexible than modern notions of nationality. Yet, at a very basic level, country and people, Scotland and Scots, are assumed to go together by Barbour as now. It seems banal to point out that, for Barbour, the Scots exist at all only because there is Scotland, both kingdom and country – as banal as it would be to say that it would be inconceivable today to imagine Scots without a Scotland, or vice versa. And yet, however old this fundamental sense of people and country may be, it must have begun sometime. When was this, and how did it happen?

My starting point therefore is not the political or institutional beginning of Scotland – the traditional concern of historians.