structural:scholar_edition
Kingdom of Scotland

Beginning in the sixth century, the area that is now Scotland was divided into three areas: Pictland, a patchwork of small lordships in central Scotland; the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria, which had conquered southeastern Scotland; and Dál Riata, which included territory in western Scotland and northern Ireland, and spread Gaelic language and culture into Scotland. These societies were based on the family unit and had sharp divisions in wealth, although the vast majority were poor and worked full-time in subsistence agriculture. The Picts kept slaves (mostly captured in war) through the ninth century.

Gaelic influence over Pictland and Northumbria was facilitated by the large number of Gaelic-speaking clerics working as missionaries. Operating in the sixth century on the island of Iona, Saint Columba was one of the earliest and best-known missionaries. The Vikings began to raid Scotland in the eighth century. Although the raiders sought slaves and luxury items, their main motivation was to acquire land. The oldest Norse settlements were in northwest Scotland, but they eventually conquered many areas along the coast. Old Norse entirely displaced Pictish in the Northern Isles.

In the ninth century, the Norse threat allowed a Gael named Kenneth I (Cináed mac Ailpín) to seize power over Pictland, establishing a royal dynasty to which the modern monarchs trace their lineage, and marking the beginning of the end of Pictish culture. The kingdom of Cináed and his descendants, called Alba, was Gaelic in character but existed on the same area as Pictland. By the end of the tenth century, the Pictish language went extinct as its speakers shifted to Gaelic. From a base in eastern Scotland north of the River Forth and south of the River Spey, the kingdom expanded first southwards, into the former Northumbrian lands, and northwards into Moray. Around the turn of the millennium, there was a centralization in agricultural lands and the first towns began to be established.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, much of Scotland was under the control of a single ruler. Initially, Gaelic culture predominated, but immigrants from France, England and Flanders steadily created a more diverse society, with the Gaelic language starting to be replaced by Scots; and a modern nation-state emerged from this. At the end of this period, war against England started the growth of a Scottish national consciousness. David I (1124–1153) and his successors centralised royal power and united mainland Scotland, capturing regions such as Moray, Galloway, and Caithness, although he could not extend his power over the Hebrides, which had been ruled by various Scottish clans following the death of Somerled in 1164. In 1266, Scotland fought the short but consequential Scottish-Norwegian War which saw the reclamation of the Hebrides after the strong defeat of King Haakon IV and his forces at the Battle of Largs. Up until that point, the Hebrides had been under Norwegian Viking control for roughly 400 years and had developed a distinctive Norse–Gaelic culture that saw many Old Norse loanwords enter the Scottish Gaelic spoken by islanders, and through successive generations the Norse would become almost completely assimilated into Gaelic culture and the Scottish clan system. After the conflict, Scotland had to affirm Norwegian sovereignty of the Northern Isles, but they were later integrated into Scotland in the 15th century. Scandinavian culture in the form of the Norn language survived for a lot longer than in the Hebrides, and would strongly influence the local Scots dialect on Shetland and Orkney. Later, a system of feudalism was consolidated, with both Anglo-Norman incomers and native Gaelic chieftains being granted land in exchange for serving the king. The relationship with England was complex during this period: Scottish kings tried several times, sometimes with success, to exploit English political turmoil, followed by the longest period of peace between Scotland and England in the mediaeval period: from 1217 – 1296.