From its beginnings the island known today as Great Britain has been the target of successive invaders. Before the Normans invaded in 1066, parts of the British Isles had been ravaged by Scandinavian raiders known as the Danes, Norsemen or Vikings. Before those raiders came Germanic invaders—mainly the Saxons, Angles and Jutes—and before them landed the legions of the Roman empire.
There to meet each of these onslaughts was an ancient tribal people known today as the Celtic Britons, among the fiercest of whom were the Picts. In the second century the latter faced down the Romans, forcing the legions to stop short of what would become Scotland and build the defensive Hadrian’s Wall, spanning the width of the island from the North Sea to the Irish Sea. Half a millennium later the Picts clashed with Angles at the 685 Battle of Dún Nechtain, an engagement some historians believe forged the roots of present-day Scotland.
The Picts inhabited the north and east of what today is Scotland. While much of their history went unrecorded, many historians suggest they were not a homogenous people, but a confederation of Celtic tribes that banded together only when threatened by a common enemy. In most cases those enemies were carrying both crosses and swords.
The Romans called these ferocious northern Britons “Picts,” from the Latin (“painted”), a possible reference to the tattoos worn by warriors
