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Kenneth mac Alpin is the only early king of Scots whose name has remained at all familiar to his countrymen throughout the
centuries, as the king who united the Picts and the Scots. Although what really happened was not quite as straightforward as this, the popular view is essentially accurate. Kenneth is the ancestor of a dynasty of kings,
which ruled in the male line, with one exception, until 1034, and which continues to rule in the female line in the person of the present Queen. The reigns of Kenneth and his successors were crucial in forging the later
Scottish identity and the modern concept of Scotland. Kenneth was a Gad on his father's side, a descendant of Fergus, son of Erc, the traditional founder of the Dalriadic dynasty in Scotland. A colourful folk-tale
achieved wide popularity, telling how Kenneth had invited the Pictish nobility to feast with him at Scone. As the Picts sat at the table glutted with food and drink, bolts were released under their benches, tipping them
into a pit where they were all slaughtered. In reality Kenneth's accession and reign was probably the key point in a process of gradual unification. The Gaelicisation of Pictland was already underway generations before
his time, and he was not the first Scottish Gael to sit on the Pictish throne. Indeed, his own name (Cinaed) is apparently Pictish, as is Alpin, and he may have had a claim to the throne under the Pictish rules of
succession.However, Kenneth was probably the first Gael to move the centre of Scottish power formally from Dalriada to Pictland. It has been suggested that he brought with him to Scone the Stone of Destiny, the
celebrated inauguration stone of the kings of Scots, and this may well be so. Yet in 858, when he died at Forteviot, near Perth - apparently of a tumour - the Irish annals describe him as rex Pictorum, 'king of the
Picts', as they do his three immediate successors. In 900, his grandson Donald was described on his death as 'king of Alba', the name now given to the new united kingdom of the Picts and the Scots. 'Alba' remains the
Gaelic word for 'Scotland', although at this point it only included the land north of the Forth-Clyde line, as the Britons and Angles held Strathclyde and Lothian. Despite a measure of Pictish continuity, the overriding
influence in the new kingdom was Gaelic. Kings were inaugurated in the Gaelic manner as in Ireland, and succession was traced through the male line, rather than through the female line as among the Picts. Ecclesiastical
connections with Ireland were maintained, as were family links with Irish royalty. Kenneth inherited a kingdom shattered by invasion and civil war. Several years earlier, Scandinavian invaders had
inflicted wholesale slaughter on the Picts in the heart of their kingdom. Kenneth, indeed, may have taken advantage of the chaos that ensued to make his bid for the throne. If eastern Pictland was vulnerable to
Scandinavian attack, then Dalriada was doubly so. The annals tell of raids, and the place names indicate settlements, not merely in the islands, but also in mainland Argyll, the ancestral homeland of Kenneth and his
dynasty. Perhaps then the threat of Vikings in Dalriada was a factor in moving the royal seat to Scone. By the end of the 10th century the western isles had been lost to the Scandinavians, and they were not to be
reincorporated into the Scottish kingdom until the Treaty of Perth in 1266. In the north, as well, the kingdom contracted. Norwegian settlement had been taking place in Shetland and Orkney since the 8th century. By the
end of the 9th, the earldom of Orkney had been established, and was expanding southwards into Caithness and Sutherland. Repelling invaders, both Danish and Norse, was a constant preoccupation of Kenneth's successors.
Kenneth's son, Constantine - the bearer of a Pictish royal name - was killed fighting Scandinavians in 877. For a time the existence itself of the kingdom of Alba must have seemed extremely precarious. The reign of
Kenneth's grandson, Constantine, son of Aed, marks a turning point. He ruled for 43 years, a truly remarkable achievement, his reign coming to an end, not by violent death at the hands of an invader or a rival, but
after graceful retirement into the Culdec monastery of St Andrews.All too little is known of the events of King Constantine's reign but, behind the meagre record of shifting alliances and of battles lost and won, it is
possible to detect a constant determination to maintain the kingdom of Alba, and to push its boundaries southwards. The main Scandinavian threat now came from sea-kings of the dynasty of the 'Hy Ivarr' -
the descendants of Ivar - whose bases lay in Ireland, where they had founded the kingdom of Dublin. In the 10th century these kings strove to extend their influence across the Irish Sea into Cumbria and as far as York.
They found support from the many Scandinavian settlers in the north of England, and for a time seemed set to establish a lasting kingdom on a Dublin-York axis. However, they were implacably opposed by the West Saxon
kings and gradually lost the north of England to Anglo-Saxon rule. For the first half of his reign, Constantine seems to have spent much of his time in conflict with the Hy Ivarr, and assisting the beleaguered English
of the north. This continued until 921 when he and Ranald, grandson of Ivar and king of Dublin and York, acknowledged Edward the Elder, Alfred's son, 'for father and for lord'. Constantine later allied with Olaf God-
freysson of the Hy Ivarr against Alfred's powerful grandson, the West Saxon king Athelstan. Athelstan's response was to ravage Scotland as far north as Dunnottar near Stonehaven and send his fleet to Caithness.
Constantine and Olaf then formed an alliance with the king of the Britons against Athclstan and in 937 entered into a famous battle at Brunanburh. Olaf and Constantine suffered catastrophic defeat. 'A great battle,
lamentable and terrible, was savagely fought between Saxons and Northmen; and in it fell many thousands of the North- men' say the Irish annals. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the victory of Athelstan 'lord of
earls, ring-giver to men' in heroic verse, one of the glories of Anglo-Saxon poetry: 'There lay on the battlefield five young kings, by the swords put to sleep; and also seven earls of Olaf: of the army untold numbers,
of the fleet and of Scots. So there also the aged Constantine came north to his country by flight, hoary warrior. No need had he to exult in the intercourse of swords. He was bereft of his kinsmen bereaved in the
battle. And he left his son in the slaughter-place, mangled with wounds, young in warfare.' Despite this crushing defeat, Constantine's reign must be counted a success. He had defended and consolidated the kingdom of
Alba; he had defused the Scandinavian danger, first by force and then by diplomacy; and he had extended the authority of his dynasty to include the south of Scotland. Constantine's immediate successors had short
and troubled reigns. Malcolm, son of Donald (943-54) and his son Dubh (962-6) were killed in internal warfare, the former by the men of the Mearns (Kincardineshire) and the latter by the men of Moray. Although Indulf,
son of Constantine, (954-62) was one of the few to die peacefully, his son Culen was killed by the Britons of Strathclyde. The work of consolidation was continued by Kenneth, son of Malcolm, and by his
son Malcolm II, who must rank with Constantine, son of Aed, and Kenneth mac Alpin as one of the great kings of the dynasty. Malcolm II's victory over the Angles of Carham, near Kelso (around 1018), confirmed that the
future of Lothian and the Merse (Berwickshire) lay with the kingdom of the Scots. Little is known of the history of the old kingdom of the Britons of Strathclyde (also known then as Cumbria, and including the land which
makes up Cumbria today) in the 10th century. After the death of its king, Owen, at Carham, Malcolm's grandson Duncan became ruler of the Cumbrians and the kingdom of Scotland began to take on its present shape, with the
exception of the islands, Caithness, Sutherland, and parts of Lothian. In 1034 the Irish annals note the death of 'Malcolm Kenneth's son, king of Alba, the honour of all the west of Europe'. Before his death, however,
the tradition of male succession was broken when his daughter's son Duncan became Malcolm's successor - the 'gentle Duncan' of Shakespeare; a young man, and not the ancient king portrayed in Macbeth. Previous kings of
the dynasty had been succeeded by brothers and cousins, but never directly by sons, far less by grandsons. Also, with the exception of Eochaid in 878 no king of the Scots since Fergus, son of Erc, had succeeded in the
female line 500 years previously. The succession of Duncan is a measure of his grandfather's authority and influence. However, it was bound to give rise to challenge from dynastic rivals. After a reign of only six
years, Duncan was slain by Macbeth, mormaer (or lord) of Moray, who claimed descent from kings of the line of Loam who had once ruled in Dalriada. Little is known of cultural life and achievements under the mac Alpin
dynasty. No manuscripts survive to rival the beauty of the Book of Kells, or the splendid illumination of 10th-century Anglo-Saxon art. Nevertheless, the great achievement of Kenneth and his successors was to mould
together diverse peoples against the odds and to lay the foundations of the kingdom of Scotland. |
