Have you ever wondered how Scotland got its borders?
This is the video for you. Hiya I'm Bruce Fummey. If you're
interested in the people places and events in Scottish history
then at the bottom left-hand side there's a button that you can click to
subscribe anytime during this video in the meantime let me tell you a story.
Today I've brought you to the Great Polish Map of Scotland at Barony Castle Hotel in Peebles.
The Great Polish map of Scotland's a
three-dimensional outdoor concrete scale model of Scotland.
It was dreamt up by a Polish war veteran called Jan
Tomasik, it was built in the 1970s and it's the world's
biggest terrain relief model. Turns out it was a Polish that built
Scotland, and this is a fantastic location to explain
how the map of Scotland came to be. OK Scotland.
Now I don't have time to explain how three different land masses came
together from north from south and from east to
form the Highlands the Central Belt and the
Southern Uplands, all you need to know is that there were
these three land masses, and they said: 'We want to be Scotland!'
Now all the time the Southern Uplands was heading to join with a central belt
and the Highlands it couldn't get away from England,
because England said: 'I want to be part of Scotland too!' Now
most of our medieval kings understood that
and that's why they kept trying to liberate Northumbria
and Cumbria from the English. Spoiler alert,
they're not on this map. Now that might not be a surprise,
but I'm hoping there will be a few surprises to come for you. Now if there's
anything to find particularly interesting and please let
me know in the comment section below. I genuinely love to hear your thoughts,
even if it's not that surprising. What's now Scotland started at the south
pole and moved up through the equator joined then separated from great
continents, hosted seven species of dinosaur,
volcanoes creating great mountain ranges, ice age glaciers eroding them back down,
and sediments forming into grainy rock. What these tectonic movements, vulcan
melting, glacial scraping and gravitational
settling have molded around us; our Polish friends have copied here.
Over time plants evolved, seeds fell, vegetation proliferated, forests grew.
Always remember that the original inhabitants of our island were the trees.
The real patriots are the tree huggers. Then the animals came. The trees shouted:
'Immigrants!' But the animals were herbivores. They are
not coming here to take your job. They are coming to eat you. Of course
where herbivores go carnivores follow; the wolves
the bears the humans. Humans, the most destructive
immigrants yet, came from the east following the animals that they were
hunting. As they crossed the Doggerland land
bridge between what is now France and England.
At the time there was free movement in Europe and the hunter-gatherers were
overtaken then by the farmers who came from the east
after them. Over time farms turned into settlements,
then settlements into tribal groups...
And so now we have tribal groups: the Votadini,
Novanti Damnonai, Selgovae, the Caledonii further to the north. Around 50 AD the
Romans came and at 83 AD they crossed onto our
map at this point there was no concept of
Scotland, and there wouldn't be for centuries to come,
but this was probably the first time these tribes felt the need to come
together against the conquering empire. 'We are the
last of the free.' The Romans
came north. They defeated the North Britons at the battle of Mons Graupius,
probably somewhere up here towards the northeast
But it wasn't going to be as simple as that. The romans faced the
same problem that would later be faced by medieval
Anglo-Norman knights, Stewart monarchs and British imperial
forces. The Highlands.
It was that area that caused the problems. How do you penetrate those
highland glens? How do you defend those lowland plains?
The Romans built a series of forts along the Gask ridge here
to keep a watch up the highland glens. Now 40 years later, when emperor Hadrian
came to power, he decided that this area was too difficult. He said:
that the North Britons were incapable of being held under Roman authority.
Get it up ye! Now Hadrian was going to consolidate and build a wall,
a stone wall, from one side of Britannia to the other. Of course
that line, that wall, would pretty much become the English border.
If Romans controlled the known world, then the known world stopped between the
Solway and the Tyne, and this was a land of
mystery and wonder. So about 20 years later
after Hadrian died there was a new emperor Antonius Pius, and he wanted to
extend the empire, because Romans liked that kind of stuff
So the Romans pushed north again and they built another wall, this time of
turf. Maybe we were governable after all.
The Antonine wall would stretch from the fourth here
across to the Clyde in the west. You can still visit parts of it today.
But within much less than 20 years the emperor Marcus Aurelius'
had to pull his troops back to the safety of Hadrian's wall again.
Get up ye! imagine the humiliation of that for a Roman emperor,
and then being murdered by your son at the start of the film Gladiator.
Hadrian's wall of stone Antonius's wall of turf and the forts along a Gask
Ridge show Rome's diminishing ability to hold
control as they moved north now
Not long after that we start to hear about the Scotti, the pirates
from Ireland and here on the western seaboard of Argyll and the Picti, from
further north and east. They were coming over the wall,
coming round the wall, raid and pillaging, but Rome had problems at home and by the
end of the fourth century the legions were drifting back to defend Rome from
other troubles, and they told the Romanised civilians of
Britannia it was every man for himself. The Scoti and Picti said: 'Get it up yeah.'
With the legions gone what do the Romanised Britons do to protect
themselves from these barbarians? Well they hire other barbarians as
mercenaries to come and protect them. Germanic Angles and Saxons. The problem
was that these Angles and Saxons decided to take over
and this led to waves of Anglo-Saxon immigrants coming across the north sea,
settling and both culturally and literally
pushing the Britons to the west. So all that's left of that Brythonic language
is the Welsh. See that's a problem. You bring in immigrants to do the crappy
jobs and before you know it they want to run the place. So over the
fifth sixth seventh and eighth centuries what is now scotland evolved from a wide
variety of tribal groups into four kingdoms
the Picts in the north, the Scots to the west
and the Saxons who'd arrived in the east, and they pushed
the Britons to the west of them. Now one of these kings fighting for the British
against the encroachment of the Saxons became the legendary king Arthur
that's right he's Scottish. Now the first half of the ninth century
changed everything. In one ten year period there were two
battles that remain significant to us as Scots today, and one
of them was a key turning point. Scots in the west seem to have become a
vassal state to the dominant Pictland and in 832 AD an army of Picts and
Scots crossed the border and invaded Northumbria under
king Óengus. The battle would be fought in
modern day Lothian near the village of Athelstaneford.
Legend tells us that when he got there king Óengus was
confronted and outnumbered by Saxons led by Aethlestan.
That was bad planning. So he went to an emergency backup plan.
Pray. He led prayers that he and his men would be delivered, and as they looked up
the white clouds clustered in the shape of a diagonal
cross on which saint Andrew had been crucified. And when
the battle was over and they'd won, St Andrew was our
patron saint, and that white cross against a blue sky
has been our flag ever since.
It's just a pity St Andrew wasn't the patron saint of football.
St Andrew wasn't there five years later though.
You see for 40 years the Vikings had been raiding and pillaging.
Vikings first raided Iona in 795, and then they came in wave after a wave.
But in 837 the Picts and the Scots assembled again
to fight the Vikings in a pitched battle, probably somewhere around Moray.
The Vikings wiped out most of the Pictish nobility
and that gave birth to what you may call Scotland,
or what was then, and is still in gaelic today, called
Alba. It was in the aftermath of that battle that the Picts and the Scots
formally came together under Kenneth MacAlpin, who emerged
from the power vacuum. And 50 years later we never heard Pictland mentioned again.
Over several generations fighting continued between warlords kings and
petty kings, who want land, power control more land more control
even more power. The key thing is that Alba
was an amalgam of the Scots and the Picts defending themselves against the
Vikings ,but in a much more limited area than we
now call Scotland it was north of the fourth Clyde line
away down there initially, but the area control was small
with royal palace at Forteviot. Over the next 200 years that
area of control increased. In 1018
this relatively new nation was down in Northumbria again,
with the help of the Britons of Strathclyde at the battle of Carham
right down by the border near Coldstream.
The Scots and the Britons defeated the Northumbrians and the English king Canute
had enough in his plate, so Lothian gradually became part of Scotland.
Then we had Duncan then MacBeth then Malcolm III and his children.
Now these people changed the Scottish map... apart from MacBeth,
he changed English literature. Anyway it was during this 11th century period
that the kingdom of Strathclyde, remember the welsh the Britons the
Cumbrians, was drawn into Scotland. This was another situation
where it was just too far north for the English king to be confident of holding
it directly, so he said to the king of Scots: 'Can you
look after my paint while I go at the toilet?'
and when the English king got back, the Scots king was pissed,
and Strathclyde was part of Scotland. However Galloway here was still
independent, and would be for a few generations yet.
Now here's an interesting point. The Gaelic word for foreigner is Gall,
and you can see it in various place names. It's the word Gall that gives us
Galloway, but there's more than that. As we go north
we're going to go up to the Hebrides. Hebrides is an English word. The Gaelic
word is Innse Gall, the islands of the
strangers. Away to the north and east Caithness in Gaelic is Gallaibh. Who do you
think these foreigners were? Of course, the Vikings who'd settled over
time and would become Scots, but that would take time. For the moment
they had a fiercely independent streak. From Malcolm III
youngest laddie David I Scottish kings were slowly taking
control further north and west, although with stutters along the way.
For example during the reign of David's grandson
William the Lion, Scotland pretty much became subject to England for a 15-year
period. I've actually got a video about that if
you're interested. It didn't quite become part of England
but it was a narrow escape, and during that period more remote
regions tried to reclaim a bit of their independence. But eventually the king of
Scots would get Galloway in check.
Then there were three kings called Alexander, and they gradually pushed the
kingdom of Scotland to the north and the west. In 1237 the second of those
Alexanders signed the treaty of York with Henry III
of England and that's when the border between
Scotland and England was agreed. I say that but that's all except Berwick
upon Tweed. That's in the east. And a tiny strip in
the west called the debatable lands. That was
bandit country, with the border reivers like Armstrongs and others taking
advantage on both sides. Alexander III kept pushing his influence
north and west and into the Innse Gall, the islands of the strangers,
but one of those strangers took exception to this
As far as Haakon of Norway was concerned these islands belong to him.
In 1263 he'd had enough, so he and his men got on some ships,
left Norway and landed just here on the west coast.
The battle of Largs was the most decisive indecisive battle in Scottish
history. It was actually here that some
Norwegians were creeping up in the Scots. But as they were creeping up
one of them accidentally trod on a thistle, and he screamed out in surprise,
which alerted the Scots and saved the day. And that's when the
thistle became the national flower of Scotland.
Now in Shetland on his way home Haakon died,
and three years later his son Magnus IV of Norway and Alexander III of
Scotland signed the treaty of Perth. That's when Scotland got the Hebrides,
the Western Isles, the Innse Gall, call them what you will.
Oh and also the Isle of Man. I'll be honest we didn't hold on to isle of man
for very long. Like so much of what's ours it was taken
by the English. The Isle of Man isn't actually part of
England. When I was at school there was a kid that moved from
the Isle of Man and I always remember him, because he talked a bit strange and
always won the three-legged race at the school sports.
Not sure if you'll get that joke. It's the flag, it's the flag.
Anyway, when the third of our Alexanders died without an heir,
that led to a lot of problems. If you've ever watched the documentary Braveheart
you'll know a little bit about it. Edward first of England invaded, and for the
first of three occasions, for a while at least Scotland
effectively became a region of a greater expanded
England. Now some Scots didn't like this and they fought back
and during the Scottish wars of independence Berwick upon Tweed
away down at the other side change hands more times than an ugly child in a
custody battle. It's a joke, there's no such thing as an
ugly child. By the time England and the Pope agreed
that Scotland was Scotland the short period of two Bruce king's was
at an end and then we got a long string of Stewarts
and James's. Now the third of these James has had a
lot of fallouts with his brother, who got support from England to try and
take over Scotland and that was the last time
Berwick changed hands. From then England got the town of Berwick
and we kept the football team. The ugly stepchild.
Now while I'm on the subject of James iii you might have noticed that Orkney
and Shetland are missing from the map. To fit Shetland in the map you'd have to
extend the pond to the next village, but I've got another reason why they
might not have been included. You see James iii married a Danish princess
called Margaret. Now the dowry for margaret was agreed at
60 000 gilders, but her daddy, the Danish king, said: 'Look
I'm a bit strapped for ready cash just now, let's say I give you
ten thousand now and you keep hold of Orkney and Shetland till I
get the other 50 at the end of the month. So the Scottish crown gets Orkney and
Shetland, and the people of Orkney and Shetland become
Scottish... at least until King Kristian can come up with ready cash.
Think about that for a second. There was no referendum,
no consultative convention. Just a convenient coinage of the lands and
peoples of the Northern Isles at least until the king got money for
his daughter's dowry. Now this was actually supposed to
be a temporary arrangement, but over time the transaction was never
finalised and Orkney and Shetland became part of Scotland
and I'm thinking that the Danes if they came up with the dowry money now,
and appropriate interest presumably, maybe they could get Orkney and Shetland back.
I suppose that's why our Polish friends didn't include them in the map. It was
only a temporary arrangement. But that's what Scotland was and has
remained ever since. Oh apart from those debatable lands. It
wasn't until 1552 that agreement was finally reached and they built a turnf
barrier called the Scots Dyke. It's just about visible today if you
go down there. Oh and I forgot to mention that for a period in the 17th century uh
Oliver Cromwell invaded Scotland and Scotland was subsumed
into England and made, you know, there was a Union and
Scots MPs in the English Parliament. That stopped after The Restoration when
Charles ii came back to the throne, although it happened again in 1707 and
Scotland was once more subsumed into England and blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah... You might have heard about that. Anyway
that's how things remain... at least for now I hope you've enjoyed
this. I hope you've learned some stuff. If you have please like it share it,
and in the meantime: Tha mi an dochas gum bith lath math leibh
Tiorridh an drasda