Tim Clarkson's Blog, page 3

Dandaleith Pictish Stone

This fabulous monument is a fairly recent addition to Scotland’s corpus of Dark Age sculpture, having been discovered only three years ago. It was unearthed in a field at Dandaleith Farm near Craigellachie in Moray and, after conservation work, is now on display in Elgin Museum.

It stands 1.7 metres tall and is a typical example of a “Class I” stone, being adorned with Pictish symbols but lacking any overtly Christian motifs. The date of carving is probably within the range 550 to 650 AD. Un...

Bede’s World reborn

St Paul’s Church, Jarrow.

The Venerable Bede was an English monk who spent almost his whole life at the dual monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. He wrote about the evolution of early English Christianity in his best-known work, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in AD 731. Despite its title the book is far more than a religious chronicle and contains a wealth of information on kings, kingdoms and politics in Dark Age Britain. Bede...

The Kilmorie Cross (again)

This magnificent cross-slab from the Viking Age stands in the churchyard of Kirkcolm in the Rhinns of Galloway. I blogged about it two years ago, reproducing a nineteenth-century drawing (see below) together with photographs from Allen and Anderson’s Early Christian Monuments of Scotland (published in 1903). Here’s an extract from my description of the carvings:

‘On one side, the hammerhead cross carries a rough representation of the Crucified Christ. Another figure stands below, flanked by...

Set in Stone: the Birth of Alba

Fragment of the Invermay Cross (illustration from The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland, 1903)

Few places are more closely connected with the Picts than the village of Forteviot in Perthshire. Nestling in the fertile valley of Strathearn, it was formerly a royal palace of Pictish kings, the most famous of whom was Cináed mac Ailpín (“Kenneth MacAlpine”) who is said to have died there in AD 858.

The lands around the village have yielded some of the finest examples of Pictish sculpture, mos...

The origin of the Merlin legend

Regular visitors to Senchus will already be aware that my latest book examines the historical roots of Merlin’s story. I’ve written several blogposts about it in recent months, as the date of publication has drawn ever nearer. Scotland’s Merlin: a Medieval Legend and its Dark Age Origins has now been published.

A summary of the book’s contents is printed on the back cover:
Who was Merlin? Is the famous wizard of Arthurian legend based on a real person? In this book, Merlin’s origins are trac...

Scotland’s Merlin in the news

Merlin the Enchanter by Louis Rhead (1857-1926)

My latest book Scotland’s Merlin was mentioned in the Scottish media this week, with a full-page feature in Monday’s edition of The National.

The image on the top right of the page shows the famous ‘Merlin window’ at Stobo Kirk in Upper Tweeddale in the Scottish Borders. A black-and-white version of the same photograph (taken by Freyja Appleyard-Keeling) appears in the plate section of my book. The accompanying text summarises my theory about t...

King Ecgfrith of Northumbria

This blogpost is about a book published last year – a biography of the Northumbrian king Ecgfrith who ruled from 670 to 685. Ecgfrith was an ambitious warlord whose army campaigned far beyond the frontiers of his kingdom. During his reign, Northumbrian forces clashed with those of Mercia – the main English power in the midlands and a frequent adversary of Ecgfrith’s forebears – as well as with various Celtic peoples. In 684, Ecgfrith sent one of his henchmen across the Irish Sea at the head...

Merlin update

Merlin depicted by Aubrey Beardsley (1872-98)

Today I’ve learned that my new book Scotland’s Merlin is about to be sent away for printing and binding. Publication is now only a few weeks away.

It seems a long time since I started writing this book (back in May 2015) and I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product. I’m especially pleased with the cover, which really captures the Merlin I’ve described in the text – a “wild man of the woods” rather than the mystical wizard of Arthurian lo...

The Over Kirkhope Stone

This curious piece of Early Christian sculpture was found in the mid-nineteenth century at Over Kirkhope, a farm in the valley of the Ettrick Water in the Scottish Borders. It was discovered by Jim Elliot, a local shepherd, in a field that had once been an old burial ground. The stone is one of the oldest Christian monuments in Scotland and was probably carved in the fifth or sixth century. It is a roughly shaped pillar of sandstone, some 4 feet tall, with a human figure – usually interprete...

Searching for Pictish gold

Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, on a postcard from c. 1900.

Dunnicaer, a stack of rock off the Aberdeenshire coast near Stonehaven, was in the news last year. On the summit, archaeologists found evidence of a very ancient fortification dating back to the third or fourth century AD. In May, I wrote about this significant discovery in a blogpost called Picts at Dunnicaer. Two months later, the Scotsman newspaper ran an article under the heading ‘Pictish fort near Stonehaven – oldest in Scotland’. Th...