Picts
The Picts were a people who lived in what is now north-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. Their confederation of tribes in northern Scotland eventually ran from Fife to Caithness. The Picts were in general agrarian, living in small communities, similar in culture to most other celts including Pagan animistic polytheism. In 843 A.D. they united with the kingdom of the Scots or Dál Riata and were assimilated into the Scottish nation.
The kingdom recorded in Old English as Wærteras (sometimes referred to as 'Fortriu') is thought to have been the dominant Pictish kingdom, and is thought to have been centred around the Moray Firth.
Broadly speaking, the Pictish territory was bound to the south by the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria, by the Brittonic Kingdom of Strathclyde to the south-west, in the west by the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata and, from about the 9th century onwards, by Norse territories to the north. The areas controlled by the Picts broadly covered the Scottish counties Aberdeenshire, Angus, Banffshire, Caithness, Cromartyshire, Fife, Inverness-shire, Kincardineshire, Moray, Nairnshire, Perthshire, Ross-shire, Stirlingshire and Sutherland as well as the Northern Isles, Orkney and Shetland.
Writing & Language
The Picts had their own system of writing, Pictish. However, little survives today, so the history of the Picts themselves is a largely "academically recreated" history from other sources.
The Pictish language was first mentioned by Bede in the 8th century, and the categorization of this language as well as its relationship to other language in Britain was historically the subject of intense debate. The late 20th and early 21st century consensus that the language was a Brittonic one closely related to Welsh, is now generally accepted. This is on the basis of Welsh words appearing in Pictish place-names, such words including aber, caer and pen, inscriptions on Pictish monuments being interpreted as Brittonic (e.g. Pictish cuhett vs Welsh cyhyd), and Picts recorded as having borne Brittonic names including Mailcon, Resad, Talorc and Wrgust.
Woad
In battle, the Picts used to dye their faces and skin with blue woad, giving them a fearsome appearance.[1]
Sources
The New American Desk Encyclopedia, Penguin Group, 1989