Perhaps the Northern Picts Project have already excavated Dhun Fothair! Perhaps Dunnicaer is the original Dunottar. Whilst promontory forts are common in the NE, it would be exceptional for two to be so close.
But Dunicaer is not big enough to support a late medieval fortification so when it came to it maybe they moved lock, stock and name to the current Dunottar? Dunicaer does sound a bit made up - the (Gaelic) fort of the (Brythonic/Pictish(?)) fort?
Hi Alastair, thanks for all your good comments, keep them coming!
Gordon Noble's team decided that Dunnicaer was a very early Pictish fort, dating from the third and fourth centuries AD (thus pushing back the date of the Pictish symbols to Roman times). So 10th century kings wouldn't have been killed there.
But you may be right that the Northern Picts Project has already excavated Dun Fother. (Wild theory incoming...) Burghead is the biggest and highest-status Pictish fort ever discovered, continuously occupied from the 6th to the 10th century, when it was destroyed by fire. But despite being massive and super high-status, it's never mentioned once in any early medieval source. We don't even have any idea what its name was. UNLESS the "Dun Fother" that crops up every so often in the sources is not Dunnottar but Burghead... (I'm sure I'll have a post on this before long!)
I guess if Kinneddar can be the "head" of a foithir then Burghead can be the "fort" of the same foithir?
For somewhere supposedly unmentioned in the documentary record Burghead does seem to have a lot of putative names though. Nicholas Evans has suggested that Simon Taylor has suggested that Roseisle could originally have been Burghead's name (Ros = headland, Ilei = a personal name as in Nechtan son of Der-ilei); McGuigan has suggested that Woolf has suggested that it is the Viking battle-site of Torfnes, on the basis of the Burghead Bulls beng reflected in Tarbh, a Gaelic work for a bull; Joseph Anderson the translater of the Orkneyinga Saga reckoned it was the trading settlement of Dúfeyrar mentioned in that work (the "Sandy spit of Duffus") and the association with Ptolomy's Pinnata Castra is attractive even if only on geographic grounds - where else is it that going to be on the Moray coast west of the Spey? That would be dependent on the theory that Burghead's three external ramparts predated the two inner citadels having some truth to it though.
The negative is that your theory has a lot of competition for the naming of Burghead, the positive is that the matter is clearly far from settled!
Thanks for all this! It does seem to be a bit of a mystery where the name 'Roseisle' came from. I've seen someone else suggest 'ros-ey', the headland of the island - the 'island' being the ridge of Duffus above Loch Spynie. That said, neither 'ros-ilei' or 'ros-ey' appear in the early medieval sources as far as I'm aware. The jury goes back and forth on the whereabouts of Torfness, but it's definitely a candidate - although I think (?) it's only mentioned in the Orkneying Saga, which is a highly unreliable source. Re. Pinnata Castra/Ptoroton Stratopedon, Leif Isaksen, who excavated Cluny Hill in Forres, thinks the massive Iron Age fort he (re-)discovered there has a good claim to being the place Ptolemy meant. His historiography of Forres/Cluny Hill is *really* good if you haven't read it: https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/85498/1/Cluny.compressed.pdf
I spent a lovely afternoon exploring the Cluny Hills a few months ago on the back of that article! I hadn't realised Isaksen was now actively proposing that identification though. Does that mean they have got evidence of Roman Iron Age (or early medieval?) occupation from their pre-Covid digs? That would be quite a big deal.
The old manor of Sanquar just south of Forres is intriguing too - Geoffrey Barrow identified the name as potentially coming from Sean Cathair - "Old Fort" (page 15 of this - https://clog.glasgow.ac.uk/ojs/index.php/JSNS/article/view/177 - there's another now lost example of it as a placename in the Elgin area too). As it's a raised area south across the small flooded Mosset valley from the Cluny Hills, from where Isaksen's fort faces north, it's hard topographically to see the name referring to the Cluny fort. Coupled with the recent discoveries around the Grantown Road, could those shiny houses that replaced Sanquar House be built over pre-Burghal Forres? (More wild theorising, but fun...)
Re:Roseisle - Duffus and Drainie parishes are apparently getting the full Taylor/Markus treatment as part of the Comparative Kingship project, so hopefully we'll be treated to an avalanche of toponymic revelation in the near future.
Coming back to Forresian regicide though, I'm sure I read an article by Dauvit Broun (that I can't now track down), arguing that the movement of the deaths of Duncan and Malcolm north from the Mearns to Moray was an early 13th century fiction designed to demonise the Moravians at the time of the McWilliams rebellions. So maybe the whole thing has a more humdrum political explanation after all?
Ah wait, now I look again, Leif Isaksen doesn't mention it, so I must have been thinking of someone else proposing Cluny Hill as Pinnata Castra. Isaksen's dig didn't find anything later than the 1st century BC, although the fort must have been an imposing feature into the early medieval period.
I'd also thought that about the Sanquhar place-name, as Simon Taylor gives that same etymology ('old fort') for Sanquhar in Fife. Exciting that they're going to do a place-name survey of Duffus and Drainie - Simon Taylor gave a lecture at the Groam House Museum a few years back on 'Fortrose, Fortriu and the Place-Names of Northern Pictland' for which I've been trying to track down the lecture notes, not with any great success so far.
Neil McGuigan on Twitter also pointed me towards Dauvit Broun's book "The Irish Identity of the Kingdom of Scots" for exactly the interpretation you mention - that the places of death were changed to demonise the men of Moray. I find all Dauvit Broun's work very hard (either out of print or expensive) to get hold of, which is one reason I'm looking forward to actually starting this MA and getting library/journal access.
On the other hand, Neil McGuigan thinks the idea of a bridge at Kinloss (which I thought felt anachronistic) is actually plausible for the 10th century, which re-opens the possibility of an early medieval settlement - or at least something that might require a bridge - at Kinloss. But the royal connection with Forres is looking tenuous again, so Sueno's Stone remains a mystery...
Ha - I've been trying to track down that Groam House lecture too, also with no success. They publish most of them, it's frustrating that that one wasn't. Let me know if you get hold of it! I'm also desparate to read Broun's "Origins of the Mormaer", which is liberally referenced in Taylor's monumental "Shape of the State", but seems to have been "forthcoming" since at least 2016. That's been delivered as a lecture at least once too.
Even if the two earliest supposed King-deaths in Forres are fictional though, it still implies that Forres was viewed as a likely and symbolically-charged location for Kingly death by 12th and early 13th century Scottish propagandists, at a time when Stracathro would still just have been within living memory, so it could surely still be argued to give some weight to arguments for Forres's royal significance within Moray? (alongside Dub's more credible death towards the other end of Moray's likely lifespan as a province, and of course the presence of Sueno's stone itself).
Hi Fiona, me again.
Perhaps the Northern Picts Project have already excavated Dhun Fothair! Perhaps Dunnicaer is the original Dunottar. Whilst promontory forts are common in the NE, it would be exceptional for two to be so close.
But Dunicaer is not big enough to support a late medieval fortification so when it came to it maybe they moved lock, stock and name to the current Dunottar? Dunicaer does sound a bit made up - the (Gaelic) fort of the (Brythonic/Pictish(?)) fort?
Hi Alastair, thanks for all your good comments, keep them coming!
Gordon Noble's team decided that Dunnicaer was a very early Pictish fort, dating from the third and fourth centuries AD (thus pushing back the date of the Pictish symbols to Roman times). So 10th century kings wouldn't have been killed there.
But you may be right that the Northern Picts Project has already excavated Dun Fother. (Wild theory incoming...) Burghead is the biggest and highest-status Pictish fort ever discovered, continuously occupied from the 6th to the 10th century, when it was destroyed by fire. But despite being massive and super high-status, it's never mentioned once in any early medieval source. We don't even have any idea what its name was. UNLESS the "Dun Fother" that crops up every so often in the sources is not Dunnottar but Burghead... (I'm sure I'll have a post on this before long!)
I guess if Kinneddar can be the "head" of a foithir then Burghead can be the "fort" of the same foithir?
For somewhere supposedly unmentioned in the documentary record Burghead does seem to have a lot of putative names though. Nicholas Evans has suggested that Simon Taylor has suggested that Roseisle could originally have been Burghead's name (Ros = headland, Ilei = a personal name as in Nechtan son of Der-ilei); McGuigan has suggested that Woolf has suggested that it is the Viking battle-site of Torfnes, on the basis of the Burghead Bulls beng reflected in Tarbh, a Gaelic work for a bull; Joseph Anderson the translater of the Orkneyinga Saga reckoned it was the trading settlement of Dúfeyrar mentioned in that work (the "Sandy spit of Duffus") and the association with Ptolomy's Pinnata Castra is attractive even if only on geographic grounds - where else is it that going to be on the Moray coast west of the Spey? That would be dependent on the theory that Burghead's three external ramparts predated the two inner citadels having some truth to it though.
The negative is that your theory has a lot of competition for the naming of Burghead, the positive is that the matter is clearly far from settled!
Thanks for all this! It does seem to be a bit of a mystery where the name 'Roseisle' came from. I've seen someone else suggest 'ros-ey', the headland of the island - the 'island' being the ridge of Duffus above Loch Spynie. That said, neither 'ros-ilei' or 'ros-ey' appear in the early medieval sources as far as I'm aware. The jury goes back and forth on the whereabouts of Torfness, but it's definitely a candidate - although I think (?) it's only mentioned in the Orkneying Saga, which is a highly unreliable source. Re. Pinnata Castra/Ptoroton Stratopedon, Leif Isaksen, who excavated Cluny Hill in Forres, thinks the massive Iron Age fort he (re-)discovered there has a good claim to being the place Ptolemy meant. His historiography of Forres/Cluny Hill is *really* good if you haven't read it: https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/85498/1/Cluny.compressed.pdf
I spent a lovely afternoon exploring the Cluny Hills a few months ago on the back of that article! I hadn't realised Isaksen was now actively proposing that identification though. Does that mean they have got evidence of Roman Iron Age (or early medieval?) occupation from their pre-Covid digs? That would be quite a big deal.
The old manor of Sanquar just south of Forres is intriguing too - Geoffrey Barrow identified the name as potentially coming from Sean Cathair - "Old Fort" (page 15 of this - https://clog.glasgow.ac.uk/ojs/index.php/JSNS/article/view/177 - there's another now lost example of it as a placename in the Elgin area too). As it's a raised area south across the small flooded Mosset valley from the Cluny Hills, from where Isaksen's fort faces north, it's hard topographically to see the name referring to the Cluny fort. Coupled with the recent discoveries around the Grantown Road, could those shiny houses that replaced Sanquar House be built over pre-Burghal Forres? (More wild theorising, but fun...)
Re:Roseisle - Duffus and Drainie parishes are apparently getting the full Taylor/Markus treatment as part of the Comparative Kingship project, so hopefully we'll be treated to an avalanche of toponymic revelation in the near future.
Coming back to Forresian regicide though, I'm sure I read an article by Dauvit Broun (that I can't now track down), arguing that the movement of the deaths of Duncan and Malcolm north from the Mearns to Moray was an early 13th century fiction designed to demonise the Moravians at the time of the McWilliams rebellions. So maybe the whole thing has a more humdrum political explanation after all?
Ah wait, now I look again, Leif Isaksen doesn't mention it, so I must have been thinking of someone else proposing Cluny Hill as Pinnata Castra. Isaksen's dig didn't find anything later than the 1st century BC, although the fort must have been an imposing feature into the early medieval period.
I'd also thought that about the Sanquhar place-name, as Simon Taylor gives that same etymology ('old fort') for Sanquhar in Fife. Exciting that they're going to do a place-name survey of Duffus and Drainie - Simon Taylor gave a lecture at the Groam House Museum a few years back on 'Fortrose, Fortriu and the Place-Names of Northern Pictland' for which I've been trying to track down the lecture notes, not with any great success so far.
Neil McGuigan on Twitter also pointed me towards Dauvit Broun's book "The Irish Identity of the Kingdom of Scots" for exactly the interpretation you mention - that the places of death were changed to demonise the men of Moray. I find all Dauvit Broun's work very hard (either out of print or expensive) to get hold of, which is one reason I'm looking forward to actually starting this MA and getting library/journal access.
On the other hand, Neil McGuigan thinks the idea of a bridge at Kinloss (which I thought felt anachronistic) is actually plausible for the 10th century, which re-opens the possibility of an early medieval settlement - or at least something that might require a bridge - at Kinloss. But the royal connection with Forres is looking tenuous again, so Sueno's Stone remains a mystery...
Ha - I've been trying to track down that Groam House lecture too, also with no success. They publish most of them, it's frustrating that that one wasn't. Let me know if you get hold of it! I'm also desparate to read Broun's "Origins of the Mormaer", which is liberally referenced in Taylor's monumental "Shape of the State", but seems to have been "forthcoming" since at least 2016. That's been delivered as a lecture at least once too.
Even if the two earliest supposed King-deaths in Forres are fictional though, it still implies that Forres was viewed as a likely and symbolically-charged location for Kingly death by 12th and early 13th century Scottish propagandists, at a time when Stracathro would still just have been within living memory, so it could surely still be argued to give some weight to arguments for Forres's royal significance within Moray? (alongside Dub's more credible death towards the other end of Moray's likely lifespan as a province, and of course the presence of Sueno's stone itself).