Sueno's Stone and my MA dissertation

Why I've chosen Archie Duncan's theory about Sueno's Stone as my dissertation topic

If you’re just tuning into this blog, a quick recap. Last year I decided to chuck in (or at least, dial down) my career as a professional copywriter, and go back to university to study medieval history.

I’m now gearing up to start an MA History (Medieval Studies) at Birmingham this September. More specifically, I plan to study early medieval Scotland, which has fascinated me since I was a child.

Most people when they think of early medieval Scotland think of the Picts – those enigmatic people with their carved stones, mysterious symbols, lost language and impenetrable ogham inscriptions.

Pictish carved stones l-r: Hilton of Cadboll stone, Invereen stone, Brandsbutt stone with ogham inscription (National Museum of Scotland, Wikipedia)

Pictish symbols and oghams: Cool, but not for me

At first I thought I wanted to study the Picts too. I fancied myself as a modern-day Michael Ventris; I’d be the first to crack the code of the ogham inscriptions and/or the Pictish symbols (they don’t seem to be related, even when they appear together on the same stones).

But the more I looked into it, the more I realised that even for scholars like Professor Katherine Forsyth, with her deep understanding of epigraphy and the development of Celtic languages in Britain, most of the inscriptions still resist interpretation. With no background in linguistics, I couldn’t hope to contribute anything here.

The symbols, meanwhile, seem to defeat everyone who attempts to decipher them. In 2010, Exeter University researchers proved mathematically that they are a written language, but their patterns of use and geographical distribution don’t provide many clues as to what they mean.

What to focus on for my dissertation?

So when I thought about a topic for my MA dissertation, I decided I wanted to look at something else; something that (as it seemed to me at the time) not many scholars were looking at.

That got me thinking about other early medieval carved stones that I was aware of – ones that get overlooked because they don’t fit neatly into the classification system applied to them by antiquarians Joseph Anderson and John Romilly Allen in their epic 1903 compendium, The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland.

In their system, stones with incised Pictish symbols and no Christian imagery are deemed ‘Class I’, while stones with relief-carved Pictish symbols and Christian imagery (a cross, at a minimum) are deemed ‘Class II’.

Stones with Christian imagery but no Pictish symbols go into a catch-all bucket called ‘Class III’ - a bucket full of all kinds of oddities, both Pictish and later.

Sueno’s Stone: An extraordinary Class III monument

Class III stones come in all shapes and sizes, from unremarkable (though I like it!) Pictish cross-slabs like the Kebbuck Stone near Nairn, to extraordinary and possibly post-Pictish monuments like the stone I’ve picked as the anchor for my dissertation: Sueno’s Stone in Forres, Moray.

Location of Sueno’s Stone in Forres, Moray (Google Maps)

Sueno’s Stone is unique in its extraordinariness: at 6.5m tall it’s over twice the height of imposing Pictish stones like the Maiden Stone (3m) and Shandwick Stone (2.7m), and was clearly intended to make a powerful statement.

We went to visit it recently, and despite having lived near it for the whole of the 1980s, I don’t think I’d ever appreciated just how massive it is.

Here it is with former England cricketer Monty Panesar, former Changing Rooms host Laurence Llewelyn Bowen, and former Apprentice adviser Nick Hewer for scale:

Still from episode 3 of the BBC programme Pilgrimage: The Road to the Scottish Isles (BBC)

It’s also extraordinary in its iconography. One face has a huge, ring-headed Christian cross, beneath which is a heavily eroded (or defaced) scene that’s been interpreted as a royal inauguration.¹

The other has a series of grisly battle scenes with piles of decapitated bodies and severed heads – including one head in a frame, seemingly to emphasise its importance.

Drawing of Sueno’s Stone panel showing decapitated bodies and severed heads, with one head in a frame (Drawing and labelling by John Borland)

Studying Sueno’s Stone as a historical text

Given that I’m going to be studying history, not archaeology, my plan is to try to situate Sueno’s Stone within the context of the geopolitical events of its time.

That’s where things get tricky, though, as nobody can really agree which period Sueno’s Stone belongs to. Pictish art historians Isabel and George Henderson imagine it to have been commissioned by “a 9th century patron fresh from a visit to Rome,”² but charcoal fragments found in post-holes around the stone during a 1991 archaeological excavation returned dates of 960-1170 AD.³

Meanwhile, historians trying to map the battle scenes to known historical events have suggested everything from Cináed mac Áilpin’s supposed defeat of the Picts c. 842 AD to the battle of Carham in c. 1018.⁴

Sueno’s Stone and the Alpinid dynasty

What does seem likely is that the stone post-dates Cináed mac Áilpin’s accession as king of the Picts in c. 842 - a pivotal date when ‘Pictish’ language and culture started to give way to ‘Scottish’ (i.e. Gaelic) language and culture in north-eastern Scotland.

As a Gaelic-speaking king who already ruled over the Scots of Dál Riata (modern-day Argyll) when he assumed the kingship of the Picts, Cináed was probably more Scottish than Pictish. Although he was described in contemporary Irish annals as rex Pictorum⁵, he’s generally viewed today as the first ruler of a new polity: the kingdom of Alba, and the founder of a new ruling dynasty: the Alpinids.⁶

This transition may be in evidence on Sueno’s Stone. It seems (to me) to have one foot in Pictish art – with its ornate vine scroll, intricate Celtic knotwork and otherworldly figures seen in profile with long hair and top-knots – and the other in a new visual style: with tightly-packed, frieze-style narrative panels, a solid central figure facing outwards from the stone, and scenes of bloody massacre.

Sueno’s Stone battle scenes, with central king-like figure circled in red (My photo)

So who is the figure depicted, what’s the significance of the battle narrative, and how does it relate to the enormous cross? And what about the inauguration scene? If it does depict a royal investiture, why in Forres? The few surviving historical sources imply that Pictish and Alpinid kings were inaugurated near Forteviot in Perthshire.⁷

On the other hand, two Alpinid kings (Domnall in 900 and Dubh in 966) are recorded in the annals as dying in Forres⁸, despite there being (as yet) no archaeological evidence – aside from Sueno’s Stone itself – of any kind of 9th or 10th century settlement in the Forres area.⁹ The great Pictish fort at nearby Burghead was, however, destroyed by fire in the 10th century: could that be related?

My starting point: Archie Duncan’s ‘Dubh’ theory

So there’s lots to unravel, and I’m excited to get started. Having learned from my previous MA not to pick too big a topic for my dissertation, my plan (at the moment, anyway) is to take one of the leading theories about Sueno’s Stone and see how it stands up in relation to historical sources and archaeological evidence.  

The theory I’m planning to examine is one put forward by Professor Archie Duncan in 1984¹⁰ and elaborated on in his 2002 book The Kingship of the Scots: Succession and Independence 842-1292: that the stone commemorates the murder of king Dubh mac Mael Coluim in Forres in 966 AD.

In his 2002 book, Professor Duncan writes:

“The depiction on Sueno’s stone by the side of the Kinloss road at Forres of a mighty battle, with one panel showing an arch under which lie corpses, one with a framed head, fits the list account of Dubh’s death […]. If the framed head is truly Dubh, then the stone would probably have been erected by his brother Cinaed II.”¹¹

This is one of three theories offered on Historic Environment Scotland’s interpretation board at Sueno’s Stone, but does it stand up to scrutiny? I’m not wholly convinced it does, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

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References

1. Ruth Loggie, A Revisit to Sueno’s Stone, unpublished University of Aberdeen MSc Archaeology dissertation (2020)

2. Henderson and Henderson, The Art of the Picts (2004), page 136

3. Ruth Loggie, as above.

4. James Bruce, Trajan's Máel Coluim - interpreting Sueno's Stone, talk given to Berwick History Society on 20th April 2022

5. Annals of Ulster, Year U858.2

6. A term coined (I think!) by Dr Neil McGuigan in his 2015 PhD thesis Neither Scotland nor England: Middle Britain c.850-1150.

7. See A. A. M. Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, Succession and Independence 842-1292, 2016 edition, page 11: “… the royal centre which Cinaed inherited from Pictish kings was Forteviot, and it is nearby that we should locate, I suggest, the inauguration rite of 9th century kings.”

8. Chapter 1 of Neil McGuigan’s 2021 book Mael Coluim III, 'Canmore': An Eleventh-Century Scottish King has a useful table of Alpinid kings and their places of death.

9. A planned community dig on the site of the medieval St Leonard’s Chapel in Forres, led by Dr John Barrett, may (or may not!) produce some interesting evidence.

10. A. A. M. Duncan, The Kingdom of the Scots, in The Making of Britain: The Dark Ages (1984), a book produced by London Weekend Television and Channel 4 to accompany a TV series of the same name, edited by Lesley M. Smith.

11. A. A. M. Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, Succession and Independence 842-1292, 2016 edition, page 21