The Auldest Tung

Danes

However, the Norse were not the only Scandic activity in the interval between Eogan and Clontarf. Whilst Anglo-Saxon matters were unfolding further south and Calefrisia continued to be generally unbothered greater Pictland found itself having to, if not exactly see off, then see out another group of bellic interlopers. They were the Danes. Bluntly put that only two Pictish and/or Alban kings died in battle with the Norse and then one hundred and twenty years apart does not mean it was quite the complete story. Two more kings, Caustantin I, once more, and Donald II, in fact father and son, in between also lost their lives to Scandic forces. Indeed, Caustantin was probably executed with the question whether in both bases the perpetrators were Norse or not and the answer quite possibly not.

Thirty-five years after the death of Eogan and eighty-seven before Indulf's, in 875 AD the Battle of Dollar had taken place at the foot of the Ochil Hills in the Germanic, possibly originally Frisian, probably by then Franglic even Scots Anglic enclave that stretched from the North shore of the Firth of Forth into Perthshire. On one side was Caustantin I himself, son of Kenneth MacAlpin, whilst on the other were what are described as “Vikings”, but this time apparently genuinely generically "Danish" ones under the command of, by some reports, Thorstem, and by others, Halfdan, one of the joint leaders of the Great Heathen Army, the GHA. And there is a story as to why they, particularly Halfdan, might have been there.

Halfdan was the commander to have brought in 866 AD one half of the GHA, actually a blatant invasion force, north from its East Anglian landing-point and apparently for reasons of family honour to have captured and held Anglic York. Then, after a decade campaigning successfully in England, in 875 AD apparently again for family reasons he turned his attention to Dublin, briefly taking control of it, with the from whom, Eystein, clear but not the why; this before returning the following year, 876 AD, to take command in York once more. Quite how he returned is unclear. He may have crossed the Irish Sea and travelled overland, then gathered the Dollar force and sent it northwards but still through Anglic, albeit partly Scots-Anglic, territory, perhaps with him in command, perhaps just Thorstem. He, or they, may even have sailed around Scotland, stopping on the way to take on a fight that Dublin had already started from the enclave but which had stuttered on the death there of Amlaib, its Hiberno-Norse commander. It matters not. The fact is that Halfdan's Danes won a major victory, the defeated Caustantin was pursued into Fife and it was claimed that the “North of Scotland” fell under Danish control, a likely exaggeration, the Anglic south presumably being already more understandably so.

But victory has proved to have been neither without preceding and subsequent problems nor long-term cost. Prior to it in Dublin its "king", Imar, had already died of natural causes in 873 AD, so even before Halfdan's intervention there. And he had been followed by his brother and next-in-line, Amlaib, the commander in question, who, whilst having started the anti-Caustantin campaign had in 874-5 AD suffered an unspecified death, whether from wounds incurred during it or not is unclear, but notably in Dollar, clearly the then Scandic base. Moreover, post-battle Caustantin I had not been caught; at least not yet. That would not occur until 877 AD and in the meantime Halfdan had continued on/returned to York, remaining there until he felt his attention was required in Ireland once more but where he would before the year ended meet his own death at known Norse hands at the Battle of Strangford Loch.

However, Halfdan may have again paused in Scotland on the fatal journey, at which point Caustantin I, somewhat carelessly it has to be said, allowed himself to be captured, in Atholl or Fife, and was reportedly ritually-killed on a Tayside beach. It might then have been expected that all hell would descend on Pictland. But actually there was nothing, neither action or reaction from either side. It was and remains strange but may have been due to the dual deaths of Amlaib and Halfdan resulting in a complete loss of impetus amongst the aggressors combined with Pictish pragmatism. Indeed Halfdan’s death seems to have marked the end of Danish involvement not just in Scotland but might also be seen as the beginning of the political end for Danes in Brittia. York would have no king, and therefore no Danish king, for six years, then have a series of local Norse cum Danish rulers for a generation, be controlled after defeat at the Battle of Tettenhall by Saxons from 910 AD to 918 AD and largely by the Norse alone from 919 AD for 35 years more before the Saxons returned unopposed until 1013 AD.

Indeed post-Halfdan not just did Danish activity die down but for a generation nothing Scandic filled the space in the Pictish heartland. It was in that period of Norse/Dane rule in York so with any one of three possible kings at the time and general confusion that seems to have ruled out any input and thus non-Norse, i.e. Danish involvement from there. And whilst its is true there was Norse activity and that it was extensive territorially but it was also confined. Three Pictish kings came and went, one killed by his local rivals, one replaced and one dying naturally, as did three Earls of Orkney, Sigurd dying from campaigning, but locally and from sepsis, another after just a year in place and the third giving up and returning to Norway.

Yet it was also once more at a time when Pictland was said to be under attack, indeed, “wasted”, although there is frankly little reporting until after the event and may actually have been referring the again Norse-only expansion under Sigurd from Caithness into Sutherland and Thorstein the Red into Ross-shire two decades earlier. In fact there only one even possible counter-indication. It is from 904 AD; the death of another Pictish king, Ead, perhaps a sub-king, since Caustantin is said from then already to have been on the throne, perhaps a very brief incumbent. But then he died, location unknown, in fighting the Ui Imair, the "The Grandsons, the Descendants of Ivar", the dynasty of the same late Imar of Dublin, so perhaps semi-Dane but more Hiberno-Norse, who were apparently still chipping away.

And from where they were chipping is interesting. Two years earlier in 902 AD Imar ua Imair, the grandson of Imar, had been driven from Dublin by the Irish, the family not returning until 917 AD and said in the meantime to have been operating out of territory somewhere in Scotland. And it is known that in 903 AD his/its forces had raided central Pictish territory, specifically Dunkeld, which suggests attack by land from the west. Perth, the Pictish capital, would have blocked the Tay as a water-route in. And in 904 AD once more Caustantin had won or would win a victory in battle in nearby Strath Earn with that same year and reportedly at the hands of Fortriu Picts Imar ua Imair's own death and nothing more. That is save the short-lived expedition to Kincardine following Brunanburh some thirty years later. But then that was irrefutably Saxon.