Kingdom of Fortriu

Fortriu or the Kingdom of Fortriu is the name given by historians for a Pictish kingdom recorded between the 4th and 10th centuries, and often used synonymously with Pictland in general. While traditionally located in and around Strathearn in central Scotland, it is more likely to have been located in and around Moray and Easter Ross in the north.

The people of Fortriu left no surviving indigenous writings and the name they used to describe themselves is unrecorded.

The population group was first documented in the late 4th century by the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who referred to them in Latin as the Verturiones. The Latin root verturio has been connected etymologically by John Rhys with the later Welsh word gwerthyr, meaning "fortress", suggesting that both came from a Common Brittonic root vertera, and implying that the group's name meant "Fortress People". A reconstructed form in the Pictish language would be something like *Uerteru.

A connected Old Irish form of the name appears from the 6th to the 10th centuries in the Annals of Ulster and later sources, which contain repeated references to rex Fortrenn, ("the King of Fortriu"), la firu Fortrenn ("the men of Fortriu") and Maigh Fortrenn ("the plain of Fortriu"), alongside references to battles occurring i Fortrinn ("in Fortriu"). These are examples of a common pattern of Goidelic languages rendering with an f what in Brittonic languages is U/V, W or Gw. The word Fortriu is a modern reconstruction of a hypothetical nominative form for this word that has survived only in these genitive and dative cases.Anglo-Saxon sources, from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the 6th century to Bede in the 8th century, refer to the group using the Old English form of the name Waerteras.

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