Battle of Nechtansmere (685): Picts Defeat Northumbria

The Battle of Nechtansmere, or Dún Nechtáin, was fought on 20 May 685 between the Picts under King Bridei son of Beli and the Northumbrians under King Ecgfrith. Ecgfrith was killed and his army destroyed. The Pictish victory ended Northumbrian domination north of the Firth of Forth and helped shape the later border between the English and the peoples who would form Scotland.

Background: Northumbrian power in the north

In the mid-7th century Northumbria was the most powerful English kingdom. Its kings, Oswald and then Oswiu, extended their overlordship over neighbouring British, Scottish and Pictish peoples. By the 650s the southern Picts paid tribute to Northumbria, and a Northumbrian bishopric was later established at Abercorn on the south shore of the Forth.

Ecgfrith became king in 670. Early in his reign the Picts rebelled, and according to Stephen of Ripon’s Life of Wilfrid he crushed them in a bloody battle. In 684 he sent an army to raid Brega in Ireland, an act condemned by Bede. In 685, against the advice of his friends and of Cuthbert, newly chosen bishop of Lindisfarne, he led an army into Pictland.

The Pictish king Bridei son of Beli had come to power around 672. He ruled Fortriu, the leading Pictish kingdom, and steadily extended his authority, attacking Dunnottar and Orkney in the early 680s. His father Beli was probably a king of the Britons of Dumbarton, and he may have been a distant relative of Ecgfrith.

The battle

Bede, writing in the early 730s, gives the essential account. The Picts feigned retreat and drew Ecgfrith’s army into narrow passes among inaccessible mountains, where the king was killed with most of his forces on 20 May, in his 40th year and the 15th of his reign.

The Irish annals call the battle Dún Nechtáin, “Nechtan’s fort”, and the Northumbrian tradition later preserved by Symeon of Durham calls it Nechtanesmere, “Nechtan’s lake”. A Welsh source, the Historia Brittonum, names it Gueith Lin Garan, “the battle of the heron lake”. Bridei’s forces seem to have used their knowledge of the terrain and the element of surprise against an invading army far from home.

Where was it fought?

For a long time historians placed the battle near Dunnichen in Angus, a name derived from Dún Nechtáin, where a lake or marsh once lay. In 2006 Alex Woolf argued that the battle took place at Dunachton in Badenoch, beside Loch Insh near Kingussie, which fits Bede’s mention of mountains and the location of Fortriu in the north. The debate is unresolved, and both sites are discussed in modern work.

Consequences

The defeat was a disaster for Northumbria. Bede reports that the Picts recovered lands held by the English, and that the Scots of Dál Riata and some Britons regained their freedom. Many Northumbrians were killed, enslaved or forced to flee. Bishop Trumwine abandoned his see at Abercorn and retired to the monastery at Whitby.

Ecgfrith was succeeded by his half-brother Aldfrith, a scholar who had been educated among the Irish and who ruled peacefully until 705. Northumbria remained a centre of learning and art, producing works such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, but it never again dominated the far north. In Bede’s view, the hopes and strength of the kingdom began to ebb from this time.

For the Picts, the victory secured the independence of Fortriu and the southern Pictish lands. Bridei died in 692 or 693, and was mourned in the annals and in verse associated with Iona’s abbot Adomnán.

The Aberlemno stone

A carved cross-slab in Aberlemno churchyard, about ten kilometres north of Dunnichen, shows on its back a battle between horsemen and foot soldiers. One group wears helmets with long nose-guards, a style known from Anglo-Saxon finds. Some scholars have suggested that it commemorates Nechtansmere and that a fallen figure being attacked by a raven represents Ecgfrith. Others note that the stone may date from the 8th or 9th century and could show a different or symbolic battle.

Timeline

• c. 653–660s: The southern Picts come under Northumbrian overlordship.
• 670: Ecgfrith becomes king of Northumbria.
• c. 671–672: A Pictish rising is crushed by Ecgfrith; Bridei son of Beli becomes king about this time.
• 684: Northumbrian forces raid Brega in Ireland.
• 20 May 685: Battle of Nechtansmere; Ecgfrith is killed.
• 685: Aldfrith becomes king of Northumbria; Bishop Trumwine leaves Abercorn.
• 692 or 693: Death of Bridei son of Beli.

Why it matters

Nechtansmere is one of the decisive battles of early British history. It stopped the northward expansion of the most powerful English kingdom of its day, preserved the independence of the Picts, and indirectly influenced where the later frontier between Scotland and England would run. It is also a reminder of how much of early Scottish history depends on scattered evidence from Bede, Irish annals and carved stones.