Gododdin

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Yr Hen Ogledd or The Old North . Northern England before the Anglo-Saxon / Scottish conquest

Gododdin (pronounced [go'doðin] ) is the name of a tribe of Britons . He settled at the end of the Roman era in what is now northeastern England and southeastern Scotland at the upper end of the Firth of Forth . The Gododdin are known from the 7th century heroic song Y Gododdin , which is ascribed to Aneirin .

The name Gododdin is the modern Welsh pronunciation. It comes from the old Welsh name of the Guotodin tribe , which in turn is derived from the old British Votadini . In the Geographike Hyphegesis of the geographer Ptolemaios , which was created in the 2nd century, they are referred to as Uotadini .

Kingdom of Gododdin

Emergence

Morris suspects that Coel Hen , who took over the northern capital of Britain during the Roman withdrawal from Britain around 410 Eburacum ( York ), is the last Roman military governor, the Dux Britanniarum ( Duke of the British ). In the following years he became a high king of northern Britain. He ruled over the former northern Roman provinces, possibly also over the area that the Votadini settled. This area was later referred to in poems as Hen Ogledd . Since his empire began to fall apart after his death, Gododdin comprised most of the settlement area of ​​the Votadini in 470, while the southern part between the rivers Tweed and Tyne became the kingdom of Bryneich. In Cunedda or Cunedag , called the legendary founder of the Kingdom of Gwynedd in North Wales is believed that he was a warlord was the Manaw Gododdin, who left at that time Gododdin to the southwest.

expansion

The extent of the kingdom of Gododdin is not precisely known. Possibly it reached in the north from the Scottish city of Stirling to the kingdom of Bryneich in what is now Northumberland . Gododdin was bounded in the west by the British Kingdom of Strathclyde and in the north by the tribes of the Picts . The Gododdin living in Clackmannanshire are also known as Manaw Gododdin (Watson, 1926; Jackson, 1969). According to tradition, the kings of Gododdin lived alternately in the area around the Traprain Law and in Dùn Éideann (fortification of Eidyn), today's Edinburgh . They may also have been in Din Baer ( Dunbar ).

Conquest of Gododdin

In the 6th century, the kingdom of Bryneich, bordering Gododdin to the south, was conquered by the Angles and became the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Bernicia. The pressure from the Angles was directed northwards towards Gododdin. Around the year 600 there was the Battle of Catraeth (probably in the area around Catterick ). 300 Gododdin warriors were killed in this battle. One of the survivors, the poet Aneirin , composed the heroic song Y Gododdin from his impressions .

In 638 the last fortress Din Eidyn (Edinburgh) was besieged and captured by the Angles. Gododdin came under the rule of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Bernica. It is unknown to what extent the original population was displaced. Bernica later became part of the Kingdom of Northumbria . At the end of the heptarchy , Northumbria was conquered by the Danish Vikings in 867 and incorporated into the Kingdom of Jórvík . In 1018 the area was conquered as far as the River Tweed and became part of Scotland.

literature

  • Ian Armit (1998): Scotland's Hidden History (Tempus [in association with Historic Scotland]) ISBN 0-7486-6067-4
  • Kenneth H. Jackson (1969): The Gododdin: The Oldest Scottish poem (Edinburgh: University Press)
  • John Morris (1973): The Age of Arthur (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson) ISBN 0-297-17601-3
  • Stuart Piggott (1982): Scotland Before History (Edinburgh: University Press) ISBN 0-85224-348-0
  • WJ Watson (1926, 1986): The History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland: being the Rhind lectures on archeology (expanded) delivered in 1916. (Edinburgh, London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1926; Edinburgh: Birlinn, 1986 , reprint edition). ISBN 1-874744-06-8

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