The vicinity of Glamis Castle has prehistoric traces ; for example, a noted intricately carved Pictish stone known as the Eassie Stone was found in a creek-bed at the nearby village of Eassie.

Historic features near Kirriemuir include a carved Pictish stone known as the Eassie Stone, found in the bed of a burn near the village of Eassie.

The village was once the ' capital ' ( or at least a major religious and political centre ) of the Pictish kingdom.

The vicinity of Glamis has prehistoric traces-within the village there stands an intricately carved Pictish stone known as the Glamis Manse Stone.

There are various other Pictish stones nearby the village, such as the Hunter Hill Stone, and the Eassie Stone, which stands in the nearby village of Eassie.

It is traditionally held that Manire baptised Pictish converts in a pool of the Dee east of the modern village of Crathie.

Comrie ( Gaelic: Cuimridh ; Pictish: Aberlednock ; Roman: Victoria ) is an affluent village and parish in the southern highlands of Scotland, towards the western end of the Strathearn district of Perth and Kinross, seven miles ( 11 km ) west of Crieff.

Before Balthus can meet a similar fate, Conan sets the Pictish village on fire and the two flee into the woods.

Nearby historical features to the north include Glamis Castle and the Eassie Stone, a carved Pictish cross slab-stone ( now situated in a ruined church in the village of Eassie ).

Conversion to Christianity may have speeded a long term process of gaelicisation of the Pictish kingdoms, which adopted Gaelic language and customs.

The means by which the Pictish confederation formed in Late Antiquity from a number of tribes is unknown, although there is speculation that reaction to the growth of the Roman Empire was a factor.

Likewise, the Pictish shires and thanages, traces of which are found in later times, are thought to have been adopted from their southern neighbours.

It appears that these are associated with Pictish kings, which argues for a considerable degree of royal patronage and control of the church.

In 839, a large Norse fleet invaded via the River Tay and River Earn, both of which were highly navigable, and reached into the heart of the Pictish kingdom of Fortriu.

The sophisticated kingdom that had been built fell apart, as did the Pictish leadership, which had been stable for more than a hundred years since the time of Óengus mac Fergusa ( The accession of Cináed mac Ailpín as king of both Picts and Scots can be attributed to the aftermath of this event ).

Northumbria played an important role in the formation of Insular art, a unique style combining Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Pictish, Byzantine and other elements, producing works such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, St Cuthbert Gospel, the Ruthwell Cross and Bewcastle Cross, and later the Book of Kells, which was probably created at Iona.

Whether it was or not, Iona was certainly important in the formation of Insular art, which combined Mediterranean, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Pictish elements into a style of which the book of Kells is a late example.

Perth's Pictish name, and some archaeological evidence, indicate that there must have been a settlement here from earlier times, probably at a point where a river crossing or crossings coincided with a slightly raised natural mound on the west bank of the Tay ( which at Perth flows north-south ), thus giving some protection for settlement from the frequent flooding.

In 744 the Picts acted alone, and in 750 Óengus may have cooperated with Eadberht of Northumbria in a campaign in which Talorgan, brother of Óengus, was killed in a heavy Pictish defeat at the hands of Teudebur of Alt Clut, perhaps at Mugdock, near Milngavie.

One of the stones, the 9th century Drosten Stone, has the distinction of being one of the few Pictish artefacts to have an inscription in Latin text: ' DROSTEN: IREUORET TTFOR CUS ', which has been interpreted in various ways, but it is thought that the second line refers to the Pictish King Uurad, who reigned between 839 and 842 AD.

Further north still lay the great Pictish kingdom of Fortriu, which after the Battle of Dun Nechtain in 685 came to be the strongest power in the northern half of Britain.

When Malcolm Canmore defeated and slew Macbeth in 1057 he married the dead king's relative Ingibiorg, a Pictish princess, an event which marked the beginning of the decay of Norse influence.

The Culdee of Loch Leven lived on St Serf's Inch, which had been given them by a Pictish prince, Brude, about 700.

It has been suggested that Gartnait son of Áedán could be the same person as Gartnait son of Domelch, king of the Picts, whose death is reported around 601, but this rests on the idea of Pictish matriliny, which has been criticised.

Germanus led the native Britons to a victory against a Pictish and Saxon army, at a mountainous site near a river, of which Mold in North Wales is the traditional location.

The battle ended with a decisive Pictish victory which severely weakened Northumbria's power in northern Britain.

It may have originated from an ancient legend regarding a Pictish king who slew a giant in the distant past, which had spread throughout the isles, or the name may also come from a sixth-century Pictish saint who bore another form of the name-or it may may have migrated upwards from the southwest due to the fame of the legends of King Arthur.

The idea that a distinct Pictish language was perceived at some point is attested clearly in Bede's early 8th-century Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, which names Pictish as a language distinct from both Welsh and Gaelic.

MacAlpin's treason is a medieval legend which explains the replacement of the Pictish language by Gaelic in the 9th and 10th centuries.

The Pictish king-lists originally ended with this Causantín, who was reckoned the seventieth and last king of the Picts.

The dominant kingdom in eastern Scotland before the Viking Age was the northern Pictish kingdom of Fortriu on the shores of the Moray Firth.

The historical record for 9th century Scotland is meagre, but the Irish annals and the 10th-century Chronicle of the Kings of Alba agree that Kenneth was a Pictish king, and call him " king of the Picts " at his death.

The kingdom of Alba was too new to be said to have a customary rule of succession, but Pictish and Irish precedents favoured an adult successor descended from Kenneth MacAlpin.

There was also a merger of the Gaelic and Pictish crowns, although historians debate whether it was a Pictish takeover of Dál Riata, or the other way around.

The clàrsach or harp was the most popular musical instrument in later medieval Scotland and Ireland and Gaelic poets portrayed their Pictish counterparts as very much like themselves.

Rather than a conquest of the Picts, instead the idea of Pictish matrilineal succession, mentioned by Bede and apparently the only way to make sense of the list of Kings of the Picts found in the Pictish Chronicle, advanced the idea that Kenneth was a Gael, and a king of Dál Riata, who had inherited the throne of Pictland through a Pictish mother.

Pictish society was typical of many Iron Age societies in northern Europe, having " wide connections and parallels " with neighbouring groups.

In the reign of Óengus mac Fergusa ( 729 – 761 ), Dál Riata was very much subject to the Pictish king.

The rise of Cínaed mac Ailpín ( Kenneth MacAlpin ) in the 840s, in the aftermath of this disaster, brought to power the family who would preside over the last days of the Pictish kingdom and found the new kingdom of Alba, although Cínaed himself was never other than king of the Picts.

Regardless of the exact number of kingdoms and their names, the Pictish nation was not a united one.

The kings of the Picts when Bede was writing were Bridei and Nechtan, sons of Der Ilei, who indeed claimed the throne through their mother Der Ilei, daughter of an earlier Pictish king.

Even in the Late Middle Ages, the line between traders and pirates was unclear, so that Pictish pirates were probably merchants on other occasions.

While long-distance travel was unusual in Pictish times, it was far from unknown as stories of missionaries, travelling clerics and exiles show.

The largest hoard of early Pictish metalwork was found in 1819 at Norrie's Law in Fife, but unfortunately much was dispersed and melted down ( Scottish law on treasure finds has always been unhelpful to preservation ).