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Concept
Votadini
Summary
The Votadini, also known as the Uotadini, Wotādīni, Votādīni, or Otadini were a Brittonic people of the Iron Age in Great Britain. Their territory was in what is now south-east Scotland and north-east England, extending from the Firth of Forth and around modern Stirling to the River Tyne, including at its peak what are now the Falkirk, Lothian and Borders regions and Northumberland. This area was briefly part of the Roman province of Britannia. The earliest known capital of the Votadini appears to have been the Traprain Law hill fort in East Lothian, until that was abandoned in the early 5th century. They afterwards moved to Din Eidyn (Edinburgh).
The name is recorded as Votadini in classical sources, and as Otodini on old maps of ancient Roman Britain. Their descendants were the early medieval kingdom known in Old Welsh as Guotodin, and in later Welsh as Gododdin ɡoˈdoðin.
One of the oldest known pieces of British literature is a poem called Y Gododdin, written in Old Welsh, having previously been passed down via the oral traditions of the Brythonic speaking Britons. This poem celebrates the bravery of the soldiers from what was later referred to by the Britons as Yr Hen Ogledd – The Old North; a reference to the fact that this land was lost in battle to an invading force at Catraeth (modern day Catterick).
The area was settled as early as 3000 BC, and offerings of that period imported from Cumbria and Wales left on the sacred hilltop at Cairnpapple Hill, West Lothian, show that by then there was a link with these areas. By around 1500 BC Traprain Law in East Lothian was already a place of burial, with evidence of occupation and signs of ramparts after 1000 BC. Excavation at Edinburgh Castle found late Bronze Age material from about 850 BC.
Brythonic Celtic culture and language spread into the area at some time after the 8th century BC, possibly through cultural contact rather than mass invasion, and systems of kingdoms developed.
Official source
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