In 839, a fateful battle took place. Some Picts were fighting the rebellious Scots under Alpin of Gabhran's house, a large army of Norsemen happened upon their rear. Though Alpin was killed, and his head impaled by the Picts --  the Pictish army now turned to face the Norsemen and were destroyed in a wild pitched battle. The Picts not only lost to the Norsemen, they were utterly destroyed.   Eoghann, the last King of Picts, died with them and now there was no Pictish leader to oppose the Scots.

Why the Norsemen took part in a battle between Scots and Picts that did not concern them, is easily explained. The Norsemen believed to die in battle was a sure way of entering Valhalla, the great warriors reward in "Asgaard", and because of this pagan belief, the Vikings  had no fear of dying in combat.  They happened upon the battle between the Picts and Scots, which the Scots were losing, and promptly attacked the winners -- the Picts.   Besides the last of the Pictish Kings dying in the battle, so did the Scots' King Alpin.   Kenneth the Hardy, son of Alpin, avenged his fathers death by taking the remaining territory of the Picts.  His ascendancy to 'King of Scots and Picts,'  was not a peaceful one though.

The first king of Scots and Picts, (southern Picts), MacAlpin, it is said, murdered seven Earls of Dalriada, kinsmen who might have disputed his claim to Kingship.  All this took place during a celebration banquet at Scone. The ascendancy of Kings was a bloody and treacherous affair -- not for the faint of heart.

One would think that after a history making battle such as the one above-described would be a dramatic turning point and famous in all history books.    Curiously this didn't happen, and the reason is, most likely, that it actually took another century, and more battles, before the union was a stable union of Pict and Scot.  In time, however, it did become stable and the Scots gained  tremendous lands, wealth, and access to expert horsemanship, as well as countless more Scottish subjects, from the fall of the Picts.  The two peoples    had been locked in ferocious combat for so long that the bonds of war had actually helped unite the people, as two metals in a great flame, they became fused and then were tempered by the cooling hand of Christianity.

Kenneth MacAlpin was the first Scottish King of Alba, (the Pict name for their Kingdom) although his mother was a Pict.  The Picts pass from history as most unknown races but  the memory of their culture would last for a thousand years among the  western clans.

The Vikings were another story.   In Scotland they invaded then settled. The Norsemen had easy pickings in early Scotland, which at the time was a confused collection of rival kinglets, prior to MacAlpin. It was not until 843 that the country was totally united under     Kenneth.

When Kenneth MacAlpin died in the latter half of the 9th century, Scotland  went through a series of mediocre kings who were kept very busy trying to hold the Norsemen out of Scotland and keep its borders fixed.   Three kings died in battle, others had short reigns. The Scottish unity held, but barely.   One hundred  and sixty years of Norse invasions and counter attacks occurred, led by, only partially successful kings, (three of whom died in battle) and then, finally  the Vikings began to settle more than invade.

The unity did not keep the Norsemen out.  They took Dumbarton, on the River  Clyde, and lorded it over the area, and they were the death of Scots' Kings,  Constantine, Donald the Second and Indulf.

They were the kings in a time when not many Scottish kings died in their beds.  Turbulence was never far from the surface, and a king was liable to be struggling against the Norsemen, new territorial aggression from England, as well as the incurablerebelliousness of the men of Moray in the north.  It was not until MalcolmII arrived on the throne in 1005, that the country even  acquired, atlast, a geographical unity with fixed borders.  Malcolm II vainly triedto extend his borders to occupy parts of the north of England, but had  his armies cut to pieces.

England also had trouble with the Vikings, who had been invading England and now began to thirst for England's land. They took nearly half of England by force and then    demanded to be paid to stop further aggression.  Actually, it was an English king's idea to pay the money, or "Danegeld" (Dane gold) as it came to be known, to halt the Viking attacks. This "ransom" or Danegeld was at first  successful, and the Danes left the rest of England alone......for a while. 

However, the idea of easy pickings, the Danegeld, was just too much for the Vikings to resist and they began to demand more and more payment of Danegeld from the English, at this point in time, England was in serious crisis. Plus the Danes were now settling large areas of England and marrying the locals.  The villages in the north and east of England still have many Viking names.   Eventually the Danes became so powerful in England, one of their own became King of England. This was King Canut who took the English throne in  1016.

King Canut of England (pronounced Kanewt) now began to eye Scotland,  especially the Lothian area which he considered belonged to him by right. What right isn't clear. His forces went to repossess it in 1018, and the combined  Britons and Scots massacred them on the banks of the River Tweed, at a battle called Carham in 1018, under the King of Scotland, Malcolm II, a descendent of  Kenneth MacAlpin.  The army they defeated was an Angle army from Northumbria,  which brought the rich Lothians under Malcolm II's rule.   Scotland,and her  borders, were now stable, but not necessarily for long.

Meanwhile, in the farthest southwest corner of England, Alfred the Great and his descendants, made a stand against the Danes and won a series of  victories, which led in time, to the Saxons reclaiming England.  The Vikings, remained however, slowly mixing with Britain and in all of Europe with the native populations and eventually the "Age of the Vikings" came to a gradual  end.

Alba grew even more:


In the same year as the Scottish victory at Carham, 1018, the King of the Britons of Strathclyde died with no heir and was succeeded by Malcom II's grandson and heir -- Duncan, (who was not the ageing and venerable monarch portrayed by Shakespeare in "MacBeth"), Duncan had some type of claim to the throne of Strathclyde through the female line.   Exactly how he did this isn't clear, but 16 years later, in 1034, Duncan became King of Scotland.  In this way the frontiers of the Scottish Kingdom were still further extended,  reaching far down into what is now English territory.