Pictish Language - Inscriptions

Inscriptions

Among the ogham stones in Scotland there is a small subset that do not have Gaelic inscriptions. These are generally assumed to be in Pictish as they date from the Early Middle Ages. However, many alternative languages have been suggested—from non-Indo-European to Norse. It may have been that an older language was retained for inscriptions, in a similar way to Latin. Interpretation is difficult and some writers have concluded that the inscriptions are a jumble of nonsense.

According to W. B. Lockwood (1975), the view that Pictish was a Celtic language is tentative. Referring to an inscription in Shetland, he writes: "When the personal names are extracted, the residue is entirely incomprehensible. Thus the Lunnasting stone in Shetland reads ettocuhetts ahehhttann hccvvevv nehhtons. The last word is clearly the commonly occurring name Nechton. The rest, even allowing for the perhaps arbitrary doubling of consonants in ogham, appears so exotic that philologists conclude that Pictish was a non-Indo-European language of unknown affinities". Jackson considered that the language of the inscriptions was a different one from that of the place-names. However, Forsyth believes these inscriptions to be a Celtic language.

Richard Cox of the University of Aberdeen claims that the Scottish ogham inscriptions are non-Pictish in origin, dating from the 11th to 13th centuries, and can be interpreted as Old Norse. However this approach is controversial and has attracted unfavourable review.