Welcome to the British History Podcast.

My name is Jimmy and this is Episode 355.

Double, double, toil and trouble.

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As we've covered the dark ages, we've largely been at the mercy of the scribes.

If they didn't write something down, there was almost no way for us to know about it.

And one of the biggest casualties of this dynamic has been Scotland.

The business north of the wall has been going on largely invisible to us for centuries.

Not because Scotland was isolated or unimportant, just because the scribes were continually

leaving the amount of their sentences, especially in the southern sources, which are among

our best sources for this period.

But at the early part of the 11th century, that was beginning to change.

As you know, the kingdoms of the island had always been interacting.

But now, the scribes were finally starting to find those interactions worthy of mention.

Now, unfortunately, our reliance on largely English scribes means that the Scots generally

only emerged from the mists and entered the English record for two reasons.

Either there was a major battle taking place that involved the English, and the one that

probably immediately jumped to your mind was when King Atholstan fought at Brunembourg,

...