UAS Lecture: 'The Pictish symbols: a new interpretation' by Mike King
Schedule
Mon, 27 Apr, 2026 at 07:30 pm
UTC+01:00Location
Elmwood Building, 3A Elmwood Avenue, BT9 6AZ Belfast, United Kingdom | Belfast, NI
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Our April Lecture will be on Monday 27th April at 19.30 in 0G.029 Elmwood/Geography Building QUB and online (Zoom/YouTube).The lecture is titled 'The Pictish symbols: a new interpretation' and will be given by Mike King (Tour Director at ACE Cultural Tours).
This lecture is free and open to UAS members and the public, no ticket or reservation needed!
As always, there will be *complemetary* hot beverages and biscuits at 19.00 in the Elmwood Common Room. Feel free to bring your own mug (BYOM!). The lecture will then begin at 19.30 in 0G.029.
The Zoom link for the lecture will be sent to UAS members-only before the lecture. Everyone can watch the lecture *for free* on our YouTube channel (please like and subscribe!).
We look forward to seeing you there!
-Lecture Abstract: 'In this presentation I wish to explore an interpretation of the Pictish symbols as elements of a non-linguistic symbol system, consisting chiefly of ideograms derived from Late Antique and native culture, designed to communicate the hope and expectation of eternal life in a Christian context. As well as being found on various artefacts, the symbols are found incised on rough boulders (known as Class I stones), and carved in relief on dressed stones also displaying a cross and other Christian imagery (known as Class 2 stones), in an area of Scotland stretching from Midlothian in the south to the Shetland Islands in the north, and from Aberdeen in the east to Skye in the west.
I will draw on a variety of texts and images that could have influenced the subject-matter of these incised and relief stone carvings in Pictland and beyond. As well as Late Antique images, I will draw on ancient narratives, ecclesiastical history, hagiography, a guide to holy places, Physiologus, the bible, carvings and inscriptions on stones and artefacts, and Irish pseudo-scientific treatises.
I shall show how ideograms carved on the stones, deliberately selected from disparate sources, can be interpreted as symbols of life, which, alone or in various combinations, constitute pictorial prayers for the dead, in effect short excerpts from prayers like those of the Late Antique/early medieval ‘commendatio animae’, (the commendation of the soul to God). In this I will be drawing together strands of insight from a whole host of scholars, and combining them with some new approaches. My approach essentially takes its cue from the description of these monuments as the ‘Early Christian Monuments of Scotland’ by J. Romilly Allen and Joseph Anderson in 1903.
I shall consider how various Pictish symbols may be interpreted as vessels for water, spiritual nourishment, rest in the grave and resurrection to new life, in addition to representing books, words and numbers, that all signify ‘life’. I shall apply an aspect of conceptual metonymy from the realm of cognitive linguistics to help elucidate how ‘vessels’ were used to symbolise aspects of new life. The use of such ‘symbols of life’ on objects and stones to protect and give hope to the living will also be explored.
One area I will consider is the possibility of the existence of oral (or even written) narratives of a secular nature in Pictland by analysing several distinctive images on a symbol-bearing cross-slab which parallel motifs included in the Welsh tales known as the 'Mabinogi'.
I shall also consider the view of the cosmos contained in the 7th-century Irish pseudo-scientific treatises 'De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae' and the 'Liber de ordine creaturarum', and how this view appears to be manifested on one of the great 8th-century Pictish cross-slabs of Easter Ross.
I shall explore the idea that the Picts chose their own pictorial approach when setting up stone monuments to commemorate the (largely anonymous) dead, following a widespread Late Antique tradition of erecting memorial stones, but finding inspiration in their own culture, as well as in the imported culture of Christianity, to create concise and highly sophisticated permanent statements of hope and supplication in stone, generally dispensing with inscriptions and names of individuals (except for some in ogham and a few in the Roman alphabet), but designed, in theory, to last for eternity.'
-Lecturer Biography: 'Mike studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge University, Early Medieval Archaeology at Durham, and Museum Studies at Leicester, before working in Scottish museums during the 1990s. He started his career in Perth Museum, and then worked as Curator of North-East Fife Museums Service, including St Andrews Museum from 1994, where he gathered all the known examples of St Andrew pilgrim badges for an exhibition in 1998. In 2000 he exchanged St Andrew for St Patrick, when he moved to Downpatrick to become Curator of Down County Museum. His main projects there were creating new permanent exhibitions with Heritage Lottery funding in 2006, and liaising with Down Cathedral and the Historic Environment Division NI to preserve the early 10th century Downpatrick High Cross by moving it a short distance into a newly built extension at the museum in 2014-15, replacing the original with an exact replica in Mourne granite. He retired from museums in 2022 and is now leading tours around different parts of Ireland (https://www.aceculturaltours.co.uk/blog/meet-the-tour-director-mike-king), and also Hadrian’s Wall, having walked it in 2022. He documented Roman coins found at Anglo-Saxon sites while at Cambridge, and the re-use of Roman carved stones in Hexham Abbey while at Durham.'
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Where is it happening?
Elmwood Building, 3A Elmwood Avenue, BT9 6AZ Belfast, United Kingdom, 42 Elmwood Avenue, Belfast, BT9 6AZ, United KingdomEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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