Envoi

REFLECTING ON THE immense journey that is our history, many competing interim conclusions crowd the landscape. But at least one theme is clear. Scotland was never an inevitable destination. As we approached several crossroads, our destiny might easily have turned in different directions. Scotland could have become Pictland, Alba, Norseland or Northern England. This recurring sequence of uncertainties, real enough at the time, is a useful corrective to the temptation to read history backwards.

But is difficult to resist. When Agricola watched the vast host of the Caledonian Confederacy muster to meet his legions at Bennachie or when King Bridei rode up and down the ranks of Pictish spearmen at Dunnichen, it is near-impossible for us to see those momentous days as they did. We know they won. They were uncertain. Both battles were part of the dramatic sweep of our history but neither general could know that their victories would be transient or have a profound impact. Such is political history, stories of advance and retreat, of ambition fulfilled or denied. The wars for Scotland, the unions of crowns and parliaments and the play of powerful interests, both religious and secular, all have close historical parallels across Europe and beyond.

What makes Scotland’s story unique is the land, the places where it happened. It may be seen as a palimpsest, a different way of looking at history as our peoples shaped where they lived and left their marks. The matchless beauty of Scotland is often seen in rugged, even wild landscapes, the drama of mountain and flood. But, to me, it is the fields that are most beautiful and atmospheric. They are a memory of uncounted lives lived on the land, a patchwork of day-in, day-out labour somehow best seen in the evening, lit by a westering sun. Evening is best because the day’s end brought rest for the numberless and nameless people who walked and worked their lives in the fields of Scotland. They can be intimate and detailed. After the harvest is home in early September, when round straw bales dot and accentuate their contours and the trees and fringing hedges are beginning to turn russet, they look at their gentle best. For all but 200 years of the 11,000 years of our continuous history, almost all Scots worked on the land in one way or another and the fields are their common monument.

Our land of Scotland is like no other – it helped form the character of the people, it determined the nature of agriculture and it directed contact and commerce. It made history. The Irish war bands who sailed the North Channel from the 5th century onwards used its character to penetrate far inland, their ships moving up the long western sea lochs to reach quickly into the heart of Scotland. It is not small-nation boastfulness to say that Scotland is unique – it is no more than the truth.

The shape of this story of Scotland has, of course, been formed by its sources and the accident of their survival. What attracted me was the possibility of writing a people’s history rather than a recital of the doings of the mighty, the saintly and the notorious. But that is an ambition limited by the facts, such as they are. Prehistory and the archaeology that reveals it is necessarily about ordinary people because it does not deal with named individuals, leaders or otherwise. It is a fascinating period but anonymous. After Tacitus wrote of Calgacus, the first Scot to be named in the historical record, as he faced down the Roman legions, it is difficult to avoid dealing with elites. The sources talk almost exclusively of politics, of the deeds of great men (and very few women) and events. There are only whispers of the lives of farmers, weavers, labourers and others but no voices loud enough to be heard. Not until the second half of the 19th century is it possible to say much about the lives of ordinary Scots.

Looking out over the empty pages of the future, interconnectedness suggests itself as a new theme. Through the neon flicker of 24-hour media, through the deafening, unrelenting chatter of social media, though the constant, frenetic exchange of the markets and the ability of all of this to affect our lives directly and unexpectedly, we are pushed to define Scotland as more than just a website. We must now look outwards, offering what is uniquely attractive to the world, and also look inwards at what we can do to attract people to live, work or holiday in Scotland. Or persuade them to stay.

Scots have struggled with self-definition, often careering towards the crazier shores of parody. After Culloden, we frisked the Highlanders for their distinctive iconography – tartan, whisky, bagpipes and the Bens & Glens of the Flower that is Scotland – and applied it all to the whole nation. We did this, mostly badly, because it looked different and not English. Walter Scott has a great deal to answer for. We gamely seek alternatives but they are difficult to find because, like most nations, our identity is complex and not given to instant expression. So we put a kilt on it.

There is much uncertainty now. And, while history can teach us a great deal, the mystery of the past is also important. About a mile west of my house, there is a track that winds up to the old earthworks of a Norman motte-and-bailey castle. When I walk down to the stables to feed the horses, I can see its line clearly, shelved into the flank of the hill. I have ridden up the track once or twice and it is very old. No source has survived to say which Norman lord, if it was a Norman lord, had the track made. It fascinates me and I do not know why. Nor do I wish to.

When I was a little boy, I used to help deliver the Store milk around the streets of Kelso and, up at 5.30 a.m. six days out of seven, I saw many dawns break. As I greet another on my way to my office to write this, it seems that this moment in our history is a time of hesitation. For Scotland now, it seems that several dawns are possible.