'The Birth of Scotland: Celtic & Viking Legacies in the Forging of a New Kingdom' Summer Course 2025 - Applications Now Open
Following 2024’s successful summer course, the Institute for Northern Studies Viking and Early Medieval Studies (VEMS) is delighted to announce our summer course for 2025: The Birth of Scotland. The course is residential and will take place from Monday 16th June 2025 until Friday 20th June 2025 at the UHI Perth campus.
Over the course of the week, we will explore how the Kingdom of Scotland came into being. We will investigate how a disparate patchwork of kingdoms encompassing speakers of Pictish, Gaelic, Norse, British and English languages came to become politically and culturally incorporated into an emerging Kingdom of Scotland, a process which was far from smooth and far from inevitable. We will consider how the legacies of these different groups played a part in the shaping of the fledgling kingdom.
Morning and evening classes and workshops will cover a variety of topics, with afternoon and full day excursions visiting key sites associated with the birth of Scotland. We will visit important sites and museum collections in locations including Perth, St Andrews, Dunfermline and Edinburgh.
The Provisional Programme
Monday 16th June
- (late afternoon and evening) Welcome and introductory lectures: 1) Before Scotland: Picts, Gaels and the creation of Alba 2) Norse settlement and new identities
Tuesday 17th June
- Morning Lecture: Kingship and Places of Power at the Turn of the Second Millennium
- Afternoon: Field excursion to Perth Museum.
- Evening Lecture: Saint Andrew and Identity in the Pictish and Scottish Kingdoms
Wednesday 18th June
- All day: Field excursion to St Andrews Cathedral and Castle
- Evening: Living history session
Thursday 19th June
- Morning lecture: Gaelic and Norman Identities in Early Scotland
- Afternoon: Field excursion to Dunfermline Abbey
- Evening: Living history session
Friday 20th June
- All day: Edinburgh including the National Museum of Scotland and Palace of Holyroodhouse
- Evening: Ceilidh
The field excursion locations, seminars, lectures and other events are subject to change. The overall fee is £900. This includes accommodation, excursions, breakfast and lunch, and a ceilidh on the final evening. You will be free to organise your own evening meals.
Accommodation is within the modern student flats on campus. Each of which has a single room with an en-suite and a shared kitchen.
Please contact us at ins@uhi.ac.uk to book your place.