Tag: Caledonia

Caledonia is the Latinised form and name given by the Romans to the land in today’s Scotland north of their province of Britannia, beyond the frontier of their empire. Its modern usage is as a romantic or poetic name for Scotland as a whole.
The original use of the name, by Tacitus, Ptolemy, Lucan and Pliny the Elder, referred to the area (or parts of the area) also known as Pictavia or Pictland north of Hadrian’s Wall in today’s Scotland. The name may be related to that of a large central Pictish tribe, the Caledonii, one amongst several in the area and perhaps the dominant tribe, which would explain the binomial Caledonia/Caledonii. Their name can be found in Dùn Chailleann, the Scottish Gaelic word for the town of Dunkeld meaning “fort of the Caledonii”, and in that of the mountain Sìdh Chailleann or Schiehallion, the “fairy [hill] of the Caledonians”. According to Historia Brittonum the site of the seventh battle of the mythical Arthur was a forest in what is now Scotland, called…