Celtic Impressions

THE CELTS

A Celtic Poem

An outline history of the Celts

When the Celts first appear on the historical stage around 500 BC, they seem already to have been spread over much of the alpine region and the areas immediately to the north, in central France, and in parts of Spain. Traditionally these early Celts are broadly associated with part of the archaeologically attested Hallstatt culture of the European iron age. Excavations have revealed richly adorned tombs, assumed to be those of chieftaincy or royal classes, associated with a number of major defended centres. These 'princedoms' furnish evidence for trade with the Classical Mediterranean, especially the Greek colony of Massalia (Marseilles).
Beginning in the fifth century BC, in a zone stretching from eastern France to Bohemia, a new Celtic culture arose, named after the archaeological site of La Tene in Switzerland where it was first identified. This too was characterized by splendidly furnished graves containing evidence of Classical contacts (with Etruscan cities via the Alps). Soon after 400 BC, these La Tene Celts erupted over the Alps, seizing and settling the Po Valley and sacking Rome in about 390 BC. They were known to the Romans as Galli, Gauls a term later used particularly of the Celts of France. Others migrated through the Balkans, attacking Greece and perhaps sacking Delphi in 279 BC. Known to the Greeks as Keltoi or Galatae, some burst across the Hellespont and carved out a kingdom in central Turkey (Galatia).
While the documentary sources tell us nothing of events in distant northern France or the British Isles, archaeology reveals the spread of La Tene culture (especially decorated metalwork) to those areas in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. It has often been assumed that this reflects the migration northwards of Celtic speaking groups, paralleling the clearly recorded movements south and east from a supposed Celtic homeland in and north of the Alps, where La Tene art arose. But it now seems likely that Celtic speakers already populated much of north-western Europe and the British Isles, perhaps from far earlier times. The expansion of La Tene art may simply reflect the spread of a new fashion which arose in one part of the Celtic speaking region.
In the third century BC, the Celtic world consisted of a shifting mosaic of autonomous tribes and states stretching from Ireland to Hungary, with isolated pockets and partly Celtic populations from Portugal to Turkey. But during the later third and second centuries BC the Celtic lands were beginning to come under pressure from the Germans and to fall under the sway of Rome, which conquered first northern Italy, then parts of Spain and, in the second century BC, southern France. In Turkey, the Romans crushed the power of the Galatians, who were almost annihilated by the kingdom of Pontus in the 80s BC. The greatest blow Rome dealt the Celticspeaking world was the conquest of Gaul in the 50s BC. Spain was entirely conquered before the turn of the millennium, by which time the Celts of the Danube had all but vanished.
This left only the British Isles. Claudius invaded southeastern Britain in AD 43, and by the early 80s the Romans had conquered as far as the Highlands of Scotland (Caledonia). However, the legions proved unable to hold the north, which remained a largely free zone of at least partly Celtic stock. Ireland was the only part of the Celtic world entirely to escape the colonial ambitions of Rome, and she sat out the centuries of the Roman empire largely undisturbed until her tribes took part in the dismemberment of the provinces in the later fourth and fifth centuries AD.
Roman rule seems to have virtually extinguished the culture and, very slowly, the language of the continental Celts although the Gauls adapted well to Roman ways, Gaul becoming the linchpin of the Roman west. After Rome fell in the fifth century AD, and the old Celtic lands came under Germanic rule, even the name of Gaul disappeared, to be replaced by France (derived from the Germanic tribe of the Franks).
Celtic language and social structure seems to have survived quite well in the west and north of Britain until Roman rule collapsed, probably because Britain was never as thoroughly Romanised as Gaul. Following the appearance in the sixth century of the proto Welsh and other British kingdoms, there was a resurgence in Celtic culture perhaps in response to the establishment of the early Anglo Saxon realms by Germanic invaders in the east of the country. La Tene style art made something of a comeback, largely due to the vigour and influence of newlyChristian Ireland. Western Britons crossed the Channel to Armorica in Gaul, and so established Brittany.
Ireland experienced a cultural golden age during the sixth to eighth centuries AD. Many groups of Irish raided and settled the western seaboard of Roman Britain (where Christianity had been established by the fourth century); some of these returned to their native country resulting in the evangelisation of the Irish kingdoms. With astonishing speed, Ireland became one of the greatest centres of European Christianity, and Irish monks and clerics worked to evangelise the largely pagan British and English, establishing famous monasteries such as those at Iona (a small island off the west coast of Scotland) and Lindisfarne in Northumbria. Some of the Irish sea rovers, who were known as Scotti, founded a kingdom in western Caledonia; this was the genesis of the medieval kingdom of Scotland.
The Celtic revival of the early Middle Ages was halted by the appearance of the Vikings at the end of the eighth century. The Norse ravaged Europe, and invaded Ireland, beginning the long and troubled history of foreign intervention there.
From the eleventh century, the Celtic nations of the British Isles were under constant pressure from their large neighbour, England, as the Bretons were similarly threatened by the developing kingdom of France. The story of the Celts in the later Middle Ages is one of gradual absorption and partial assimilation. Wales lost her independence in the thirteenth century, by which time the Celtic identity of Cornwall was being rapidly eroded. Brittany was subsumed within France in 1532. Ireland only fell fully under English rule during the reign of Elizabeth 1. Her death in 1603 also began the final unification of England with Scotland; the two countries were formally unified in 1707. The Gaelic speaking clan society of Scotland's Highlands and Islands was effectively destroyed after the rebellion of 1745. Ireland was also incorporated into the United Kingdom, in 1801.
The Celtic parts of the British Isles underwent severe economic difficulties in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially in Scotland with the systematic depopulation of the Highlands and in Ireland, where rural distress culminated in the Potato Famine of the 1840s and appalling loss of life. Together with these agricultural difficulties, the growing demand for industrial labour and the new opportunities overseas engendered a new wave of migration, as Scots and Irish in particular flooded into the expanding industrial cities, or emigrated to America and Australasia.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Celtic languages experienced steep decline, even being actively suppressed. Yet at the same time, the rediscovery of the past contributed to developing national selfawareness in modern Celtic Europe, and was essential to the final rebirth of Irish statehood in 1921. Vigorous nationalist movements also exist in Scotland, Wales and Brittany.
Today Celtic tongues are still spoken as first languages, and the development of Welsh and Gaelic television and radio has done much to promote their survival. Although facing an uncertain future, Celtic speech will certainly survive for generations to come.
La Tene Situated on the northern edge of Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland, La Tene was identified as an archaeological site in 1857 when an archaeology enthusiast discovered a series of ancient timber piles driven into the bed of the lake. His interest aroused, he then found iron weapons and tools hidden in the mud among the piles. Drainage and dredging operations carried out during the 1860s and 1800s brought many additional discoveries, including human remains and, early in the twentieth century, wellpreserved wooden items including shields. A total of 166 swords, 269 spearheads, 29 shields, 382 fibulae, plus belt clasps, razors, tools, bronze cauldrons, wooden yokes, iron ingots and other objects, were salvaged. Excavations ceased in 1917, but the nature of the site is still discussed. Variously thought to be a trading emporium or frontier station, more recent research suggests that La Tene may have been a religious sanctuary. Whatever its true role, La Tene remains a key site to the understanding of Iron Age chronology, art and technology.
The Hallstatt and La Tene 'cultures' Celtic studies took a new turn in the later nineteenth century when scholars began to identify Celtic artefacts at many sites across Europe. In 1872, the archaeologist Hans Hildebrand proposed that the objects recovered from Hallstatt and La Tene were the product of two separate periods of the preRoman Iron Age. Adopting the names of the two sites, he suggested that the earlier 'Hallstatt culture' was followed by the 'La Tene culture'.
The Hallstatt culture is now thought to span a period from c. 1200 to 475 BC. We have no way of ascertaining exactly who was responsible for the earlier, Bronze Age Hallstatt material, because we have no written records from this epoch; indeed it is very likely that the remains of peoples other than Celticspeakers are included under the Hallstatt label. But we can be fairly sure that some artefacts from the later, Iron Age, part of the Hallstatt period represents the relics of the earliest Celts as defined by their first mention in the Classical texts. Indeed, the Celts can be credited with many of the greatest developments of the Hallstatt period, such as the fine hill forts constructed during the sixth century BC or the rich tombs from the 'princedoms' of the western Hallstatt lands.
Whereas the Hallstatt culture probably extended to other language groups, the La Tene culture is identified very closely with the Celts. The La Tene culture evolved during the fifth century BC in part of the Hallstatt area, when Rome was an infant republic and Athens was beating off the Persians and making her own bid for empire. Characterized in particular by the famous curvilinear ('curving line') art a largely abstract style of decoration applied especially to metalwork La Tene culture is more broadly defined by a wide repertoire of pottery and metalwork styles, burial rites, and settlement types. The original La Tene heartland lay during the fifth century BC in an area covering eastern France, southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland, from where it subsequently spread. La Tene is the culture of the Celts who featured so prominently in the history of the ancient world.
Interest in things celtic really started to blossom in the midneneteenth century following the discovery of two spectacular sites at Hallstatt in Austria and La Tene in Switzerland. Identified as the relics of the ancient Celts, the finds fed into the more general curiosity in Europe's past that had general curiosity in Europe's past that had been kindled by the new, scientific approach to the excavation and documentation of antiquities. Changes were afoot in the field of Celtic studies, for scholars began to broaden their definition of the Celts form the eigtheenth century) focus on the documents and linguistics, and now started to search for their actual physical remains. Thus began the exploration of Celtic archaeology.
Hallstatt Artifacts were first unearthed at Hallstatt in Upper Austria early in the nineteenth century, and excavations continued at the site from 1846 to 1863. These revealed a cemetery of an astonishing one thousand graves many containing sumptuous funerary offerings. The individuals buries came from an early Iron Age community, whose livelihood depended on mining the nearby deposits of rock salt. Investigations of the mines themselves yielded clothing, equipment and even the body of a miner, perfectly preserved by the salt.
The cemetery mostly dates to the seventh and sixth centuries BC, and includes some splendid 'chieftains' graves. It remains one of the richest known cemeteries of its kind, with a wide range of weapons, brooches, pins and pottery, as well as imported Italian bronze vessels which have been used to date the cemetery. Few graves date to the fifth century, because the site was eclipsed by more convenient deposits of salt at Durrnberg. In the fourth century BC, Hallstatt was devastated by a vast landslide.