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Revision as of 00:25, 15 July 2004 by Dave souza (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The Votadini were people in the eastern half of the ancient British kingdom of the North which included the modern South of Scotland and North of England. The name is a Latin version of the Brythonic form of the name, Goutodin or Gododdin, which refers to both the people and to the region.
Their territory lay south of the Firth of Forth and extended from the Stirling area down to the River Tyne, including what are now the Lothian and Borders regions of eastern Scotland and Northumberland in north east England. Those living around Stirling were known as the Manaw Gododdin.
As Iron Age people,the Votadini appear to have been in the area as long as 1,000 years before the arrival of the Romans, and certainly the castle rock upon which Edinburgh Castle stands has been inhabited since the Bronze Age at least (c.2000 BC). Brythonic Celtic culture spread into the area at some time after the 8th century BC, possibly through cultural contact rather than mass invasion, and systems of kingdoms developed.
In the 1st century the Romans recorded the Votadini as a British tribe. Between 138-162 they came under direct Roman rule as occupants of the region between Hadrian's and the Antonine Walls. Then when the Romans drew back to Hadrian's Wall the Votadini became a friendly "buffer state", getting the rewards of alliance with Rome without being under its rule, until the about 400 when the Romans withdrew from Britain.
The kingdom of Northern Britain had come under the powerful reign of Coel Hen (remembered in the nursery rhyme Old King Cole), but after his death the North began to divide. In about 470 Votadini lands became the separate kingdom of Gododdin, while the southern Votadini territory between the River Tweed and the River Tyne formed its own separate kingdom called Brynaich.
Gododdin's capital was probably at first the Traprain Law hillfort in East Lothian, moving later to Din Eidyn (Edinburgh Castle).
Both kingdoms came under attack from the Angles, a story vividly told in the poem Y Gododdin, and by the mid 7th century Gododdin came under Angle rule. To what extent the native population was replaced is unknown.