10 September 2016, Starts: 14:00, Ends: 16:30

Scotland and Celtic Identies

Panel discussion chaired by Neil Acherson at National Museums of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh. £10 (concessions £8). Bookings online or call 0300 123 6789

Can we say that Scotland is a Celtic nation? This engaging panel discussion, chaired by Scottish journalist and author Neal Ascherson, will explore the history of our national, cultural and linguistic identities and their resonance for those in Britain, Ireland and the global Celtic diaspora.
Itinerary

from 13:30 Registration at the Auditorium, level 1

14:00 Welcome and introduction

Dr Martin Goldberg is Senior Curator of Scottish History and Archaeology at National Museums Scotland and co-curator of Celts.

14:05 When was Scotland a Celtic Country?

This presentation will argue that while Scotland may once have been a Celtic Country, it has not been so for a long time.

Dr Alex Woolf is Senior Lecturer in the School of History at The University of St Andrews. He holds a BA in Medieval History and Medieval English and an MPhil in Archaeology. In 2010 he was awarded a PhD by portfolio from the University of St Andrews for his work on Politics and Identity in Early Medieval Scotland.

14:20 The Celtic landscapes of Scotland

Whether it is right or not to describe Scotland as a ‘Celtic nation’, Scotland and its inhabitants are shaped, consciously or otherwise, by a landscape studded with Celtic inheritance – in the place-names given by the speakers of a variety of different Celtic languages, and by the other cultural remains they created which still form the backbone of our cultural heritage. This subtly colours even the non-Celtic language literature of Scotland; and can allow Gaelic-speakers now to engage with that past in ways which can invigorate the future.

Prof. Thomas Owen Clancy holds the Chair of Celtic in the University of Glasgow, and is head of Celtic & Gaelic in the School of Humanities, where he has taught for the last two decades. He has written extensively on medieval Celtic history and culture, and especially on early Scottish poetry, and on Scottish place-names. He is currently writing the first volume in the series The History of Gaelic Scotland, of which he is joint series editor.

14:35 Medieval Celtic literature and Scottish cultural imagination

Manuscripts written in the Celtic languages contain the richest and most extensive body of early medieval literature in Europe: tales, poetry, historical and legal writing which have shaped the way we understand the Celtic-speaking peoples. From the 19th century onwards, as romantic nationalists across Europe looked to medieval literature for inspiration, texts in the Celtic languages were used to shape new cultural, artistic, and national identities. Scotland, with its rich collections of medieval Gaelic manuscripts, its scholars and Celtic cultural activists, played its own part in this Celtic Revival movement – but what happened next?

Abigail Burnyeat is lecturer in Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh, where she works on medieval Gaelic language, literature, and manuscripts, and the ways in which they inspired the Celtic Revival movement in 19th- and 20th-century Scotland.

14:50 Articulating the nation: the use, misuse, and abuse of languages in imagining Scottish Celtic identity

Scotland has long been a multilingual space, but the intersections between its languages and its changing cultural and national identities have often been neglected, misconstrued, perhaps even ignored, in its national histories. I shall explore the changing fortunes of Gaelic, and notions of ‘Celticity’, in depictions of the country’s past over the last three centuries, and how these depictions might have moulded the identities and wider affiliations of Scotland’s people today.

Dr Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart is Senior Lecturer in Material Culture and Gàidhealtachd History at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, University of the Highlands and Islands, where he researches the history, literature, popular culture, and folklore of the early modern Scottish Highlands. At present he is investigating three key figures in the shaping of modern Gaelic identity: the late 17th-century traveller Martin Martin, and the 19th-century folklorists John Francis Campbell and Alexander Carmichael.

15:05 The Celtic languages today – Gaelic as a 'national' language in Scotland?

To some extent, living Celtic languages are viewed by many in the modern Celtic nations as being important markers of national identity. In a Scottish context, however, how does Gaelic contribute to, and challenge a sense of Scottish identity? Over the last 30 years, Gaelic, like Welsh and Irish, has gained increasing institutional recognition. At the same time, it continues to face huge challenges, particularly as a medium of daily communication in even the strongest Gaelic speaking communities.

Prof. Robert Dunbar is Chair of Celtic and head of Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He is a leading expert on sociolinguistics and language policy for Gaelic and the other Celtic languages, and he has a wealth of experience in Gaelic policy in Scotland. His research also focuses on Gaelic language, literature and culture in the ‘diaspora’.

15:20 Tea, coffee and biscuits

15:45 Panel discussion and audience Q&A chaired by Neal Ascherson

Neal Ascherson is a Scottish journalist and the author of The Struggles for Poland, Black Sea, and Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland. He is an Honorary Professor at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. As a journalist for more than 50 years, he has written from, and about, countries all over the world.

16:20 Final commentary and conclusion from Neal Ascherson

For further details see http://www.nms.ac.uk/celticidentity