Where do we place Hen Ogledd?

Question

If you've never heard of a place called Hen Ogledd, Wikipedia can give you a good start.  After the Romans left Britain in the early 400's, Angle and Saxon invaders drove native Britons westward into Wales -- and northward into Hen Ogledd, the "Old North", located, in today's geography, in parts of England's north and Scotland's south. By 700, Hen Ogledd had been conquered by Picts coming south and Angles moving north, and the Welsh-speaking Britons who were not absorbed by their conquerers fled to Gwynedd or Powys in Wales.

WikiTree has some profiles for persons who lived in the Old North.  Whether they can be well documented or forever live in "Uncertain Existence", their places need to be identified.

Other genealogy sites might say they were in England, Scotland or Wales, but Wikitree prefers to identify places closer to what the person profiled might have used.  Compounding this is that they spoke a Welsh-like language and ended up in Wales, but while in Hen Ogledd were geographically in England, Scotland, or both.

I propose the following:

1.  In the data field for place of birth, marriage or death, enter the applicable Kingdom if known, then Hen Ogledd, then Britain.

2.  Categorize them in a geographic category Hen Ogledd which could be a subcategory of all three -- England, Scotland and Wales.

3.  Project oversight would be Medieval or Wales, since the names follow Welsh patronymic rules and are really part of Welsh history (although the peoples who defeated them are part of English or Scottish history).

We're not dealing with a lot of names here, and some will never be well documented, but they exist on WikiTree and a consensus on how to place them would be helpful!

Comments

I like this and agree with the general geography based on my own findings when researching these kingdoms. And while it may be impossible to learn of specific individuals, I do think links can be made to known Celtic Iron Age tribes like the Silures, Ordivices, Cornovii, Darini (in Northern Ireland), among others, to the kingdom(s) of Hen Ogledd.

It seems these kingdoms fought amongst themselves frequently but created a united front against the Romans. I think they also united against other invaders in both earlier times (Scandinavian tribes had been raiding the British Isles for several centuries prior to the Roman invasion and the invasion of the Germanic tribes after the Romans).

It seems the old Celtic Kingdoms of the North were a confederation of decentralized kingdoms that chose a High King through internal conflict and their hierarchy was always in flux, which means conflict was “the norm”, but history also demonstrates when foreigners invaded the Isles, these kingdoms would set aside their internal struggles and follow the High King against the invaders.

Answer 1

I very much agree with Andrew Millard that Hen Ogledd should not feature in the location field. The location should, I suggest, not be "Kingdom of Rheged" - just Rheged - just as we use Scotland, England, Wessex or Mercia etc etc etc in location fields, not Kingdom of Scotland, England, Wessex or Mercia, etc etc etc. Whether to include Britain in the location field is probably a matter of personal preference, rather than something on which one should lay down a WikiTree rule. For Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, we often include England in location fields, but practice is not consistent: from the point of view of the Medieval Project, which I co-lead, I do not see this as something on which it's worth spending time arguing. The concept of Britain existed at this time, and there are more important things to debate than this sort of detail where one can argue either way. Personally, I would see it as helpful to others to include Britain in the location field, but that is just my own view.

Rheged's exact boundaries will have varied over time, as with all kingdoms in Britain of this period. It is pretty certain that it straddled what are now SW Scotland and NW England.

The category can probably be left as "Rheged" - see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Rheged. No "Britain" should be included. I can see it being sensibly nested under Ancient Scotland (like Dal Riata), as Amy Gilpin has suggested and also under English History where various pre-1066 kingdoms are nested. It is currently under British History and Kingdom of Northumbria and could be left under them as well.

Comments

Just to add, in case there was any doubt, I would advise against creating an intermediate category for the vague concept of Hen Ogledd, even if it could be defined in a time of rapidly shifting boundaries and even if there is evidence for the term being used at the time. Just as we do not have an intermediate category for the English Midlands or Northern England, even though those terms are in widespread use today and have been for a long time. According to Google translate, it is simply Welsh for "the old North". As Andrew Millard has suggested, it appears to be a later invention, as its name would imply.

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The Wales Project has created categories of Welsh geographic entities that existed prior to Statue of Rhuddlan in 1284 when the old Welsh jurisdictions were abolished.  

Category: Wales, Ancient Kingdoms

In order to distinguish the pre-1284 areas from later ones, the categories use the term Kingdom of Gwynedd, Kingdom of Powys etc.  These are mid-level categories and if one knows the cantref associated with a person profiled, categorizing by a cantrefi subcategory is preferred.  In working with pre-1284 Welsh files I have followed the same practice in the location field.  This has seemed important to make it clear that a particular profile was for a pre-1284 person in a pre-1284 geographic world.  

You're right that "Hen Ogledd" was a later invention, not in the sense of having been invented recently, but in the sense of having been invented after people left it.  So Maelgwn Hir ap Cadwallon lived his life in the Kingdom of Gwynedd, but looked back to his great-grandfather Cunedda who started life in "the old north" and came to Gwynedd to start a new dynasty there.  Cunedda himself would not have called it "the old north/Hen Ogledd" when he was there as a child.  In dealing with memories of a prior generation's travels one has the same problem as American or Australian families who remember that several generations ago, their ancestors came from "Europe" or "the old country."  That designation begs for more research to define "where in Europe?"  Or in the case of Cunedda, "where in Hen Ogledd?  

So I've come around to accepting that these early figures who play roles in Welsh pedigrees need their birth places designated in Ancient England or Ancient Scotland.  Which still leaves a problem that some of the Hen Ogledd jurisdictions may not be clearly Scotland or England.  I can see that we need to do some collaborative research here.  I can picture a free-space profile on Hen Ogledd in which we document some of our conclusions on how to handle the affected profiles so that others need to less inventing of the wheel!

Which also leaves the question of how the Medieval Project relates to the ancient activities of the Wales, England and Scotland projects.  I have been focusing my pre-1500 activity recently largely on Welsh forebears, but I'm not really clear as to whether I've been doing it as a member of the Wales Project or Medieval -- or to what extent that matters!  That's one reason for having this discusison on G2G rather than on any one project's google group.

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It would be off-topic in this conversation, Jack, to discuss the scope of different Projects. Very briefly, though, it really does not matter which Project you consider yourself helping when you work on a profile. But if the profile is specifically Welsh, you should follow any specific standards set by the Wales Project. The normal rules on consultation and communication apply where a profile is Project-managed. If you want more detailed advice, I suggest you either message me or ask in the Medieval Project Google Group.

On Rheged/Kingdom of Rheged, my limited understanding is that it is possible that Rheged was for a period divided into more than one kingdom, but that the evidence is not clearcut and that this is not certain. That may be another reason for avoiding including "kingdom" in the location as it suggests there was definitely only one kingdom. I am, though, no expert on this.

For my part, I can see no reason why Britain is not enough in the location field where, like Rheged, a former kingdom straddles England and Scotland.

I am not sure if you are suggesting that there should be a location country for some profiles called "Ancient England”: if so, I would see no need for this and would regard it as undesirable. If the location is entirely in England, "England” is enough. If you want to propose a different approach, please either raise this in the Medieval Project Google Group and/or ask a separate question in G2G to put your proposal forward. Further discussion here would again be off-topic.

Answer 2

Many thanks for this fascinating question. I have raised similar questions regarding other old British kingdoms such as Mercia, Powys and the Pict lands. It must be difficult to define the geographical boundaries and dates as these seem to have been fluid and documentation sparse. Also is there any way of verifying that the 'Angle and Saxon invaders drove native Britons westward' (the wikipedia source cited seems to give a more nuanced account of events).

Answer 3

In Scotland, we have an Ancient Scotland category structure where these places can be nested.  I'm happy to add it there when you're ready, Jack.  Perhaps other Projects involved have something similar?

Comments

Thanks, Amy. Please see my answer of today. We already have a category for Rheged, https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Rheged, and the way may be clear for you to add Ancient Scotland as one of the categories under which it is nested. I almost did this, but held back because I did not want to tread on your toes.

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I would always appreciate your assistance Michael, but thank you.  I'll get it added.

Answer 4

1. I think the places should just have the kingdom names. Hen Ogledd is a name invented after the fact to describe a group of kingdoms that were never politically unified. In the same way that Wikitree localities don't say Connecticut was in British Colonial America, or Mercia was in the Heptarchy, we shouldn't say Strathclyde was in Hen Ogledd.

Britain is an unncecessary addition in my view, and is not the name of a political unit or a grouping of political units. If it should be used here, then it should be used everytime Scotland, Wales or England are used, and we already have rules not to do that.

2. The geographical categories work by political boundaries. If there is any category for Hen Ogledd, I think it should fall under England and Scotland but not Wales, as it never covered part of the territory which is now Wales.

3. The relevant project would be Medieval. The Wales Project coverage is Wales not Welsh-speakers, and in any case linguists classify the language of Hen Ogledd as Cumbric, a sister language to Welsh. If the Wales project were to encompass Hen Ogledd, then it would logically also cover the Picts and Romano-Britons, the Ireland project would cover Dalriada, and the England project would cover the USA.

Answer 5

This conversation is both fascinating and important and I hope others will contribute.  I suppose I was looking for a catchall category that would serve a broad group of people for several centuries, and that is not to be.  

The profiles on Wikitree for this period of time in this broad Cumbric or Welsh speaking area consist of a smaller number of historical and fairly well documented people linked together by pedigrees giving minimal information about the person and sometimes just a name.  Thus the better documented profiles may have enough information to identify a specific kingdom they were associated with.  The profiles supported by pedigrees only are already problematic and often eligible for Uncertain Existence status, and the inability to place them in a specific kingdom will simply add to their problematic nature!