Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 32, 2007

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Dál Riata (also Dalriada or Dalriata) was a Gaelic kingdom on the western seaboard of Scotland and the northern coasts of Ireland, situated in what is now Argyll and Bute, Lochaber, and County Antrim. The traditional view that Dál Riata was an Irish Gaelic colony in Scotland has lately been questioned, largely on archaeological grounds, but it is not clear that a consensus view has yet been reached. The inhabitants of Dál Riata are often referred to as Scots, from the Latin scotti, a word which came from the Low Latin scottis, which came from the Greek language word σκότος meaning darkness, and later came to mean Gaelic-speakers whether Scottish, Irish or otherwise. They are referred to here as Gaels, an unambiguous term, or as Dál Riatans.

The kingdom reached its height under Áedán mac Gabráin (r. 574-608), but its expansion was checked at the Battle of Degsastan in 603 by Æthelfrith of Northumbria. Serious defeats in Ireland and Scotland in the time of Domnall Brecc (d. 642) ended Dál Riata's Golden Age, and the kingdom became a client of Northumbria, then subject to the Picts. The kingdom finally disappeared in the Viking Age.