language. Fortriu to Moray The St Andrews historian Alex Woolf has recently put forward a case for relocating the Kingdom of Fortriu north of the Mounth (the Grampians). Previously, it had been located in the vicinity of Strathearn; but as Woolf pointed out, this is based on one passage saying that the Men of Fortriu fought a battle in Strathearn. This is an unconvincing reason, because there are two Strathearns - one in the south, and one in the north - and, moreover, every battle has to be fought outside the territory of one of the combatants. By contrast, a northern recension of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes it clear that Fortriu was north of the Mounth, in the area visited by Columba. The case has to be accepted, and there can be little doubt that the core of Fortriu lay to the north of the Grampian Mountains - in Moray, Ross and perhaps Mar and Buchan too. Relocating Fortriu north of the Mounth increases the importance of the Vikings. After all, the Viking impact on the north was greater than in the south, and in the north, the Vikings actually conquered and made permanent territorial gains. Pictland to Alba There remains the possibility that Alba is simply a Gaelic translation of the Pictish name for Pictland. Both the Welsh and the Irish use archaic words for Briton to describe the Picts. It is very likely therefore that the Picts did so themselves; or if they did not originally, they came to do so. In which case the Pictish for Pictland would have been either the same as their word for Britain, or an obsolete term. Alba was exactly this kind of word in Old Irish. It is therefore plausible that Alba is simply a Gaelic translation. The name change is first registered at the very beginning of the tenth century, not long before Constantine II is alleged to have Scotticised the "Pictish" Church, and at the height of Viking raids. Later records, especially the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba and other documents in the Poppleton Manuscript, tell us that the Picts were simply conquered and annihilated by king Kenneth MacAlpin (Cináed mac Ailpín). This is the traditional explanation, and the one repeated by many historians. The only thing which is certain is that before 900, the Cruithentuath (Gaelic for Pictland), and perhaps Fortriu, became Gaelic-speaking Alba. See also Fortriu