Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 46, 2013

The Votadini (the Wotādīni, Votādīni, or Otadini) were a Celtic people of the Iron Age in Great Britain. Their territory was in what is now south-east Scotland and north-east England, extending south of the Firth of Forth and extended from the Stirling area down to the English River Tyne, including at its peak what are now the Falkirk, Lothian and Borders regions of eastern Scotland, and Northumberland in north east England. They were briefly part of the Roman province Britannia. Their capital was probably the Traprain Law hill fort in East Lothian, until that was abandoned in the early 400s, moving to Din Eidyn (Edinburgh). The name is recorded as Votadini in classical sources. Their descendants were the early medieval kingdom known in Old Welsh as Guotodin, and in later Welsh as Gododdin [ɡoˈdoðin].

One of the oldest known pieces of British literature is a poem called 'Y Gododdin', written in Old Welsh, having previously been passed down via the oral traditions of the Brythonic speaking Britons. This poem celebrates the bravery of the soldiers from what was later referred to by the Britons as 'Yr Hen Ogledd' – The Old North; a reference to the fact that this land was lost in battle to an invading force at Catraeth,(modern day Catterick).