Welcome to Aberdeen

Situated on the North Sea coast, between the Rivers Dee and Don, Aberdeen forms a natural port which has drawn people for around 8000 years.  Aberdeen's geography is reflected in the name: meaning either “mouth of two rivers” (a corruption of “aber da-aevin”) or it is a compromise between Aber-Don and Aber-Dee (“mouth of the Don/Dee”), combining the name of the city's two rivers.  Aberdonians have always looked out to sea: in expectation of the return of loved ones, in fear of attack or simply to allow their reflections to be stirred by the ever shifting waters of the North Sea.  Aberdeen has been shaped by the waves breaking on its shores and by what the tides have brought and taken – as well as by the toil of its people.

About 6000 BC, the first settlers reached Aberdeen.  These hunter-gatherers, who set up home around the estuaries of the Dee and Don rivers, left little that can give us much insight into their ways of life, with the exception of their "shell middens" - the rubbish they left behind.  Around 3000 BC, during the Stone Age, their descendants cleared the forest area around their homes to grow crops and raise livestock.  They also built burial cairns, the remains of one of which has been unearthed in Rosemount Place.  Around 2000 BC the "Beaker People" arrived from the Rhine lands.  They were thus called because they were buried, upright, with beakers full of liquid at their side, presumably to make their journeys to the afterlife more comfortable.  They also fashioned articles from copper, bronze and gold.  It is the Beaker People who built the mysterious stone circles that can be found in the Aberdeenshire area.  Examples include the Cullerlie Stone Circle, Midmar Kirk Stone Circle and the East Equhorties Stone Circle.  They have also left their genetic legacy in the area: their brachycephalus heads can still be seen in a large number of Aberdonians today.

Around 400 BC there were new waves of Celtic migration: these peoples arrived in Aberdeen from the south.   Settlers, old and relatively new, had formed into loose tribal societies by the time the Romans made their first forays into Aberdeenshire, less than four centuries later.  The Romans named the locals "Picts" meaning "painted people" and founded a marching camp in Gilcomston, which they called "Devana".  In 84 AD, Agricola, the Roman governor in charge of Britannia, leading a force of some 40,000 men, fought and defeated the united armies of Caledonia (the Roman name for Scotland) in the battle of Mons Graupius, near the peak of Bennachie in Aberdeenshire.  Agricola's troops were supplied through the port at Aberdeen.  But this victory only demonstrated Roman military superiority over the Picts: the Romans were not overly concerned with dominating these peoples, only with containing them.

When the Romans left the British Isles a power struggle began which would result in the emergence of the islands' earliest kingdoms.  Aberdeenshire would become the power base of the northern Picts.  These early kingdoms and British Christianity developed over the same time period, a fact underlying a symbiotic relationship between the two developments: political (or military) power as well as the "ideological" force of Christianity would be needed to forge complex, stratified but coherent kingdoms.  Accordingly, there are numerous ancient Christian sites in the Aberdeenshire area: Fordyce, Deer (where the Book of Deer was written) Mortlach, Fyvie, Methlick, Clova, Monymusk, Dyce, Tullich and Banchory are amongst them.

Aberdeen itself has had a church since c.580.  Legend has it that St Kentigern, based in Glasgow, sent his companion, St Machar, north to convert the northern Picts to Christianity and to found a church where a river forms a shepherd's crook before flowing into the sea.  Satisfied that Aberdeen fulfilled these requirements, St Machar founded his church near the River Don, which later developed into Aberdeen's primary ecclesiastical centre: St Machar's Cathedral (major construction work began in the 14th century).  Today the Cathedral contains, amongst other interesting relics, a carved Pictish stone cross, believed to date from the foundation of St Machar's first church.

The absorption of the Pictish Kingdom into the Scots Kingdom, in 843 AD, did little to stunt Aberdeen's growth.  The bustling Alton, "The Old Town", would develop around the Cathedral.  By the 10th century Aberdeen had developed enough for the Danes to feel that marauding there might pay dividends.  In 1136 David I instigated considerable new developments north of the River Dee, in what would become "New Aberdeen".  In 1179, during the reign of William the Lion, Aberdeen became a Royal Burgh, a title which granted the town certain rights as regards trade (such as the right to trade oversees).  By the end of the same century a castle and a leper house had been built, and by the end of the following century a market, a friary, a grammar school and a hospital.  The population of about 3000, significant by the standards of the time, made a living by fishing, weaving, dying wool or working leather.  Apart from Scots there was a small French speaking population, from Flanders.  The town was centred around 4 main streets forming a cross with a market held by the Denburn (a stream running at the foot of the gorge dissecting Aberdeen). Next>>>

Related topics:
A Brief History of Scotland