Drosten Stone

The Drosten Stone
The Drosten Stone
Writing	Roman script: DROSTEN: IPEUORET [E]TTFOR CUS
Symbols	Celtic cross Crescent Double disc and z-rod Mirror and comb Knotwork
Created	9th century CE
Present location	St Vigeans, Angus, Scotland
Classification	Class II Cross slab (defaced)
Culture	Picto-Scottish

The Drosten Stone is a carved Pictish stone of the 9th century at St Vigeans, near Arbroath, Scotland. In academic contexts it is sometimes called St Vigeans 1.

The Drosten Stone is a Class 2 cross-slab: a flat rectangular stone with a cross carved on one side and symbols on the other. The stone is unusual in having a non-ogham inscription.

The inscription is read as:

DROSTEN:
IPEUORET
[E]TTFOR
CUS

Thomas Owen Clancy has interpreted the text as Goidelic, giving Drosten, i ré Uoret ett Forcus (Drosten, in the time of Uoret, and Forcus). Clancy notes three possibilities for the origin of the stone. One is as a monument to a noble or ecclesiastic called Drosten, a common Pictish name related to Tristan, who died in the reign of Uoret and Fergus. The second possibility is a dedication to the popular Pictish Saint Drostan, or perhaps to Saints Drostan and Fergus. The final possibility noted by Clancy is that Drosten and Fergus had the stone made. Clancy believes the stone should be dated to the reign of the Pictish king Uurad (i.e. Uoret) (839–842), again, an unusual feature in that Pictish stones can rarely be so precisely dated.

Guto Rhys hypothesized that UORET may be a personal name, or a Pictish form of the Old Welsh noun guoret, meaning "protection".^[1]

• Clancy, Thomas Owen (1993), "The Drosten Stone: a new reading" (PDF), Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 123: 345–353, archived from the original (PDF) on 11 June 2007, retrieved 5 February 2010

• Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland at the Archaeology Data Service
• CISP database entry (Celtic Inscribed Stones Project)
• St Vigeans Museum details at the Historic Scotland website