Unravelling the riddle of King Arthur's Scottish roots

Charlie Hunnam, star of Sons of Anarchy and The Lost City of Z, plays the eponymous leading man in a swashbuckling romp that has echoes of Game of Thrones meets Lord of the Rings (with a dash of the Lion King, Troy, Gladiator – and even the Bible – for good measure).

There are epic battles, expensive-looking special effects, giant computer-generated elephants, Jude Law as an evil king and a cameo by a scar-ravaged David Beckham with bad teeth.

It was partly filmed in Scotland, using the Quiraing on the Trotternish Peninsula in Skye and the Devil's Pulpit at Finnich Glen in Killearn, as well as in and around Shieldaig, Kishorn and Applecross in Wester Ross.

Tourism chiefs hope that King Arthur: Legend of the Sword will follow in the footsteps of Outlander, The BFG and James Bond's Skyfall by attracting visitors.

The film's release has strengthened calls that Scotland – rather than England or Wales – can lay claim to the true roots of the King Arthur fable and several threads of research have recently been published that appear to back this theory. Bothwell advocate and author Adam Ardrey is among those to give it credence.

Ardrey who has written two books – Finding Arthur: The True Origins of the Once and Future King and Finding Merlin: The Truth Behind the Legend of the Great Arthurian Mage – has compiled a trail of the 10 best Arthurian locations that will go live on the VisitScotland website on Friday.

It is his belief that the celebrated stories of King Arthur were based around the life of sixth century Scot Arthur Mac Aedan who was born in Stirling and lived in Argyll after his father became King of the Scots in 574.

Merlin wasn't a wizard, says Ardrey, but rather a Scottish political leader who took on the might of St Mungo and the march of Christianity during the sixth century.

"There is no other historical figure called Arthur in the age of Arthur who could have been the legendary Arthur," he asserts. "That's why you have so many theories because people have been looking for him in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"They have been looking for him down south and they just don't have him. There are 12 Arthur battles and all of mine are in a chronological, historical and geographically sensible order. They make sense when you consider Scotland. None of them make sense when you consider England or Wales."

Large swathes of England, including Cornwall, Shropshire, Somerset and Cumbria, as well as parts of Wales (where Bangor University launched its Centre for Arthurian Studies this year) have staked a claim on the legend, but Ardrey believes Scotland's ties blow all of them out the water.

"Carmarthen in Wales, for example, makes £6m a year out of Merlin Festival – a spurious Merlin Festival because 'marthen' sounds a bit like Merlin. The likes of Glastonbury and Tintagel in Cornwall also make millions out of their Arthurian tourist industry.

"We should be doing that. I would like us to say: 'Scotland is actually the place where these things happened'. If that is accepted, then hopefully Scotland will get its fair share of the Arthurian tourist income which, as I see it, should be 100 per cent."

Ardrey, 62, stumbled upon the Arthur legend while researching his family ancestry. "The first written reference to the man called Merlin was at the Battle of Arderydd in 573, while in 574 there was a chap called Arthur Mac Aedan at a fort called Dunardry in Argyll."

It was the similarity between the battle location and his surname that drew Ardrey's interest. "I found a Merlin in 573 and an Arthur in 574, made the connection and after that everything began to fall into place."

Ardrey has also found an explanation for the origins of the sword in the stone story. "In 574, as part of an inauguration ceremony, Arthur Mac Aedan placed his foot into a footprint cut into the stone on the summit of Dunadd, a hill fort which is a mile from Dunardry.

"Then, just like the way the Queen did at her coronation, he was given a sword to hold. When Arthur stepped out of the footprint holding the sword, he literally took a sword from a stone."

The ninth century historian Nennius listed 12 battles that the legendary Arthur was reputed to have fought. According to Ardrey, all of these could have been in Scotland. "If you draw a line from Stirling down to Berwick, for example, four of the battles were fought along that line," he says.

"The battle of the Caledonian Wood was fought near Peebles, the next battle was fought at Stow in the Borders and then there was the Battle of the City of the Legions fought at Trimontium, the Roman fort near Melrose.

"The last battle in that campaign – and there are 42 different records of it – is called Tribruit. One version has it spelt Trevroit which is obviously, the Teviot. This was fought at the bottom of Lord Lothian's garden at Monteviot House outside Jedburgh where the Roman road known as Dere Street crossed the Teviot.

"None of the English scholars have managed to attach a historical Arthur to two of the 12 battles. I can attach 12 battles to one historical Arthur and they physically and historically make sense."

The most famous of all Arthur's conflicts was the Battle of Badon which Ardrey believes happened in Argyll. "My Battle of Badon lies between the summit of Dunadd, where Arthur took a sword from a stone, and the hill fort on Dunardry not far from Lochgilphead. It is on the ordnance survey map as Badden which is a corruption of Badon."

Ardrey is confident he can also pinpoint the isle of Avalon where the legendary Arthur was said to have been buried. "Avalon is Iona," he says. "That is where the historical Arthur Mac Aedan's family burial plot was."

The same goes for the site of our hero's death. "The legendary Arthur died at a place called Camlann," says Ardrey. "No one has been able to find Camlann. There are dozens of theories."

He thinks that the location of a sixth century fort – now the ninth tee of Falkirk Golf Club in Camelon – could hold the key. "It was called Aedan's fort after Arthur's father. It was built on the same site as an earlier Roman fort which had four big ditches at its southern end.

'Cam' means twisted and 'lann' is land so Camlann would be 'twisted land' which makes sense when you think of the Roman ditches. Camlann is where the legendary Arthur died and Camelon is where the historical Arthur died, you couldn't get closer than that."

In 2011, archaeologists from Glasgow University using geophysics techniques to study the King's Knot in the former royal gardens below Stirling Castle discovered a circular feature that pre-dated the visible earthwork. It has been suggested this could be Arthur's round table.

"They found it on the ground and I found it in history," says Ardrey. "There are four 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th-century writers all saying in no uncertain terms that King Arthur's round table was at Stirling."

The sword Excalibur, says Ardrey, was brought from Ireland by Arthur Mac Aedan's ancestor Fergus Mor Mac Erc around 500. "Excalibur used to be called Caliburn," he says. "The 'Cal' part is Caledonia and 'iburn' is taken from the word Hibernia meaning Ireland. 'Ex' means 'out of' in Latin."

He paints a picture of the broader political landscape at the time. "The Picts were in the north, the Scots in the west, the Britons in the south of Scotland. At that time the Angles were coming in and attacking from around their base in Berwick and heading up towards Edinburgh.

"The only person who had an army ready and raring to go was Arthur Mac Aedan at Stirling. Merlin, as the political leader, organised the people to follow Arthur. And Arthur defeated the Angles in four battles and saved Edinburgh and that's why the city has got Arthur's Seat."

The story of Merlin, says Ardrey, is every bit as fascinating. "Merlin is always painted as an avuncular, ancient wizard," he says. "But he wasn't always an old man. Originally Merlin became famous because he and his family fought against St Mungo of Glasgow in the sixth century.

"There is a story written in the 12th century that tells of Merlin standing on the Necropolis hill in Glasgow shouting down across the Molendinar Burn to St Mungo in his church.

"The reason Arthur and Merlin are famous is because the two of them were the last men standing, holding a torch for the old way of the Druids fighting against the Christians."

He has a theory about how stories of Arthur's feats were disseminated. Around 40 years after Arthur Mac Aedan died, says Ardrey, the Angles captured Edinburgh in 638 and the Britons who lived there fled to areas in what is now England and Wales.

"They would sit around their campfires and tell stories of a golden age under Arthur and Merlin when they beat the Angles in battle after battle," he says. "The Britons who lived down south then adopted those stories because they didn't have an Arthur of their own."

Backing claims of Arthur as a Scottish hero is filmmaker and author Robin Crichton. Yet, while the founder of the Arthur Trail Association agrees that the roots of the tale began on this side of the border, Crichton has a somewhat different take. He suggests that Arthur was a central belt Scot who came to prominence as a renowned cavalry general.

"It is a vague period because it is mostly an oral history that was written down later," he says. "There is great dispute as to whether Arthur ever existed. I think if Arthur didn't exist that somebody like him did. Arthur may have also been a nom de guerre."

Crichton, 77, who lives at Traquair House in Peebles doesn't rule out that the legend of Arthur may be a storyteller's amalgamation of several heroes and their battles.

"Britain was Welsh-speaking until the Angles arrived. As the Angles gradually occupied east and southern Scotland, the Welsh language retreated until it ended up only being in Strathclyde. What could be preserved of the Celtic history was done so at Dumbarton.

"When the Vikings came along in ninth century and Dumbarton was threatened everything was put in a boat and taken to Anglesey in Wales. All the stories about Arthur ended up there. Two centuries later, when the Welsh were reading this story about the 'men of the north', they thought it must refer to north Wales and so transposed the stories to that landscape."

The Arthur who features in the new film, says Crichton, is loosely based on a heroic warrior created by an ambitious Breton monk called Geoffrey de Monmouth in the 12th century.

"What he did was take these Welsh legends of Arthur and make a composite that had parts drawn from every corner of Henry II's empire, stretching from the Mediterranean up through Western France and including England, most of Wales and half of Ireland."

Crichton, a former social anthropologist who has recorded the oral histories of native Americans and more recently spearheaded the development of a Charles Rennie Mackintosh Trail in the Pyrenees, states that "even in the oddest legend there is often a good grain of truth."

He has written On the Trail of King Arthur: A Journey into Dark Age Scotland and is due to publish a sister book, On the Trail of Merlin: In a Dark Age, this month.

The author says that as the Romans prepared to leave Britain in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, they left a cavalry force centred on Stirling to defend the Pictish frontier. Later this passed into the control of Strathclyde.

"In the rulers' genealogies the youngest sons tended not to get mentioned, only the older ones," he explains. "Putting the jigsaw together I think that Arthur was probably the younger son in the southern dynasty of Strathclyde. He was given the job of running the cavalry at Stirling around 495."

After the Picts invaded and occupied the Lennox – an area between Loch Lomond and Stirling – the northern chief of Strathclyde was challenged, says Crichton, and exiled by the dynasty in the south.

"Arthur and his cavalry then spent two or three years taking back the Lennox. He defeated the two western clans of the Picts. The Picts had to sign a peace treaty and part of the package was Guinevere and her twin sister. Guinevere married Arthur."

Nor were Arthur's battles confined to Scotland, says Crichton. "Word reached Arthur from Yorkshire that the Angles were threatening to cross the Humber. Arthur and his cavalry joined a Roman-style infantry force to form the Great Army and knocked the Angles back into East Anglia.

"Then came the call to head south and help get rid of the Saxons who were trying to form Wessex. The Saxons had encircled the hill fort at Badbury Rings in Dorset for a siege. Arthur charged out with the cavalry, broke the ring and was swiftly followed by the infantry and local militia who then massacred the lot. It was a huge defeat for the Saxons. This was the Battle of Badon in 516."

Afterwards peace reigned on every front for 20 years, says Crichton, although Arthur didn't get his happy ending. "Guinevere's twin sister was married to Arthur's nephew Mordred. I think the nephew had hanky panky with Guinevere and her sister found out. There was a hell of a ding dong."

As Guinevere fled back to her Pictish homeland, the two men did battle. "Mordred was killed and Arthur mortally wounded," he says. "Arthur was put on a barge to St Ninian's just outside Stirling. He died there and it is probably where he is buried. That was the end of Arthur."

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is in cinemas from Friday