Test Your Knowledge of the Ancient Celts

Boudicca was the queen of the Iceni, a Celtic tribe in eastern England. After her husband’s death, Roman troops seized her lands and she and her daughters were brutally assaulted. In 60 CE, she led a rebellion that destroyed several Roman cities in England, including present-day London. She was defeated the following year and died shortly after, but she remains a British national icon.

For the Celts, water was considered a link between the physical and spiritual world. Many Celtic gods were associated with water, and the Celts made regular offerings by throwing sacrificial objects into lakes, rivers, and streams. Water was also believed to be an entrance to the “otherworld,” a realm entered into after death.

The Celts were known as fierce warriors, and sometimes fought naked, likely as a way to intimidate their enemies. Their weapons included iron axes, daggers, javelins, and swords, and they often wore horned helmets elaborately decorated with distinctive Celtic swirling patterns. Celtic warriors — both male and female — were often buried with their armor to honor their bravery in life.

The Celts had a deep fascination with the natural world. They often attributed sacred powers to trees and plants, including mistletoe, which could grow year-round regardless of climate, and which the Celts associated with strength and fertility. These and other Celtic beliefs were later incorporated into Christian thought, inspiring many modern-day traditions.

Celts believed that the human head could live on after death and had mystical powers. Celtic reverence for the body part took many forms. Their artwork depicted the heads of gods and warriors, which also adorned their iron shields, and they often preserved the embalmed heads of those they had defeated in battle as sacred trophies of war.

The famous Celtic King Vercingetorix was the son of a chieftain of the Averni, a Celtic tribe in Gaul, now modern-day France. In 52 BCE, he led an uprising against Julius Caesar, whose previous victories over the Gauls had caused the loss of much Celtic territory. Vercingetorix’s guerilla campaign led to early victories, but he was finally forced to surrender and taken captive by Caesar.

Archaeologists date the earliest Celtic civilizations to the Bronze Age (around 3000 to 1000 BCE), but the culture thrived between 700 and 400 BCE, in the Iron Age. During this period, they became master producers of ironwork weapons and tools, and their culture spread widely thanks to migration and trade.

While the Celts are today most associated with the British Isles, they trace their roots to the region along the Danube River in central Europe. By the third century BCE, Celtic culture had spread as far east as Turkey and west across Europe. But the Celts were never a unified empire; they had differing social and political customs and rulers unique to hundreds of local tribes.

While the Celts were never one cohesive group, they did share common languages that spread across Europe. Many of those languages are now largely extinct, but others survived and experienced a revival in the 20th century. In Britain, an uptick in speakers of Welsh and Gaelic has been credited to the rise of nationalism and pride in Celtic cultural heritage.

Along with kings and chieftains, Druids were the most revered people in the Celtic societies, based primarily in modern-day France, Ireland, and Britain. Because the Celts did not use a written language, Druids learned by oral tradition, passed down through the generations. They were known for their interest in both nature and prophecy, and they handled legal, political, and sometimes medical issues.