Celtic nations
The Celtic nations or Celtic countries are a cultural area and collection of geographical regions in Northwestern Europe where the Celtic languages and cultural traits have survived. The term nation is used in its original sense to mean a people who share a common identity and culture and are identified with a traditional territory.
The six regions widely considered Celtic countries in modern times are Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Scotland, and Wales. In each of these six regions a Celtic language is spoken to some extent: Brittonic or Brythonic languages are spoken in Brittany, Cornwall, and Wales, whilst Goidelic or Gaelic languages are spoken in Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man.
Before the expansion of ancient Rome and the spread of Germanic and Slavic tribes, much of Europe was dominated by Celtic-speaking cultures, leaving behind a legacy of Celtic cultural traits. Certain regions with evidence of Celtic influence in northwestern Iberia, such as Galicia, Asturias, northern Portugal, León, and Cantabria, are not typically considered Celtic nations. Unlike with the Insular Celtic languages, there is no record of Celtic languages surviving into the modern era within these regions. Similar evidence of a pattern of Celtic influence without the long-term survival of Celtic languages is also found in various regions across Europe, including parts of Italy, Austria, and the Czech Republic.
The concept of the Celtic nations is widely promoted by pan-Celtic movements, including political and cultural organizations like the Celtic League or International Celtic Congress.
Six recognised nations
Each of the six nations has its own Celtic language. In Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales these have been spoken continuously through time, while Cornwall and the Isle of Man have languages that were spoken into modern times but later died as spoken community languages. In the latter two regions, however, language revitalisation movements have led to the adoption of these languages by adults and produced a number of native speakers.Ireland, Wales, Brittany, and Scotland contain areas where a Celtic language is used on a daily basis; in Ireland these areas are called the Gaeltacht; in Wales Y Fro Gymraeg, Breizh-Izel in western Brittany and Breizh-Uhel in eastern Brittany. Generally these communities are in the west of their countries and in more isolated upland or island areas. Welsh, however, is much more widespread, with much of the north and west speaking it as a first language, or equally alongside English. Public signage is in dual languages throughout Wales and it is now a requirement to possess at least basic Welsh in order to be employed by the Welsh government. The term Gàidhealtachd historically distinguished the Gaelic-speaking areas of Scotland from the Lowland Scots areas. More recently, this term has also been adopted as the Gaelic name of the Highland council area, which includes non-Gaelic speaking areas. Hence, more specific terms such as sgìre Ghàidhlig are now used.
In Wales, the Welsh language is a core curriculum subject, which all pupils study. Additionally, 20% of schoolchildren in Wales attend Welsh medium schools, where they are taught entirely in the Welsh language. In the Republic of Ireland, all school children study Irish as one of the three core subjects until the end of secondary school, and 7.4% of primary school education is through Irish medium education, which is part of the Gaelscoil movement. In the Isle of Man, there is one Manx-medium primary school, and all schoolchildren have the opportunity to learn Manx.
Other regions
Parts of the northern Iberian Peninsula, namely Galicia, Cantabria, Asturias in Spain, and the North Region, Portugal, also lay claim to a Celtic heritage. These regions are not traditionally included among the six primary "Celtic nations" owing to the absence of a living Celtic language; however, archaeological and historical evidence points to a significant Celtic influence, particularly in the ancient region of Gallaecia, which encompassed modern Galicia and northern Portugal.Historical and archaeological influence
Numerous archaeological findings, such as castros and artifacts bearing Celtic motifs, support the presence of Celtic-speaking cultures in Gallaecia dating back to at least the Iron Age. Classical sources, including Strabo and Pomponius Mela, described the Gallaeci and Astures tribes as Celtic, noting similarities in cultural practices and languages with the broader Celtic world.Toponymy and linguistic substrates
While no Celtic language has been spoken in northern Iberia since the early Middle Ages, traces of a Celtic linguistic substratum persist in local place names and vocabulary. Toponyms with Celtic roots, such as those ending in "-briga", are common in Galicia and northern Portugal.Cultural revitalization of Celtic heritage
In recent decades, there has been a revival of interest in Celtic heritage across Galicia, Asturias, and northern Portugal. These regions actively participate in pan-Celtic events such as the Festival Interceltique de Lorient, where Galicia and Asturias are recognized alongside the six core Celtic nations. The annual Ortigueira's Festival of Celtic World in Galicia, one of Europe's largest celebrations of Celtic music and culture, attracts performers and audiences from across the Celtic world.Irish was once widely spoken on the island of Newfoundland, but largely disappeared by the early 20th century. Vestiges remain in words found in Newfoundland English, such as scrob for "scratch" and sleeveen for "rascal." There are virtually no known fluent speakers of Irish Gaelic in Newfoundland or Labrador today, though memorized passages survive in traditional tales and songs.
Canadian Gaelic dialects of Scottish Gaelic are still spoken by Gaels in parts of Atlantic Canada, primarily on Cape Breton Island and nearby areas of Nova Scotia. In 2011, there were 1,275 Gaelic speakers in Nova Scotia, and 300 residents of the province considered a Gaelic language their "mother tongue."
Patagonian Welsh is spoken principally in Y Wladfa in the Chubut Province of Patagonia, with sporadic speakers elsewhere in Argentina. Estimates of the number of Welsh speakers range from 1,500 to 5,000.
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages form a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. SIL Ethnologue lists six living Celtic languages, of which four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are the Goidelic languages and the Brittonic languages.Taken together, there were roughly one million native speakers of Celtic languages as of the 2000s. In 2010, there were more than 1.4 million speakers of Celtic languages.
Celtic identity
Formal cooperation between the Celtic nations is active in many contexts, including politics, languages, culture, music and sports:The Celtic League is an inter-Celtic political organisation, which campaigns for the political, language, cultural and social rights, affecting one or more of the Celtic nations.
Established in 1917, the Celtic Congress is a non-political organisation that seeks to promote Celtic culture and languages and to maintain intellectual contact and close cooperation between Celtic peoples.
Festivals celebrating the culture of the Celtic nations include the Festival Interceltique de Lorient, Ortigueira's Festival of Celtic World, the Pan Celtic Festival, CeltFest Cuba, the National Celtic Festival, the Celtic Media Festival, and the Eisteddfod.
Inter-Celtic music festivals include Celtic Connections, and the Hebridean Celtic Festival. Due to immigration, a dialect of Scottish Gaelic is spoken by some on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, while a Welsh-speaking minority exists in the Chubut Province of Argentina. Hence, for certain purposes—such as the Festival Interceltique de Lorient—Gallaecia, Asturias, and Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia are considered three of the nine Celtic nations.
Competitions are held between the Celtic nations in sports such as rugby union, athletics and association football.
The Republic of Ireland enjoyed a period of rapid economic growth between 1995 and 2007, leading to the use of the phrase Celtic Tiger to describe the country. Aspirations for Scotland to achieve a similar economic performance to that of Ireland led the Scotland First Minister Alex Salmond to set out his vision of a Celtic Lion economy for Scotland, in 2007.
Genetic studies
A Y-DNA study by an Oxford University research team in 2006 claimed that the majority of Britons, including many of the English, are descended from a group of tribes which arrived from Iberia around 5000 BC, before the spread of Celtic culture into western Europe. However, three major later genetic studies have largely invalidated these claims, instead showing that haplogroup R1b in western Europe, most common in traditionally Celtic-speaking areas of Atlantic Europe like Ireland and Brittany, would have largely expanded in massive migrations from the Indo-European homeland, the Yamnaya culture in the Pontic–Caspian steppe, during the Bronze Age along with carriers of Indo-European languages like proto-Celtic. Unlike previous studies, large sections of autosomal DNA were analyzed in addition to paternal Y-DNA markers. They detected an autosomal component present in modern Europeans which was not present in Neolithic or Mesolithic Europeans, and which would have been introduced into Europe with paternal lineages R1b and R1a, as well as the Indo-European languages. This genetic component, labelled as "Yamnaya" in the studies, then mixed to varying degrees with earlier Mesolithic hunter-gatherer or Neolithic farmer populations already existing in western Europe. Furthermore, a 2016 study also found that Bronze Age remains from Rathlin Island in Ireland dating to over 4,000 years ago were most genetically similar to modern Irish, Scottish and Welsh, and that the core of the genome of insular Celtic populations was established by this time.In 2015 a genetic study of the United Kingdom showed that there is no unified 'Celtic' genetic identity compared to 'non-Celtic' areas. The 'Celtic' areas of the United Kingdom show the most genetic differences among each other. The data shows that Scottish and Cornish populations share greater genetic similarity with the English than they do with other 'Celtic' populations, with the Cornish in particular being genetically much closer to other English groups than they are to the Welsh or the Scots.
The Irish appear to be the least affected by foreign invaders out of the Celtic nations, most notably the Anglo-Saxons, this is reflected in them having the highest concentration of the "Insular Celtic" haplogroup R1b-L21 in the world.