What is Bernicia?
[[File:Northumbria.rise.600.700.jpg|thumb|300px|{{center|The Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Bernicia}}]] '''Bernicia''' ([[Old English]]: ''Bernice'') was a kingdom in [[England|Northern England]]. It was an [[Anglo-Saxon]] kingdom established by [[Angles|Anglian]] settlers in the 6th century. Bernicia occupied about the same area as the modern English counties of [[Northumberland]] and [[County Durham|Durham]], and the former Scottish counties of [[Berwickshire]] and [[East Lothian]]. Bernicia was one of two Anglo-Saxon kingdoms located north of the [[River Humber]]. The other was [[Deira]] and in the early [[7th century]] they combined to become the kingdom of [[Northumbria]]. == Roman and British Bernicia == The name Bernicia was an [[Anglicization]] of the earlier [[Celt]]ic name ''Bryneich'' (or ''Beornice'').<ref name=Ashley753>Mike Ashley, ''The Mammoth Book of British Kings and Queens'' (New york: Carroll & Graf, 1999), p. 753</ref> The name probably meant 'The Land of Hills' or something very similar.<ref>''Ireland: Revolution and Evolution'', ed. John Strachan, Alison O'Malley-Younger (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010), p. 68</ref> It was the territory of the Guairi, a [[clan]] of the Votadini tribe.{{efn|The Votadini were a [[Celtic people|Celtic]] people. Their territory was in what is now south-east Scotland and north-east England.<ref>Carl Waldman; Catherine Mason, ''Encyclopedia of European Peoples'' (New York: Facts On File, 2006), p. 851</ref>}}<ref name=Ashley753/> Their fortress home was the pre-[[Roman Britain|Roman]] ''Din Guairi'' (fort of the Guairi).{{efn|The Angles called it [[Bamburgh]], named after the [[Picts|Pictish]] wife of [[Athelfrith of Bernicia]], Bebbe.<ref>Bede, ''Ecclesiastical History of the English People'', trans. Leo Sherley Price, revsd. R. E. Latham (London; New York: Penguin, 1990), p. 168</ref>}} A large part of the Votadini under the leadership of Cunedda removed to north [[Wales]] creating the dynasty of [[Gwynedd]].<ref name=Marsden17>John Marsden, ''Northanhymbre S