Just been re-reading Death of Kings. The map at the front shows the Scotland/England border. Where the border really was is an interesting subject. Northumbria once went as far north as the Firth of Forth. An even earlier Anglo-Saxon Kingdom, Bernicia, occupied what is now southeast Scotland long before any Scots ever got there. ‘Scot-land proper’ as the medieval writers called it was in essence only the Highlands. ‘Scots’ today speak English not Scots Gaelic because the south-east of Scotland has always been ‘English’. These northern Anglo-saxons seem to have been cut off from the rest of Angledom by the Danish occupation and thus their territory was eventually snatched by the Scots. But at the time of Alfred the country north of Bamburgh certainly wasn’t Scotland but something more interesting, probably the Kingdom of Lothian. Hope that info is of use to you and Uhtred.
Best wishes
Steve Ainsworth
Halifax, Yorks.