Their ethnic and cultural affinity is uncertain, with various authorities positing different links, beginning with Bede, who referred to the Novantae as the Niduarian Picts, and including the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.), which described them as "a tribe of Celtic Gaels called Novantae or Atecott Picts." Scottish author Edward Grant Ries has identified the Novantae (along with other early tribes of southern Scotland) as a Brythonic-speaking culture. However, the region has a history that includes the culture of the Gaels, Picts, and Brythonic speakers at various times, alone and in combination, and there is not enough information to make conclusions about the ethnicity of the Novantae.