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"What part of any of this is a surprise given the linguo-ethnic map of the roman empire in circa 400, and the known subsequent migrations?"

With a little more time to type now, for those who aren't already familiar with it, I will put some more info on the historical migrations which make the current ethnic picture.

The Welsh and Cornish are the ethno-linguistic remnants of the apparently dominant celtic group in southern britain at the end of the roman period. Their were extended at least up into the cumbrian mountains (the name is derived from the same name the welsh give themselves, Cymru, or the language, Cymraeg,). Cornish and Welsh were basicly identical languages with very few changes over the roughly 1300 years of geographical separation until cornish became extinct under an English language-cleansing programme. Bretons actually immigrated from western britain during the germanic invasion period. I am not sure if there is any concensus on whether the language spoken by the various tribes the romans found in their invasion 54AD(?) was a p-celtic language or not, though I assume so. The romans apparently didn't take much interest in documenting the languages of subject peoples. One such tribe, the Pritani, would become the source of the name of the island Britain (p-celtic p-->b mutation)

I don't know what the ethnic composition of western scotland was before the Irish invaded, but the language of scots gaelic, Manx (extinct, Isle of Man) and Ireland were very similar with a common root. Western Scotland saw the establishment of small Irish kingdoms, eventually merging and politically conquering the Pictish kingdom of the East of scotland about a thousand years ago.

There are virtually no remaining traces of the Pictish language aside from some placenames, but it is generally assumed to be p-celtic (like welsh, cornish, etc.) One scholar wrote a work arguing it was finno-ugric, related to the language of finland, estonia, hungary. I would think genetic studies could clear this up once and for all in the east and northeast of scotland. Maybe there have already been some.

Large-scale (west) germanic immigrationinvasion into eastern and southern britain began in the 5th century, pushing out or assimilating/enslaving the remaining romano-celtic population, with nothing but placenames to attest to the celtic language's past presence. Scandinavian immigration began in the late 9th century to the north and eastern parts of england, and added to the ethnic mix, also altering the english language in a number of ways in those areas. This language would become the dominant dialect of english.

Aside from the basque connection, I am not sure where the article is pointing out a status-quo that was older than what I have listd above.

The DNA testing done to date has confirmed that the people of the Pictish regions of Scotland, i.e., the NE, are genetically 95% similar to the Basques, which makes the Pictish NE probably the "purest" 'proto-basque' population of the British Isles, given that apart from a few anglicised Briton and Flemish merchant immigrants the people of NE Scotland are the same as they always have been. Indigenous, as it were. My own NE Scottish DNA testing is 95% matched to the Basque population of the Pyrenees. It should be noted that Columba, the gaelic speaking Irishman, needed an interpreter to prosleytize the Picts...perhaps they were speaking a Basque derivative as recently as the early middle ages. As well, genetically, the Western Norwegian Vikings who settled Orkney and Sheltand, are quite distinct -- more paleo, and probably more proto-basque themselves -- from the other Scandinavian vikings, namely the thoroughly indo-European Danes and Swedes and Vandals and Goths....