Portal:Scotland
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The Culloden Viaduct near to Culloden battlefield. -
Loch Lubnaig seen from the path to Ben Ledi. -
Looking southwest from Ben_Lawers. -
Loch Leven near Glencoe village. -
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| Main Page | Selected articles 1 | Selected articles 2 | Selected biographies | Selected quotes | Selected pictures | Featured Content | Categories & Topics |
Introduction
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjacent islands, principally in the archipelagos of the Hebrides and the Northern Isles. To the south-east, Scotland has its only land border, which is 96 miles (154 km) long and shared with England; the country is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, the North Sea to the north-east and east, and the Irish Sea to the south. The population in 2022 was 5,439,842. Edinburgh is the capital and Glasgow is the most populous of the cities of Scotland.
The Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the 9th century. In 1603, James VI succeeded to the thrones of England and Ireland, forming a personal union of the three kingdoms. On 1 May 1707, Scotland and England combined to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain, with the Parliament of Scotland subsumed into the Parliament of Great Britain. In 1999, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, and has devolved authority over many areas of domestic policy. The Scottish Government is the executive arm of the devolved government, headed by the first minister who chairs the cabinet and responsible for government policy and international engagement. Further powers are devolved to local government from the Scottish Government to the country's 32 subdivisions (known as "council areas").
The country has its own distinct legal system, education system and religious history, which have all contributed to the continuation of Scottish culture and national identity. Scottish English and Scots are the most widely spoken languages in the country, existing on a dialect continuum with each other. Scottish Gaelic speakers can be found all over Scotland, but the language is largely spoken natively by communities within the Hebrides; Gaelic speakers now constitute less than 2% of the total population, though state-sponsored revitalisation attempts have led to a growing community of second language speakers.
The mainland of Scotland is broadly divided into three regions: the Highlands, a mountainous region in the north and north-west; the Lowlands, a flatter plain across the centre of the country; and the Southern Uplands, a hilly region along the southern border. The Highlands are the most mountainous region of the British Isles and contain its highest peak, Ben Nevis, at 4,413 feet (1,345 m). The region also contains many lakes, called lochs; the term is also applied to the many saltwater inlets along the country's deeply indented western coastline. The geography of the many islands is varied. Some, such as Mull and Skye, are noted for their mountainous terrain, while the likes of Tiree and Coll are much flatter.
Selected article
Tantallon Castle is a ruined mid-14th-century fortress, located 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) east of North Berwick, in East Lothian, Scotland. It sits atop a promontory opposite the Bass Rock, looking out onto the Firth of Forth. The last medieval curtain wall castle to be constructed in Scotland, Tantallon comprises a single wall blocking off the headland, with the other three sides naturally protected by sea cliffs.
Tantallon was built in the mid 14th century by William Douglas, 1st Earl of Douglas. It was passed to his illegitimate son, George Douglas, later created Earl of Angus, and despite several sieges, it remained the property of his descendants for much of its history. It was besieged by King James IV in 1491, and again by his successor James V in 1527, when extensive damage was done. Tantallon saw action in the First Bishops' War in 1639, and again during Oliver Cromwell's invasion of Scotland in 1651, when it was once more severely damaged. It was sold by the Marquis of Douglas in 1699 to Hew Dalrymple, Lord North Berwick and the ruin is today in the care of Historic Environment Scotland. (... Read the full article)
Selected quotes
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" ... Whaur's yer Wullie Shakespeare noo? ... "
—Anonymous
(Patriotic shout from an audience member at the 1st Edinburgh performance of the John Home tragedy Douglas)
" ... Law is the reflection of the spirit of a people, and so long as the Scots are conscious that they are a people, they must preserve their law ... "
— Robin Cook -
" ... All government is a monopoly of violence ... "
— Sir Walter Scott
" ... In order to enjoy leisure, it is absolutely necessary it should be preceded by occupation ... "
— Hugh MacDiarmid -
" ... I have not yet begun to fight! ... "
— John Paul Jones
" ... Devolution will kill nationalism stone dead ... "
— George Robertson -
" ... The secret of long life is always be doing something you enjoy ... "
— Tom Weir
" ... War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle ... "
— Thomas Carlyle -
" ... Some of my plays peter out and some pan out ... "
— J. M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan
" ... There are two rules for drinking whisky. First, never take whisky without water, and second, never take water without whisky ... "
— Chic Murray -
" ... A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence ... "
— David Hume
" ... The surest way to get a thing in this life is to be prepared for doing without it, to the exclusion even of hope ... "
— Jane Welsh Carlyle -
" ... One sometimes finds what one is not looking for ... "
— Sir Alexander Fleming
" ... I have found you an argument; I am not obliged to find you an understanding ... "
— James Boswell -
" ... My theory is that all of Scottish cuisine is based on a dare ... "
— Mike Myers
" ... A man may well be condemned, not for doing something, but for doing nothing ... "
— William Barclay -
" ... I fear I have nothing original in me excepting original sin ... "
— Thomas Campbell
" ... Life is a waste of time. Time is a waste of life. Get wasted all the time and you'll have the time of your life ... "
— Billy Connolly -
" ... When Scotland forgets Burns, then history will forget Scotland ... "
— John Stuart Blackie
" ... Women do not find it difficult nowadays to behave like men, but they often find it extremely difficult to behave like gentlemen ... "
— Compton Mackenzie -
" ... Authors and captured criminals are the only people free from routine ... "
— Eric Linklater
" ... The world is neither Scottish, English, nor Irish, neither French, Dutch, nor Chinese, but human ... "
— James Grant -
" ... A good gulp of whisky at bedtime – it’s not scientific but it helps ... "
— Sir Alexander Fleming
" ... I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair ... "
— Charles Lamb -
" ... All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies ... "
— Dr John Arbuthnot
" ... Where all is compulsion and enforcement, it’s the bully that rules ... "
— Neil M. Gunn -
" ... I could not be a traitor to Edward, for I was never his subject ... "
— William Wallace
" ... People in Scotland have a queer idea of the arts. They think you can be an artist in your spare time, though nobody expects you to be a spare-time dustman, engineer, lawyer or brain surgeon ... "
— Alasdair Gray -
" ... Avarice, the spur of industry ... "
— David Hume
" ... No enemy is half so fatal as a friend estranged ... "
— John Davidson -
" ... Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable ... "
— William McIlvanney
" ... Golf is a thoroughly national game; it is as Scotch as haggis, cockie-leekie, high cheek-bones or rowanberry jam ... "
— Andrew Lang -
" ... The cruellest lies are often told in silence ... "
— Robert Louis Stevenson
" ... It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important ... "
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -
" ... All I've got against golf is that it takes you so far from the clubhouse ... "
— Eric Linklater
" ... I have always found that the man whose second thoughts are good is worth watching ... "
— J. M. Barrie -
" ... There are only two types of music: rock and roll ... "
— Alex Harvey
" ... A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that Fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun ... "
— Thomas Carlyle -
" ... History is the essence of innumerable biographies ... "
— Thomas Carlyle
" ... for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule.
It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself ... "
— Declaration of Arbroath -
" ... Come along inside. We'll see if tea and buns can make the world a better place ... "
— Kenneth Grahame
" ... All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer ... "
— Robert Louis Stevenson -
" ... Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one ... "
— Thomas Carlyle
" ... Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective ... "
— John Buchan -
" ... There is only one word for aid that is without strings, and that word is blackmail ... "
— Colm Brogan
" ... It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiasts can be trusted to speak the truth ... "
— A. J. Balfour -
" ... Biography: One of the new terrors of death ... "
— John Arbuthnot
" ... It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding ... "
— Sydney Smith
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" ... In my end is my beginning ... "
— Mary, Queen of Scots
" ... The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there ... "
— John Buchan
In the news
- 24 May 2025 – 2024–25 Scottish Cup
- In association football, Aberdeen F.C. wins their 9th Scottish Cup and their first in 35 years after defeating 42-time winners Celtic F.C. 4–3 in the final on penalties after a 1–1 draw at Hampden Park in Glasgow. (BBC Sport)
- 16 April 2025 – Transgender rights in the United Kingdom, For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers
- The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom rules that legal gender is based upon biological sex for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. (BBC News)
Selected biography
James VI and I (James Charles Stuart; 19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until his death in 1625. Although he long tried to get both countries to adopt a closer political union, the kingdoms of Scotland and England remained sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciaries, and laws, ruled by James in personal union.
James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and a great-great-grandson of Henry VII, King of England and Lord of Ireland, and thus a potential successor to all three thrones. He acceded to the Scottish throne at the age of thirteen months, after his mother was forced to abdicate in his favour. Although his mother was a Catholic, James was brought up as a Protestant. Four regents governed during his minority, which ended officially in 1578, though he did not gain full control of his government until 1583. In 1589, he married Anne of Denmark. Three of their children survived to adulthood: Henry Frederick, Elizabeth, and Charles. In 1603, James succeeded his cousin Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, who died childless. He continued to reign in all three kingdoms for 22 years, a period known as the Jacobean era, until his death in 1625. After the Union of the Crowns, he based himself in England (the largest of the three realms) from 1603, returning to Scotland only once, in 1617, and styled himself "King of Great Britain and Ireland". He advocated for a single parliament for England and Scotland. In his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and English colonisation of the Americas began. (... Read the full article)
Selected picture
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View of Canisp and Suilven from nearby Clachtoll
Canisp and Suilven seen from the coastal fishing and crofting village of Clachtoll in Sutherland county, on the north western edge of Scotland.
Photo credit: Louis_Daillencourt -
Glasgow Necropolis
The Glasgow Necropolis is a Victorian cemetery in Glasgow. It sits on a hill above, and to the east of, St. Mungo's Cathedral. It was conceived as a Père Lachaise for Glasgow, and subsequently established by the Merchants' House of Glasgow in 1831. Fifty thousand individuals have been buried in approximately 3500 tombs.
Photo credit: Finlay McWalter -
Jarlshof, Grutness, Shetland Islands
Jarlshof is the best known prehistoric archaeological site in Shetland. It lies near the southern tip of the Shetland Mainland and has been described as "one of the most remarkable archaeological sites ever excavated in the British Isles".
Photo credit: Nigel Duncan -
Aerial view of Pennan village
Pennan (Scots: Peenan) is a small village in Aberdeenshire] consisting of a small harbour and a single row of homes. Pennan became famous for representing the fictional village of Ferness, being one of the main locations for the film Local Hero.
Photo credit: Tadpolefarm -
Sunset in the Trossachs
Sunset in Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park. The high peak on left of the image is Ben Lomond.
Photo credit: Michal Klajban -
The Black Cuillin viewed from Sgùrr na Strì
The Black Cuillin, a range of rocky mountains located on the Isle of Skye, viewed from Sgùrr na Strì.
Photo credit: User:YaoAxton -
Hill House, Helensburgh
Hill House in Helensburgh, Scotland, was created by architects and designers Charles and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. The house was built in a Modern Style way.
Photo credit: JeremyA -
Evening view across Calton Hill towards the Castle
Evening view from Calton Hill towards an illuminated Edinburgh Castle with the Bank of Scotland headquarters and the Balmoral Hotel illuminated in the intermediate foreground. The sillhouettes of the Scott Monument and the tall gothic spire of the Hub are both prominent in the frame.
Photo credit: Chris Fleming -
36-inch telescope at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh
36-inch telescope at the Royal Observatory on Blackford Hill, Edinburgh, the location of the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC).
Photo credit: Science and Technology Facilities Council -
The Riverside Museum on the banks of the river Clyde.
The Riverside Museum on the River Clyde in Glasgow, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. The new museum now houses the Glasgow Museum of Transport. Berthed next to it is the Clyde-built sailing ship the Glenlee..
Photo credit: Neil Williamson -
The Kelpies, Falkirk
The Kelpies are a pair of monumental steel horse-heads between the Scottish towns of Falkirk and Grangemouth. They stand next to the M9 motorway and form the eastern gateway of the Forth and Clyde Canal, which meets the River Carron here. Each head is 30 metres (98 ft) high. The sculptures, which represent kelpies, were designed by sculptor Andy Scott and were completed in October 2013.
Photo credit: James Allan -
The Skating Minister.
The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch, better known by its truncated title The Skating Minister, is an oil painting by Sir Henry Raeburn in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh.
Credit: Sir Henry Raeburn (1790s painting) -
Edinburgh Castle
Edinburgh Castle is a fortress which dominates the skyline of the city of Edinburgh, from its position atop the volcanic Castle Rock. Human habitation of the site is dated back as far as the 9th century BC, although the nature of early settlement is unclear. There has been a royal castle here since at least the reign of King David in the 12th century, and the site continued to be a royal residence until the Union of the Crowns in 1603.
Photo credit: Saffron_Blaze -
West cliffs, looking southwest towards Malcolm's Head
Fair Isle (from Old Norse Frjóey) (Scottish Gaelic: Eileann nan Geansaidh) is an island off Scotland, lying around halfway between Shetland and the Orkney Islands. The most remote inhabited island in the United Kingdom, it is famous for its bird observatory and a traditional style of knitting.
Photo credit: Dave Wheeler -
Cape Wrath Peninsula
Cape Wrath (Scottish Gaelic: Am Parbh, known as An Carbh in Lewis) is a cape in the Durness parish of the county of Sutherland in the Highlands of Scotland, and is the most north-westerly point in Great Britain.
Photo credit: RealSnowhunter -
The Old Man of Storr
The Old Man of Storr is a rock pinnacle, the remains of an ancient volcanic plug. It is part of The Storr, a rocky hill overlooking the Sound of Raasay on the Trotternish peninsula of the Isle of Skye.
Photo credit: Wojsy -
John Knox's House, Edinburgh
John Knox House, popularly known as John Knox's House, is a historic house in Edinburgh, Scotland, reputed to have been owned and lived in by Protestant reformer John Knox during the 16th century.
Photo credit: Kim Traynor -
Blackrock cottage, Rannoch Moor
A view of Blackrock Cottage on Rannoch Moor with Buachaille Etive Mor in the background.
Photo credit: Andrewmckie -
Skara Brae
Skara Brae is a stone-built Neolithic settlement, located on the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of Mainland, the largest island in the Orkney archipelago. It consists of eight clustered houses, and was occupied from roughly 3180 BCE–2500 BCE. Europe's most complete Neolithic village, Skara Brae gained UNESCO World Heritage Site status as one of four sites making up "The Heart of Neolithic Orkney".
Photo credit: craig w macgregor -
The Forth Bridge
The Forth Bridge is a cantilever railway bridge over the Firth of Forth. It was opened on 4 March 1890, and spans a total length of 2,528.7 metres (8,296 ft). It is often called the Forth Rail Bridge or Forth Railway Bridge to distinguish it from the Forth Road Bridge.
Photo credit: George Gastin -
View over Edinburgh, with the Dugald Stewart Monument in the foreground
Calton Hill is a hill in central Edinburgh, just to the east of the New Town. The hill is home to several iconic monuments and buildings: the National Monument, Nelson's Monument, the Dugald Stewart Monument, the Royal High School, the Robert Burns Monument, the Political Martyrs' Monument and the City Observatory.
Photo credit: Andrewyuill -
Satellite image of Scotland
The geography of Scotland is highly varied, from rural lowlands to barren uplands, and from large cities to uninhabited islands. Aside from the mainland, Scotland is surrounded by 790 islands encompassing the major archipelagoes of the Shetland Islands, Orkney Islands and the Outer Hebrides.
Photo credit: NASA -
Scottish National Gallery
The Scottish National Gallery, in Edinburgh, is the national art gallery of Scotland. An elaborate neoclassical edifice, it stands on The Mound, between the two sections of Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens. The building, which was designed by William Henry Playfair, first opened to the public in 1859.
Photo credit: Klaus with K -
Tobermory waterfront, isle of Mull
Tobermoray (Scottish Gaelic: Tobar Mhoire) is the capital of, and the only burgh on, the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides. It is located in the northeastern part of the island, near the northern entrance of the Sound of Mull. The town was founded as a fishing port in 1788, its layout based on the designs of Dumfriesshire engineer Thomas Telford.
Photo credit: Lukas von Daeniken -
Glasgow University main building with Dumgoyne and the Campsie Fells in the background
Autumnal view of Glasgow University main building with Dumgoyne and the Campsie Fells in the background
Photo credit: Ian Dick
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Did You Know...
- ... that the unlicensed Willy's Chocolate Experience in Scotland led to a crossover event between the American television series Abbott Elementary and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia?
- ... that despite his defeat at the battle of Pitgaveny, both of Duncan's sons would later rule Scotland?
- ... that background research for Dujanah included interviews with Muslim apostates and a Scottish veteran of Afghanistan?
- ... that today the Bishop of Edinburgh plays a ceremonial role at the coronation of Charles III and Camilla as a representative of the Walker Trustees?
- ... that the 4,000-year-old Ravenswood standing stone now lies in a cul-de-sac in a 1970s Scottish housing estate?
- ... that the New York Yankees were first named after a Scottish regiment?
- ... that Scottish physician George Gray received the thanks of the Chinese government for his work during the Manchurian plague of 1910–11?
- ... that John Neilson, a Scottish immigrant to Lower Canada, became a major publisher and bookseller, and was reportedly "the largest consumer of paper" in the country?
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- Participate in WikiProject Scotland's Peer Review, including responding to PR requests and nominating Scottish articles.
- Help nominate and select new content for the Scotland portal.
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