Portal:Scotland
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Introduction
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Scotland (Scots: Scotland; Scottish Gaelic: Alba) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and adjacent islands, principally in the archipelagos of the Hebrides and the Northern Isles. In 2022 the country's population was about 5.4 million. Its capital city is Edinburgh, whilst Glasgow is the largest and the most populous of the cities in the country. Scotland borders England to the south, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, the North Sea to the east, and the Irish Sea to the south-west. In the Scottish Parliament, 129 members represent 73 constituencies. The Scottish Government is the executive arm of the devolved government, headed by the first minister, who chairs the cabinet and is responsible for government policy and international engagement.
The Kingdom of Scotland emerged as a sovereign state in the 9th century. Independence from England was maintained partly through an alliance with France. 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 country has its own distinct legal system, education system and religious history, which have all contributed to the continuation of Scottish society, 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, although 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 Tiree and Coll are flatter.
Selected article
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Rosslyn Chapel, also known as the Collegiate Chapel of Saint Matthew, is a 15th-century Episcopal chapel located in the village of Roslin in Midlothian, Scotland. The chapel was founded by William Sinclair, 1st Earl of Caithness with a ground-breaking ceremony in 1456. After the Scottish Reformation in 1560, it was largely abandoned but, following a visit by Queen Victoria, it was rededicated in 1862. It was the target of a bombing in 1914 during the suffragette bombing and arson campaign. The interior contains some fine carvings which many historians have sought to interpret.
Since the late 1980s, the chapel has been the subject of speculative theories concerning a connection with the Knights Templar and the Holy Grail, and Freemasonry. It was prominently featured in this role in Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code (2003) and its 2006 film adaptation. Medieval historians say these accounts have no basis in fact. Rosslyn Chapel remains privately owned. (... Read the full article)
Selected quotes
" ... 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
" ... 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
" ... Well, we say yes and we are the people ... "
— Canon Kenyon Wright
" ... Socialism proposes to dethrone the brute-god Mammon and to lift humanity into its place ... "
— Keir Hardie
" ... A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one ... "
— Thomas Carlyle
" ... Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I’m very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that ... "
— Bill Shankly
" ... Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others ... "
— Robert Louis Stevenson
" ... Work is the grand cure of all maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind ... "
— Thomas Carlyle
" ... 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
" ... I must follow them. I am their leader ... "
— Bonar Law
" ... None can destroy Scotland, save Scotland's self ... "
— Lord Belhaven, opposing the union of 1707
" ... I have forgot a great deal more than most other men know ... "
— Lord Monboddo
" ... I tell you truly, liberty is the best of things; never live under the halter of slavery ... "
— William Wallace
" ... He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts — for support rather than illumination ... "
— Andrew Lang
" ... We come here with no peaceful intent, but ready for battle, determined to avenge our wrongs and set our country free.
Let your masters come and attack us: we are ready to meet them beard to beard ... "
— William Wallace
" ... Science is the greatest antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition ... "
— Adam Smith
" ... William Wallace sheds as bright a glory upon his valorous nation as ever was shed upon their country by the greatest men of Greece or Rome ... "
— Giuseppe Garibaldi
" ... A witty statesman said, you might prove anything by figures ... "
— Thomas Carlyle
" ... Generally speaking the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous ... "
— David Hume
" ... Politically correct is the language of cowardice ... "
— Billy Connolly
" ... It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine ... "
— P. G. Wodehouse
" ... Men are immortal till their work is done ... "
— David Livingstone
" ... America would have been a poor show had it not been for the Scots ... "
— Andrew Carnegie
" ... Every line of strength in American history is a line coloured with Scottish blood ... "
— Woodrow Wilson
" ... The result of our present enquiry is that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end ... "
— James Hutton on the immensity of geological time at the Royal Society of Edinburgh
" ... History, a distillation of Rumour ... "
— Thomas Carlyle
" ... Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary ... "
— Robert Louis Stevenson
" ... It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics ... "
— Thomas Carlyle
" ... We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once ... "
— Alexander McCall Smith
" ... Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations ... "
— James Mackintosh
" ... Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It’s what we have because we can’t have justice ... "
— William McIlvanney
" ... God help England if she had no Scots to think for her ... "
— George Bernard Shaw
" ... We have all taken risks in the making of war. Isn’t it time that we should take risks to make peace? ... "
— Ramsay MacDonald
" ... Teach a parrot the terms "supply and demand" and you've got an economist ... "
— Thomas Carlyle
" ... A man’s real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor ... "
— Alexander McCall Smith
" ... Fashion as King is sometimes a very stupid ruler ... "
— Eric Temple Bell
" ... There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement ... "
— Lord Kelvin, address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1900
" ... 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
" ... 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
" ... 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
" ... Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes ... "
— J. M. Barrie
" ... I am not here, then, as the accused; I am here as the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot ... "
— John Maclean from his famous "speech from the dock"
In the news
- 14 September 2026 – Separatism in the United Kingdom, Decolonization
- The First Ministers of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales meet in Cardiff at a summit to call for their independence from the United Kingdom. (BBC News) (The Guardian)
- 3 August 2026 – 2020–2026 H5N1 outbreak
- Scotland's NatureScot denies a 2026 licence for hunting northern gannets on Sula Sgeir, citing possible harm to the local gannet population after recent bird-flu deaths. (AFP via RFI)
- 25 July 2026 –
- The Bishop of Aberdeen in Scotland declares the sedevacantist Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer religious institute, an order associated with the Society of Saint Pius X, to be excommunicated, after they consecrated a bishop without Vatican approval. (The Herald) (The Catholic Herald)
Selected biography
David Livingstone (/ˈlɪvɪŋstən/; 19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish doctor, Congregationalist, pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, and an explorer in Africa. Livingstone was married to Mary Moffat Livingstone, from the prominent 18th-century Moffat missionary family. Livingstone came to have a mythic status as a Protestant missionary martyr, working-class "rags-to-riches" inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader, and advocate of British commercial and colonial expansion. As a result, he became one of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era.
Livingstone's fame as an explorer and his obsession with learning the sources of the Nile was founded on the belief that if he could solve that age-old mystery, his fame would give him the influence to end the East African Arab–Swahili slave trade. "The Nile sources", he told a friend, "are valuable only as a means of opening my mouth with power among men. It is this power [with] which I hope to remedy an immense evil." His subsequent exploration of the central African watershed was the culmination of the classic period of European geographical discovery and colonial penetration of Africa. At the same time, his missionary travels, "disappearance" and eventual death in Africa—and subsequent glorification as a posthumous national hero in 1874—led to the founding of several major central African Christian missionary initiatives carried forward in the era of the European "Scramble for Africa", during which almost all of Africa fell under European rule for decades. (... Read the full article)
Selected picture
Arbroath Harbour
Arbroath or Aberbrothock (Scottish Gaelic: Obair Bhrothaig) is a former royal burgh on the North Sea coast, around 16 miles (25.7 km) ENE of Dundee and 45 miles (72.4 km) SSW of Aberdeen. It is the largest town in the council area of Angus. and has a population of 22,785.
Photo credit: Karen Vernon
Detail of the V&A museum from the west with the Tay Bridge beyond
Detail of the V&A museum, Dundee from the west with the Tay Bridge beyond.
Photo credit: Richard Szwejkowski
The Dunmore Pineapple, a folly in Dunmore Park, near Airth in Stirlingshire
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The Dunmore Pineapple, a folly in Dunmore Park, near Airth in Stirlingshire
Photo credit: George.Gastin
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
Statue of Robert the Bruce, Bannockburn
Robert the Bruce statue at the Bannockburn Visitor Centre, Bannockburn, Stirling, is a 1964 work by Pilkington Jackson. The bronze sculpture depicts Robert the Bruce wielding an axe and on a war horse.
Photo credit: Martin Kraft
The Room de Luxe at the Willow Tearooms
The Willow Tearooms are tearooms at 217 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, designed by internationally renowned architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which opened for business in October 1903.
Photo credit: Dave souza
Cells of Life, a landform by Charles Jencks at Jupiter Artland
Cells of Life, a landform by Charles Jencks at Jupiter Artland, a contemporary sculpture park and art gallery outside the city of Edinburgh.
Photo credit: Allan Pollok-Morris
The William Younger Centre housing Our Dynamic Earth science centre
Our Dynamic Earth is a Scottish science centre and prominent conference venue and visitor attraction located in Holyrood, Edinburgh, beside the Scottish Parliament Building.
Photo credit: Globaltraveller
Lighthouse on the Bass Rock, Firth of Forth
Lighthouse on the Bass Rock, an island in the outer part of the Firth of Forth, home to the world's largest colony of northern gannets.
Photo credit: Ben Clarke
Kyle of Durness
Durness (Scottish Gaelic: Diùirnis) is a huge but remote parish in the northwestern Highlands, encompassing all the land between the Moine to the East (separating it from Tongue parish) and the Gualin to the West (separating it from Eddrachilis).
Photo credit: Neil Booth
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
The parliament building viewed from Salisbury Crags
The Scottish Parliament Building (Scottish Gaelic: Pàrlamaid na h-Alba, Scots: Scots Pairlament Biggin) is the home of the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, within the UNESCO World Heritage Site in central Edinburgh. It was designed by Enric Miralles, the Catalan architect,.and has won a number of awards, including an award at the VIII Biennial of Spanish Architecture, the RIAS Andrew Doolan Award for Architecture, and the 2005 Stirling Prize, the UK's most prestigious architecture award.
Photo credit: Photo Credit: Wangi
St Mary's Cathedral viewsedfrom Manor Place, Edinburgh 
Mousa Broch, Shetland Islands
A broch is an Iron Age drystone hollow-walled structure of a type found only in Scotland. Brochs belong to the classification "complex atlantic roundhouse" devised by Scottish archaeologists in the 1980s. Their origin is a matter of some controversy.
Photo credit: Otter
Looking south from the Quiraing, Skye
The Isle of Skye, commonly known as Skye, is the largest and most northerly island in the Inner Hebrides. In Scottish Gaelic it is commonly referred to as An t-Eilean Sgiathanach ("The Winged Isle").
Photo credit: masher2
Glenfinnan Viaduct
Glenfinnan Viaduct is a railway viaduct on the West Highland Line in Glenfinnan, Lochaber, Highland. It was built between 1897 and 1901. Located at the top of Loch Shiel in the West Highlands, the viaduct overlooks the Glenfinnan Monument and the waters of Loch Shiel.
Photo credit: Nicolas17
Freezing temperatures in Braemar
Braemar is a village in Aberdeenshire, around 58 miles (93 km) west of Aberdeen in the Highlands. Sitting at an altitude of 339 metres (1,112 ft), Braemar is the third coldest low lying place in the UK, after the villages of Dalwhinnie and Leadhills. It has twice entered the UK Weather Records with the lowest ever UK temperature of -27.2oC, on 11 February 1895, and 10 January 1982.
Photo credit: Paul Chapman
Hopetoun House
Hopetoun House is the traditional residence of the Earl of Hopetoun (later the Marquess of Linlithgow). It was built 1699-1701, designed by William Bruce. It was then hugely extended from 1721 by William Adam until his death in 1748 being one of his most notable projects. The parklands in which it lies were laid out in 1725, also by William Adam.
Photo credit: George Gastin
Dunfermline Abbey, east side viewed from the south
Dunfermline Abbey is a large Benedictine abbey in Dunfermline, Fife. It was administered by the Abbot of Dunfermline. The abbey was founded in 1128 by King David I, but the monastic establishment was based on an earlier foundation dating back to the reign of King Máel Coluim mac Donnchada (i.e. "Malcolm III" or "Malcolm Canmore", r. 1058-93).
Photo credit: Mussklprozz
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
Luskentyre Beach, Lewis and Harris, The Outer Hebrides 
Thistle flower head
Thistle is the common name of a group of flowering plants characterised by leaves with sharp prickles on the margins, mostly in the family Asteraceae. In the language of flowers, the thistle (like the burr) is an ancient Celtic symbol of nobility of character as well as of birth, for the wounding or provocation of a thistle yields punishment.
Photo credit: Fir0002
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
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Did You Know...
- ... 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?
- ... that Colin Mackay, the political editor at Scottish Television, was "very sad" when Colin MacKay, the political editor at Scottish Television, died?
- ... that during the First Bishops' War, the Duke of Hamilton's mother intended to shoot him with silver bullets if he landed in Scotland?
- ... that a miniature golf chain is an affiliate member of both England and Scotland's national governing bodies for golf?
- ... that George Parks was president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and his son Rowan Parks became president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh?
- ... that Q Manivannan and Iris Duane are the first two openly transgender people elected to the Scottish Parliament?
- ... that Q Manivannan and Iris Duane are the first two openly transgender people elected to the Scottish Parliament?
- ... that Ian Begg, known for his work on restoration of castles in Scotland, designed and built his own 20th-century tower house to live in?
Get involved
For editor resources and to collaborate with other editors on improving Wikipedia's Scotland-related articles, see WikiProject Scotland.
To get involved in helping to improve Wikipedia's Scotland related content, please consider doing some of the following tasks or joining one or more of the associated Wikiprojects:
- Visit the Scottish Wikipedians' notice board and help to write new Scotland-related articles, and expand and improve existing ones.
- Visit Wikipedia:WikiProject Scotland/Assessment, and help out by assessing unrated Scottish articles.
- Add the Project Banner to Scottish articles around Wikipedia.
- 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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Post a question on the Talk Page or consider asking it at the Wikipedia reference desk.
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