Portal:Scotland

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Introduction

Flag of Scotland

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.

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Pan Am Flight 103 was a regularly scheduled Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to Detroit, with stopovers in London and New York City. Shortly after 19:00 GMT on 21 December 1988, the Boeing 747 Clipper Maid of the Seas was destroyed by a bomb while flying over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. The attack killed 270 people: all 243 passengers, the 16 crew members, and 11 residents of Lockerbie who were killed by fire and falling debris. The Lockerbie Bombing is the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United Kingdom and one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in European history.

In 1991, after a three-year joint investigation between Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, supported by Strathclyde Police, the London Metropolitan Police, and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), arrest warrants were issued for two Libyan Mukhabarat el-Jamahiriya officers. In 1999, after repeated negotiations and United Nations sanctions, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi allowed extradition of the two men for trial at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands.

In 2001, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was found guilty of 270 counts of murder in connection with the bombing, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. His co-accused, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, was acquitted. In 2009, Megrahi was released by the Scottish Government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. Megrahi died in 2012 and remains the only person convicted of the bombing, while Fhimah died in August 2026.

In 2003, Gaddafi paid more than US$2 billion in compensation to the families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing. Although Gaddafi maintained he never personally ordered the attack, acceptance of Megrahi's status as a government employee was used to connect responsibility by Libya with a series of requirements laid out by a UN resolution for sanctions against Libya to be lifted. In 2011, during the First Libyan Civil War, former Minister of Justice Mustafa Abdul Jalil said Gaddafi personally ordered the bombing. (... Read the full article)

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Selected quotes

Image 1

" ... 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
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" ... A man with God is always in the majority ... "

— John Knox

" ... Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own ... "

— J. M. Barrie
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" ... 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
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" ... You ought to be roasted alive, though even then you would not be to my taste ... "

— J. M. Barrie speaking to George Bernard Shaw

" ... We are often unable to tell people what they need to know because they want to know something else ... "

— George MacDonald
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" ... 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
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" ... We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation ... "

— Voltaire

" ... Many a clever boy is flogged into a dunce and many an original composition corrected into mediocrity ... "

— Sir Walter Scott
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" ... 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
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" ... Freedom is best, I tell thee true, of all things to be won ... "

— William Wallace

" ... The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scots as a joke, but the Scots haven't seen the joke yet ... "

— Oliver Herford
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" ... 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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" ... Custom, then, is the great guide of human life ... "

— David Hume

" ... Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things ... "

— Robert Louis Stevenson
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" ... Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them ... "

— David Hume

" ... We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery ... "

— Samuel Smiles
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" ... the inarticulate expression of the inequalities of life ... "

— Jimmy Boyle (Speaking of crime)

" ... The proletarian has no country; all are equally prisons to him alike ... "

— Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham
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" ... 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
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" ... Golf is an indispensable adjunct to high society ... "

— Andrew Carnegie

" ... We are bought and sold for English gold. Such a parcel of rogues in a nation ... "

— Robert Burns
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" ... His mind was a kind of extinct sulphur pit ... "

— Thomas Carlyle (Speaking of Napoleon III)

" ... Fire is the best of servants; but what a master! ... "

— Thomas Carlyle
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" ... 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
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" ... God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December ... "

— J. M. Barrie

" ... A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with – a man is what he makes of himself ... "

— Alexander Graham Bell
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" ... I have not yet begun to fight! ... "

— John Paul Jones

" ... Devolution will kill nationalism stone dead ... "

— George Robertson
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" ... A ripple of laughter is worth an ocean of tears. To laugh is to be free of worry ... "

— Harry Gordon

" ... It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important ... "

— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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" ... 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
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" ... A scot is a man who keeps the Sabbath and everything else he can lay his hands on ... "

— Chic Murray

" ... Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity ... "

— Thomas Carlyle
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" ... Is there anything worn under the kilt? No, it's all in perfect working order ... "

— Spike Milligan

" ... The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them ... "

— John Buchan
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" ... Diffused knowledge immortalizes itself ... "

— James Mackintosh

" ... The cloven-foot of self-interest was now and then to be seen aneath the robe of public principle ... "

— John Galt
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" ... 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
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" ... Burns of all poets is the most a Man ... "

— Dante Gabriel Rossetti

" ... No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men ... "

— Thomas Carlyle

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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)

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Selected biography

James Braidwood (1800–1861) was a Scottish firefighter who was the first Master of Engines in the world's first municipal fire service in Edinburgh in 1824. He was also the first director of the London Fire Engine Establishment and is credited with the development of the modern municipal fire service. (... Read the full article)

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Image 1
MV Isle of Arran leaving Port Askaig

Caledonian MacBrayne ferry MV Isle of Arran leaving Port Askaig, Islay with Jura visible in the background
Image 2
Balmoral Castle

Balmoral Castle. Aberdeenshire a residence of the British royal family in the Scottish baronial style.

Photo credit: Ejdzej
Image 3
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
Image 4
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
Image 5
Dean Village, Edinburgh

Building fronting the Water of Leith in the Dean Village, Edinburgh

Photo credit: 瑞丽江的河水
Image 6
Armoury, Inveraray Castle

The Armoury at Inveraray Castle

Photo credit: Stuart Wilding
Image 7
Luskentyre Beach, Lewis and Harris, The Outer Hebrides

Luskentyre Beach, Lewis and Harris, the Outer Hebrides

Photo credit: Thomas_Andy_Branson
Image 8
Loch Lomond viewed from Balmaha

Loch Lomond viewed from Balmaha

Photo credit: Andy Farrington
Image 9
Inveraray Bridge on Loch Fyne

Loch Fyne (Scottish Gaelic: Loch Fìne, meaning "Loch of the Vine or Wine", is a sea loch on the west coast of Argyll and Bute. Although there is no evidence for grapes growing there, it was more metaphorical, such as meaning that the River, Abhainn Fìne, was a well-respected river.

Photo credit: Michael Parry
Image 10

Rannoch Moor (/ˈrænəx/ ; Scottish Gaelic: Mòinteach Rai(th)neach) is an expanse of around 50 square miles (130 km2) of boggy moorland to the west of Loch Rannoch in Scotland, from where it extends into westerly Perth and Kinross, northerly Lochaber (in Highland), and the area of Highland Scotland toward its south-west, northern Argyll and Bute. Rannoch Moor is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Special Area of Conservation.

Photo credit: Chjris Combe
Image 11
Bealach na Bà

Bealach na Bà is a historic pass through the mountains of the Applecross peninsula, in Wester Ross in the Scottish Highlands—and the name of a famous twisting, single-track mountain road through the pass and mountains. The road is one of few in the Scottish Highlands that is engineered similarly to roads through the great mountain passes in the Alps, with very tight hairpin bends that switch back and forth up the hillside.

Photo credit: Stefan Krause
Image 12
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
Image 13
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
Image 14
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
Image 15
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
Image 16
The supply boat Good Shepherd III is tied up on the jetty on Fair Isle, 1974

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: Julian Paren
Image 17
Crail Harbour

Crail is a former royal burgh in the East Neuk of Fife. Built around a harbour, it has a particular wealth of vernacular buildings from the 17th to early 19th centuries, many restored by the National Trust for Scotland, and is a favourite subject for artists.

Photo credit: S.moeller
Image 18
The Wallace Monument

The Wallace Monument is a sandstone tower, built in the Victorian Gothic style. It stands on the summit of Abbey Craig, a volcanic crag above Cambuskenneth Abbey, from which Wallace was said to have watched the gathering of the army of English king Edward I, just before the Battle of Stirling Bridge.

Photo credit: Ray Mann
Image 19
The Falkirk Wheel.

The Falkirk Wheel, named after the nearby town of Falkirk, is a rotating boat lift connecting the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal. The wheel raises boats by 24 metres (79 ft).

Photo credit: User:SeanMack
Image 20
Eilean Donan Castle

The castle on Eilean Donan (Scottish Gaelic: Eilean Donnain), a small tidal island where three sea lochs meet, Loch Duich, Loch Long and Loch Alsh, in the western Highlands.

Photo credit: Gillfoto
Image 21
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
Image 22
Coire nan Lochan on the southern side of Glen Coe

Glen Coe ((Scottish Gaelic: Gleann Comhann) is a glen in the Highlands. It lies in the southern part of the Lochaber committee area of Highland Council, and was formerly part of the county of Argyll.

Photo credit: Gil.cavalcanti
Image 23
Vat of Kirbister

The Vat of Kirbister, a natural arch on thr island of Stronsay, Orkney

Photo credit: David Loutit
Image 24
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
Image 25
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

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Did You Know...

Help available

... 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 the construction of the Jubilee Bridge was featured in the 1982 documentary about the A9 road reconstruction?
... that the 1830 abandonment of Chipewyan woman Matooskie by her Scottish husband was eventually settled with a dowry payment of £200?
... that Thorpe's secluded hills provided refuge from Scottish raiders and English Civil War troops?
... that the Scottish painter Carole Gibbons had her first US exhibition in her eighties?
... 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 Thomas Kerr protested the Iraq War with his SNP-supporting aunt, later campaigned for Labour, joined the Conservatives, and defected to Reform UK?
... that the urban environment around Glasgow's Argyle Street ash tree may have helped it to survive ash dieback disease?

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Scotland Related WikiProjects and Task forces
	WikiProject Clans of Scotland	talk
	WikiProject Medieval Scotland	talk
	WikiProject Scottish Castles	talk
	WikiProject Scottish Islands	talk
	WikiProject Scottish Television	talk
	WikiProject Transport in Scotland	talk
	WikiProject Edinburgh	talk
	Fife task force	talk
	Scottish Gaelic task force	talk

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