Braveheart

What do you know abut Scotland?

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occuping the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the Nort Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to ther north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to thesouthwest. In addition to the mainland, Scotland is made up of more than 790 islands including the Northern Isles and the Herbrides.

Population

The population distinguishes itself from the English through it's own language and literature, jurisdiction, education and organisation of the church. The Scots have a strong historical consciousness. The greater part of the population springs from the original Scottish population, which in fact is a jumble of Picts, Celts and Normans.
Contrary to the rest of the UK, less people live in the cities and more in the countryside. With a population density of 66 people per square kilometer it is fairly quiet. Yet the distribution is very uneven: more than 1.5 of the 5 million inhabitants lives in one of the 4 big cities: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee.
Our experiences have shown us that the people are very friendly and helpful, but they seem to have an inferiority complex in relation to the English; they still feel being dominated by them. It is almost, after centuries of British rule, as if it is genetically determined.

Languages

English is the official language of Scotland, but one can clearly discern a Scottish kind of english, a dialect. In the Highlands there are still people who speak Gaelic. Gaelic springs from the various (6) Celtic languages of the past and nowadays 3 forms have survived: Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge), Manx Gaelic (Gailck) and Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig). These 3 languages are being spoken in Ireland, on the island Man and in Scotland. The speakers of these languages are called Gaels (formerly Celts). About 60.000 people in Scotland still speak it, so not more than 1% of the total population!
A few centuries ago there were 3 more languages besides English: Pictic, Gaelic and Norwegian. In the present Scottish language many words pop up from these 3 languages.

History

For an extensive survey on Scottish history have a look at our special Scotland history page.
Since there are already so many sources on the internet we will give you a few links with more information about Scotland history:

electricscotland skyelander britannia.com tartans.com

Complete contents of books about Scottish history At first difficult to navigate, but apart from that an outstanding website with much informationTimeline of Scottish history Nice site with orderly information