Scotland

The northern portion of the Isle of Britain, together with most of the smaller islands. The Scots as a people are a composite of northern Irish Gael, northern Anglo-Saxon, Norman, Norwegian, and native Caledonian, or Pict. A small land and thinly populated, her skeptical and occasionaly dour children are legendary the world over as soldiers, merchants, doctors, explorers, engineers, and inventors; any trade, in fact, that requires considerable self-discipline combined with a flare of creativity.

Contains: Angus, Argyll, Atholl, Buchan, Caithness, Carrick, DalRiada, Dunbar, Fife, Galloway, Gododdin, Hebrides Isles, Iona, Islay, Lochow, Lord of the Isles, Lorne, Lothian, Moray, the Orkney Isles, the Picts, Rockall, Ross, St. Andrews, Scotland, Selcovia, the Shetland Isles, Skye, Strathclyde, Strathearn, and Sutherland.

 
ANGUS A region in eastern Scotland, comprising highlands in the west, descending across the Vale of Strathmore to the North Sea in the east. The chief town is Forfar. Associated from the late 14th century with the Douglas Clan, it has hosted a notable series of lords who have left a very powerful impact on Scottish history.


ARGYLL Western Scotland, comprising the Firth of Clyde, the Mull of Kintyre, and the highlands northward from thence, and facing the Inner Hebrides.


ATHOLL A mediaeval Scottish province, successively a mormaerdom, earldom, a marquisate, and a dukedom of Scotland. Atholl is located around the Tilt river valley in central Scotland, with the Firth of Tay to the southeast and Loch Ness to the northwest. The traditional center of the province was Blair Castle. The present Duke of Atholl maintains the only private army in Europe – the Atholl Highlanders.


BUCHAN An ancient Pictish kingdom, then a Scottish principality, located in the fertile lowlands of eastern Aberdeenshire.


CAITHNESS The northernmost tip of mainland Scotland. Caithness' population is a mixture of pre-Celtic, Celtic, and Norse elements. The region has a long tradition of independence, even while nominally within one kingdom or another.


CARRICK A region in the north of Galloway, the home of the Bruce dynasty.


DalRIADA The Scots were originally an extended clan located in Northern Ireland, the Gens DalRiada. During the troublous 5th century CE, this group migrated as a nation out of Ireland, and into what is nowadays Argyllshire. Here, they established a kingdom, and commenced extending their control in piecemeal fashion, first into Perthshire, then Lothian, then north into Mar and the Highlands. This brought them into immediate conflict with the native Caledonian population, the Picts. The ensuing wars were an epic whose fury we can only dimly hear at this distance, but the eventual result was the amalgamation of the Pictish and Scottish peoples into a single nation.


FIFE Former sub-kingdom and later earldom in eastern Scotland, between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay. It contains Saint Andrews, seat of Scotland's oldest university and the ecclesiastical capital of Scotland until the Reformation.


GALLOWAY (Gallgeidhael) District in the south-west of Scotland, comprising the counties of Kirkcudbright and Wigtown. It was the Novantia of the Romans, and till the end of the 12th century included Carrick, now the southern division of Ayrshire. Though the designation has not been adopted civilly, its use historically and locally has been long established.


The HEBRIDES The Hebrides comprise a widespread and diverse archipelago off the west coast of Scotland, and in geological terms are composed of the oldest rocks in the British Isles. They can be divided into two main groups: the Inner Hebrides, including Skye, Mull, Islay, Jura, Staffa and the Small Isles and the Outer Hebrides, including Lewis and Harris, Berneray, North Uist, South Uist, Barra and St Kilda. The Hebrides were historically tied with the Norse settlements in northern and western Scotland. The Norsemen called these islands the "Sudreys" or "South Islands" as opposed to the Nordreys (Orkney and Shetland). See also, generally, Argyll, Isle of Man, Orkney Isles, Shetland Isles.


IONA Island off the coast of western Scotland, one of the Inner Hebrides. Iona is also known as Ioua, its Pictish name, or as Innis nam Druineach (“ Island of the Cunning Workmen”) or Hy (its Saxon designation). Druids are supposed to have come here to escape the persecution of Imperial Rome, and to have founded a library on the island. In 410 Irish mercenaries in the service of Alaric the Goth added to that library by bringing back books from the plunder of Rome. The island is famous as the early center of Celtic Christianity. St. Columba,  with his companions, landed there from Ireland in 563. They founded a monastery, which was burned by the Danes in the 8th or 9th cent. Iona was a bishopric from 838 to 1098. In 1203 a Benedictine monastery, of which there are remains, was established. The cathedral, formerly the Church of St. Mary, dates from the early 13th cent. The cemetery of St. Oran's Church contains the graves of dozens of monarchs and other lords from Northumbria, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, and France.


ISLAY (pronounced "AI-la"; Scottish Gaelic: Ìle) An island in the Hebrides, the southernmost of the Inner Hebrides. It lies in Argyll just to the west of Jura and around 25 miles (40 km.) north of the Irish coast, which can be seen on a clear day. It is probably best-known worldwide for the many local whiskey distilleries located here.


LOTHIAN Southeastern Scotland; the southern shore of the Firth of Forth, including the modern capital of Edinburgh.


MORAY Northeastern Scotland; the fertile coastal regions from the northern approach to Loch Ness in the west, to Aberdeen in the east.


ORKNEY The Orkney Isles, an archipelago off the north coast of Britain, were in the control of the Kings of Norway for many centuries, but produced a notable series of Jarls who have left an indelible imprint on Scottish history. The following list attempts to trace them, although it must be admitted that it is in a very tentative and confused state. One of the few sources is the Orkneyinga Saga, which is quite eloquent, but omits dates for the most part; these must be supplied, where they can at all, by indirect means.


THE PICTS  The Pictish people were an early folk living in what is now Scotland. The seem to have been Celts, but of a very different strain than the Goidelic and Brythonic sorts in the rest of Britain. A matrilineal people, very little is known about them today. Their language was never transcribed, so all we have of it are some proper names, some of which show signs of Celticization. Their name for themselves is unknown; the Romans coined the term "Picti", meaning "the painted ones, the ones who tattoo themselves", and walled off Caledonia from the rest of Britain, since they could not conquer it. After the withdrawal of the legions, Goidelic Celts began invading Caledonia, touching off a 400 year war with the Picts. During this time, the Picts became loosely organized in a ramshackle kingdom, which this list memorializes. In this era, the Picts gradually came to resemble their opponents more and more. Christianity was introduced, and Scots Gaelic developed as a dominant language. Eventually, the Scots were able to suborn the Picts by marrying Pictish royal women, inheriting the kingdom, and passing it on to their patrilineal heirs. This was tried several times, the Picts overthrowing the alien monarch each time. Eventually though, the Scots were successful. Nevertheless, the Picts have retained a strong grip on the imagination of succeeding generations, albeit the fact that even the Scots themselves didn't know their opponent's name; the Gaels simply refered to them as "An Cruithain", Scottish for "the painted ones, the ones who tattoo themselves"...


ROSS An earldom in northwestern Scotland.


ST. ANDREWS A town in Fife, on the east coast of Scotland, the seat of the Primate of Scotland during the Middle Ages and early modern times. A center of Celtic Christianity since the 6th century, the abbot of Kilrymont was raised to the status of a Bishop based on a church and shrine to St. Andrew in 908, at a time when Roman Christianity was replacing the earlier Celtic form. St. Andrews was made independent of the Archbishopric of York in 1192, made an Archbishopric in 1472, and made Primate of all Scotland with equal authority to that of Canterbury in the south in 1487. After the Reformation, the town decayed to a considerable degree and didn't recover fully until the 19th century. Nowadays, the town is a center for another human activity - golf. The worlds most prestigious golf courses have been sited here from 1754 on.


SCOTLAND The kingdom of Scotland emerged in the 9th century CE. from the enforced union of the Kingdom of DalRiada, under Kenneth I, with that of the Kingdom of the Picts. The realm was fully extended in 1034 with the absorption of the Kingdom of Strathclyde. The Hebrides, Orkney Isles, and the Shetland Isles (Norwegian and then Danish fiefs) were attached in 1472.


SELCOVIA The ephemeral kingdom of the Selgovae, a British tribe, in what is now Selkirkshire in southern Scotland.


SHETLAND ISLANDS An archipelago of over one hundred small islands in the North Sea, located between the Orkneys to the south and the Faeroe Islands to the northwest. It forms the extreme northern limit of Great Britain (Muckle Flugga lighthouse, 1 mile off the north coast of the island of Unst). The islands have been occupied for several millenia, and were a Norse stronghold throughout the Middle Ages.


SKYE The largest and most northerly island of the Inner Hebrides.