The+English+Speaking+World

= **Scotland**=

Scotland is a country with beautiful mountains, long rivers and large lochs, like the world famous loch Ness. Scotland has also become famous for its whiskey, which they in the medieval period called “uisge-beatha”, the water of life. And who hasn’t gone crazy from the screeching sound of the Scottish bagpipe?

The Flag of Sctoland

The history of Scotland began 10,000 years ago, when the first inhabitants came after the last ice age. The ice age got followed by the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age, but there are few written records from those times. The written record of Scotland began when the Roman Empire arrived in Britain at AD 43. It took nearly 300 years before Scotland were free from the Romans. A couple of hundred years later Scotland got its first king, Kenneth MacAlpin, who ruled the fields of Scotland from AD 843 – 858. Throughout the medieval period Scotland fought in many battles, some of them against Norway who were trying to take control over the Western Isles, and some of them against France and England. But in 1286, the year that Alexander III (Scotland’s king at those days) died, Scotland’s domination was about to get change. The fall of the king led to the intervention of Edvard I of England, who manipulated this period of confusion to have him recognized as feudal overlord of Scotland. But it didn’t take long before Scotland’s relationship with England broke down and a new Scottish king ruled over the empire. In 1603, James VI King of Scots inherited the throne of the Kingdom of England, and became King James I of England, and left Edinburgh for London. There were still conflicts but Scotland remained a separate state, before the Scottish Parliament and the Parliament of England in 1707 emerged to one parliament, The United Kingdom of Great Britain. This parliament lasted until 1801 when it got succeeded by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Which again were about to get succeeded by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1922, or just United Kingdom as we call it today.
 * History**

Scotland occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It is a part of the United Kingdom and it shares its only land border with England. The country is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west and by the North Sea to the east. The capital of Scotland is Edinburgh, and it’s also the second largest city, only beaten by Glasgow which is Scotland’s largest city with 580,690 inhabitants compared to Edinburgh’s 448,624. Scotland consists of two parts; the Highlands to the north and west and the Lowlands to the south and east. The Highlands contains the majority of Scotland's mountainous terrain, including the highest mountain of the British Isles, Ben Nevis (1,344 m). The Lowlands also contains significant ranges of hills, but it’s much flatter than in the Highlands, and in the Lowlands you find the home to most of the Scottish population. Except for the mountainous terrain Scotland consists of long rivers, like River Tay with its 193 km, and stretches from the Highlands and to the centre of Scotland, or the great lochs. Loch Lomond is the largest freshwater body in Britain and it’s amazingly 71.1 km². Scotland most famous loch, which has been making controversy all over the world because of its supposed monster, is the world famous Loch Ness.
 * Geography**

Scotland

Around AD 500 groups from Ireland who called themselves scotes immigrated to Scotland, which later gave name to the country. From the regions around Argyll they spread their language and their culture, and mixed it together with the natives. Under the pressure of English from south and Irish from west the language that the native spoke were lost. In AD 800 Norwegians came to the north in Scotland and settled down. This had a great influence on the natives’ language, and the result was a mixture of northern and English, which formed the Scottish Gaelic language. The Scottish Gaelic language stood strongest in Scotland throughout the 1000 and 1100 century, before the regular English took over as language for the nobility and court. It didn’t take long before the Gaelic language had to back down for the English, which made the Gaelic language to get dislodged to the western Highlands. And today the Gaelic language has almost extinct, only to be found at the Hebrides and the Isle of Skye.
 * Why is Scotland an English speaking country?**

In many ways Scotland differs from England. For instance Scotland has its own traditional educational system that differs from England’s. School pupils in Scotland study from age 5, up to about 18 if they wish, while in England they study from the age 4 and up to 16. One other thing that makes the English and Scottish school system different from each other is that the English system emphasizes a deeper understanding of a relatively smaller number of subjects, while the Scottish system promotes the teaching of more subjects at the expense of depth.
 * What makes Scotland different from England?**

Scotland and England has many different traditions. While England has their fish & chips, tea and bowler hats, Scotland has its haggis, scotch and kilts. One of the things Scotland has been maybe best known for, except for the Loch Ness monster, is the bagpipe, Scotland’s national instrument. This instrument is made from a bag, an air supply, a chanter and usually a drone, and has been used all the way back to 1300 BC. But Scotland do also have a tradition from way back that men wear kilts, which is basically skirt for men, and underneath they wear nothing at all. A thing that makes Scotland special is the system of clans. The whole point with clans was to give a sense of identity and share descent to people in Scotland and to their relations throughout the world. Each clan has its own tartan patterns, and members of the clan may wear kilts, skirts, sashes, ties, scarves, or other items of clothing made of the appropriate tartan as a badge of membership and as a uniform where appropriate. Bagpipe The Christmas traditions in these two countries are very different from each other. The English enjoy beautiful Christmas music and they love to decorate Christmas Trees and hang up evergreen branches. But in Scotland, Christmas has traditionally been celebrated very quietly, because the Church of Scotland has never placed any great emphasis on the Christmas festival. But they do sometimes dance around big bonfires on Christmas day to the playing of bagpipe. The Scottish people instead have their big celebrations on New Year's Day, called Hogmanay. As most countries, Scotland and England also have their national days at different dates. England celebrates their national day 23. April, and Scotland got their national day at St. Andrews day, 30. November. In Scotland they celebrate with a big party were everybody is dancing Scottish dances, and the men wear kilts and the women wear Scottish dresses.
 * Traditions and culture**

Here is a video I made to show you a little bit how Scotland is like media type="youtube" key="TTfx5MGcN2s"

Mads Fatnes

http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~kjt/general/basic.html www.wikipedia.org http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/ http://www.santas.net/scottishchristmas.htm