SCOTLAND, FLAG OF

flag of a constituent unit of the United Kingdom, flown subordinate to the Union Jack, that consists of a blue field (background) bearing a white saltire (diagonal cross) that extends to the flag corners; this type of emblem is known as the Cross of St. Andrew (after the patron saint of Scotland). According to Scottish lore, the legendary King Angus (Achaius, or Hungus) saw a white saltire in the blue sky during his battle against the Saxons near what is now the village of Athelstaneford. That is the supposed origin of the Cross of St. Andrew, although the event, attributed to AD 737 or 832, is clearly apocryphal. The first corroborated use of the symbol dates from 1286, when it appeared in the government seal of the guardians of Scotland. The royal coat of arms of Scotlanda red lion and intricate border on a yellow backgroundwas used in the early 13th century on seals and, quite possibly, in flag form; in the 20th century it was unofficially and improperly used as a Scottish national flag. In the summer of 1385 the Scottish Parliament decreed that soldiers should wear a badge with the white Cross of St. Andrew against a black background. The corresponding flag, frequently with a blue background, was probably chosen to provide a stark contrast to the red-and-white flag of England (the Cross of St. George). After 1606, at least during those times when Scotland and England were under a common monarch, the saltire of St. Andrew and the Cross of St. George were united. The design of the Union Jack is the best-known example of the combination, but a quarterly arrangement was official during the rule of Oliver Cromwell in the mid-17th century. When Scotland and England joined to form Great Britain in 1707, their individual flags ceased to be recognized internationally. Whitney Smith History Ancient times Evidence of human settlement in the area later known as Scotland dates from the 3rd millennium BC. The earliest people, Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) hunters and fishermen who probably reached Scotland via an ancient land bridge from the Continent, were to be found on the west coast, near Oban, and as far south as Kirkcudbright, where their settlements are marked by large deposits of discarded mollusk shells. Remains suggest that settlers at the Forth estuary, in the area of modern Stirling, obtained meat from stranded whales. By early in the 2nd millennium BC Neolithic (New Stone Age) farmers had begun cultivating cereals and keeping cattle and sheep. They made settlements on the west coast and as far north as Shetland. Many built collective chamber tombs, the example at Maeshowe in Orkney being the finest in Britain. A settlement of such people at Skara Brae in Orkney consists of a cluster of seven self-contained huts connected by covered galleries or alleys. The Beaker folk, so called from the shape of their drinking vessels, came to eastern Scotland from northern Europe, probably beginning about 1800 BC. They buried their dead in individual graves and were pioneers in bronze working. The most impressive monuments of Bronze Age Scotland are the stone circles, presumably for religious ceremonies, such as those at Callanish in Lewis and Brodgar in Orkney, the latter being more than 300 feet (91 metres) in diameter. From about 700 BC onward there was a distinct final period in Scottish prehistory. This period is the subject of current archaeological controversy, with somewhat less stress than in the past being placed on the importance of the introduction of iron fabrication or on the impact of large new groups of iron-using settlers. One key occurrence in the middle of the 1st millennium was the change from a relatively warm and dry climate to one that was cooler and wetter. In terms of technology, this period was marked by the appearance of hill forts, defensive structures having stone ramparts with an internal frame of timber; a good example is at Abernethy near the Tay. Some of these forts have been dated to the 7th and 6th centuries BC, which might suggest that they were adopted by already established tribes rather than introduced by incomers. Massive decorated bronze armlets with Celtic ornamentation, found in northeastern Scotland and dated to the period AD 50150, suggest that chieftains from outside may have come to these tribes at this period, displaced from farther south first by fresh settlers from the Continent and later by the Romans in AD 43. From 100 BC the brochs appeared in the extreme north of Scotland and the northern isles. These were high, round towers, which at Mousa in Shetland stand almost 50 feet (15 metres) in height. The broch dwellers may have carried on intermittent warfare with the fort builders of farther south. On the other hand, the two types of structures may not represent two wholly distinct cultures, and the two peoples may have together constituted the ancestors of the people later known as the Picts. The houses of this people were circular, sometimes standing alone, sometimes in groups of 15 or more, as at Hayhope Knowe in the Cheviot Hills on the border between modern Scotland and England. Some single steadings, set in bogs or on lakesides, are called crannogs. Corn growing was probably of minor importance in the economy; the people were pastoralists and food gatherers. They were ruled by a warrior aristocracy whose bronze and iron parade equipment has, in a few instances, survived. Roman penetration and the Dark Age peoples Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the Roman governor of Britain from AD 77 to 84, was the first Roman general to operate extensively in Scotland. He defeated the natives at Mons Graupius, possibly in Banffshire, probably in AD 84. In the following year he was recalled, and his policy of containing the hostile tribes within the Highland zone, which he had marked by building a legionary fortress at Inchtuthil in Strathmore, was not continued. His tactics were logical, if Scotland was to be subdued, but probably required the commitment of more troops than the overall strategy of the Roman Empire could afford. The only other period in which a forward policy was attempted was between about 144 and about 190, when a turf wall, the Antonine Wall (named after the emperor Antoninus Pius), was manned between the Forth and the Clyde. The still-impressive stone structure known as Hadrian's Wall had been built between the Tyne and Solway Firth in the years 122128, and it was to be the permanent northern frontier of Roman Britain. After a northern rising, the emperor Severus supervised the restoring of the Hadrianic line in the years 209211, and thereafter southeastern Scotland seems to have enjoyed almost a century of peace. In the 4th century there were successive raids from north of the Wall and periodic withdrawals of Roman troops to the Continent. Despite increasing use of native buffer states in front of the Wall, the Romans found their frontier indefensible by the end of the 4th century. At Housesteads, at about the midpoint of Hadrian's Wall, archaeologists have uncovered a market where northern natives exchanged cattle and hides for Roman products: in this way some Roman wares, and possibly more general cultural influences, found their way north, but the scale of this commerce was probably small. Roman civilization, typified by the towns and villas, or country houses, of southern Britain, was unknown in Scotland, which as a whole was never dominated by the Romans, or even strongly influenced by them. From about AD 400 there was a long period for which written evidence is scanty. Four peoplesthe Picts, the Scots, the Britons, and the Angleswere eventually to merge and thus form the kingdom of Scots. The Picts occupied Scotland north of the Forth. Their identity has been much debated, but they possessed a distinctive culture, seen particularly in their carved symbol stones. Their original language, presumably nonIndo-European, has disappeared; some Picts probably spoke a Brythonic Celtic language. Pictish unity may have been impaired by their apparent tradition of matrilineal succession to the throne. The Scots, from Dalriada in northern Ireland, colonized the Argyll area, probably in the late 5th century. Their continuing connection with Ireland was a source of strength to them, and Scottish and Irish Gaelic (Goidelic Celtic languages) did not become distinct from one another until the late Middle Ages. Scottish Dalriada soon extended its cultural as well as its military sway east and south, though one of its greatest kings, Aidan, was defeated by the Angles in 603 at Degsastan near the later Scottish border. The Britons, speaking a Brythonic Celtic language, colonized Scotland from farther south, probably from the 1st century BC onward. They lost control of southeastern Scotland to the Angles in the early 7th century AD. The British heroic poem Gododdin describes a stage in this process. The British kingdom of Strathclyde in southwestern Scotland remained, with its capital at Dumbarton. The Angles were Teutonic-speaking invaders from across the North Sea. Settling from the 5th century, they had by the early 7th century created the kingdom of Northumbria, stretching from the Humber to the Forth. A decisive check to their northward advance was administered in 685 by the Picts at the Battle of Nechtansmere in Angus. The economy During the 1970s and '80s Scotland's economy shared in acute form the problems besetting many European countries, brought about by rapid changes that included the widespread failure of heavy industries. Unemployment became a serious problem, especially in those areas where major industries had declined. Successive governments made efforts to improve these conditions by a variety of measures. Beginning in the 1980s, Scotland's economy benefited from the exploitation of North Sea petroleum and natural gas and from the development of high-technology and other economic sectors. Scotland remains a small but open economy and accounts for nearly one-eighth of the United Kingdom's export revenue. Its gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is higher than in all other areas of the United Kingdom outside London and England's eastern regions, and its level of unemployment is fairly low. However, wealth in Scotland is not evenly distributed, and the average unemployment rate hides pockets of much higher unemployment in some regions and localities. Although the British central government controls Scotland's macroeconomic policy, including central government spending, interest rates, and monetary matters, the Scottish Parliament has power over local economic development, education and training, various small-scale projects, and related areas such as health and housing. Resources Mining and power generation account for less than one-tenth of the annual GDP. Until the last decade of the 20th century, Scotland's chief mineral resource was coal. The industry reached a peak annual production of 43 million tons in 1913 but subsequently declined drastically. In particular, deep mining became largely uneconomical, and by the late 1990s only a single deep-pit coal mine remained in Scotland. Other minerals that have been worked intermittently include gold, silver, chromite, diatomite, and dolomite, but none has been successfully exploited. Though peat is available to a depth of 2 feet (0.6 metre) or more and is spread over some 2,650 square miles (6,880 square km), its economic value is limited. It is still burned for fuel in the Highlands, but its use has decreased because of the time and labour involved in cutting and drying it. Britain's North Sea petroleum and natural gas resources began to be developed in the 1970s. The oil fields lie mostly in Scottish waters, but the British government holds their ownership and receives the revenue yield. Large companies have located and extracted the resource, mostly with the aid of U.S. technology. Aberdeen is the centre of the petroleum industry, and the economy of Shetland has also benefited from discoveries in adjacent waters. In addition, natural gas from North Sea wells has replaced manufactured gas in Scotland. Tens of thousands of jobs have been created in Scotland by onshore oil- and gas-related enterprises, such as oil-platform construction and the servicing of North Sea operators. Though the newfound prosperity has been subject to the vagaries of international marketsespecially after fossil fuel revenues were severely reduced in the mid-1980sthe petroleum industry continues to provide, directly and indirectly, a great number of jobs in Scotland. Water is also a valuable resource, especially for generating electricity, and several dams and power stations have been built since the mid-20th century. Though coal- and oil-fired stations are important, nuclear generation, notably via the station at Torness, east of Edinburgh, now provides the major portion of Scotland's electric power. At Dounreay, in the Highlands, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority has carried out experiments with a fast breeder-reactor since 1959. The land Relief Scotland is traditionally divided into three topographic areas: the Highlands in the north, the Midland Valley (Central Lowlands), and the Southern Uplands. (The latter two areas are included in the Lowlands cultural region.) Low-lying areas extend through the Midland Valley and along the greater part of the eastern seaboard. The east coast contrasts with the west in its smoother outline, thus creating an east-west distinction in topography as well as a north-south one. The Highlands are bisected by the fault line of Glen Mor (Glen Albyn), which is occupied by a series of lochs (lakes), the largest of which is Loch Ness, famous for its probably mythical monster. North of Glen Mor is an ancient plateau, which, through long erosion, has been cut into a series of peaks of fairly uniform height separated by glens (valleys) carved out by glaciers. The northwestern fringe of the mainland is particularly barren, the rocks of the Lewisian Complex having been worn down by severe glaciation to produce a hummocky landscape, dotted by small lochs and rocks protruding from thin, acidic soil. The landscape is varied by spectacular Torridonian sandstone mountains, weathered into sheer cliffs, rock terraces, and pinnacles. Southeast of Glen Mor are the Grampian Mountains (also shaped by glaciation), though there are intrusions such as the granitic masses of the Cairngorm Mountains. The Grampians are on the whole less rocky and rugged than the mountains of the northwest, being more rounded and grassy with wider plateau areas. But many have cliffs and pinnacles that provide challenges for mountaineers, and the area contains Britain's highest mountains, reaching a maximum elevation of 4,406 feet (1,343 metres) at Ben Nevis. There are some flatter areasthe most striking being Rannoch Moor, a bleak expanse of bogs and granitic rockswith narrow, deep lochs such as Rannoch and Ericht. The southeastern margin of the Highlands is clearly marked by the Highland Boundary Fault, running northeast to southwest from Stonehaven, just south of Aberdeen, to Helensburgh on the River Clyde and passing through Loch Lomond, Scotland's largest stretch of inland water. The southern boundary of the Midland Valley is not such a continuous escarpment, but the fault beginning in the northeast with the Lammermuir and Moorfoot hills and extending to Glen App, in the southwest, is a distinct dividing line. In some ways the label Lowlands is a misnomer, for, although this part of Scotland is low by comparison with adjoining areas, it is by no means flat. The landscape includes hills such as the Sidlaws, the Ochils, the Campsies, and the Pentlands, composed of volcanic rocks rising as high as 1,898 feet (579 metres). The Southern Uplands are not so high as the Highlands. Glaciation has produced narrow, flat valleys separating rolling mountains. To the east of Nithsdale the hills are rounded, gently sloping, and grass-covered, providing excellent grazing for sheep, and they open out along the valley of the lower Tweed into the rich farming land of the Merse. To the west of Nithsdale the landscape is rougher, with granitic intrusions around Loch Doon, and the soil is more peaty and wet. The high moorlands and hills, reaching up to 2,766 feet (843 metres) at Merrick, are also suitable for sheep farming. The uplands slope toward the coastal plains along the Solway Firth in the south and to the machair and the Mull of Galloway farther west. Soil and drainage With Scotland's diversity in geologic structure, relief, and weather, the character of the soil varies greatly. In the northwest, the Hebrides, the Shetland Islands, and other areas, the soil is poor and rocky, and cultivation is possible only at river mouths, glens, and coastal strips. On the west coast of some Hebridean islands, however, there are stretches of calcareous sand (the machair) suitable for farming. Peat is widespread on moors and hills. Areas with good, arable land have largely been derived from old red sandstone and younger rocks, as in the Orkney Islands, the eastern Highlands, the northeastern coastal plain, and the Lowlands. Uplift and an eastward tilting of the Highlands some 50 million years ago (during the Eocene Epoch) formed a watershed near the west coast. As a result, most rivers drain eastward, but deeply glaciated rock basins in the northern Highlands form numerous large lochs. There are fewer lochs in the Grampian Mountains, although the area contains the large lochs of Ericht, Rannoch, and Tay. Well-graded rivers such as the Dee, the Don, and the Spey meander eastward and northeastward to the North Sea. The Tay and Forth emerge from the southern Grampians to flow out of the eastern Lowlands in two large estuaries. The Clyde and the Tweed both rise in the Southern Uplands, the one flowing west into the Firth of Clyde and the other east into the North Sea, while the Nith, the Annan, and a few other rivers run south into the Solway Firth. Lochs are numerous in the Highlands, ranging from moraine-dammed lochans (pools) in mountain corries (cirques) to large and deep lochs filling rock basins. In the Lowlands and Southern Uplands, lochs are shallower and less numerous. The people For many centuries there was continual strife between the Celtic Scots of the Highlands and the western islands and the Anglo-Saxons of the Lowlands. Only since the 20th century has the mixture been widely seen as a basis for a rich, unified Scottish culture; the people of Shetland and Orkney have tended to remain apart from both of these elements and to look to Scandinavia as the mirror of their Norse heritage. Important immigrant groups have arrived, most notably Irish labourers; there have also been significant groups of Jews, Lithuanians, Italians, and, after World War II, Poles and others, as well as a more recent influx of Asians, especially from Pakistan. Religion Scotland is relatively free from ethnic and religious strife. The Church of Scotland, Presbyterian in structure and Evangelical in doctrine, is the established religion and largest communion, though membership has been steadily declining. It is controlled by a hierarchy of church courts, from the kirk session (governing the affairs of a congregation), through the presbytery (covering a group of parishes) and the synod (bringing together ministers from a group of presbyteries), to the General Assembly, at which clergy and lay representatives meet annually in Edinburgh to discuss key issues relating to Scottish society. The Roman Catholic church is organized into two archdioceses and six dioceses. The Scottish Episcopal Church is also significant, and there are congregations of other denominations, such as the Free Church of Scotland, Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, and Unitarians. Faiths other than Christianity are also practiced, especially by ethnic minority groups; Glasgow, for instance, has several synagogues and mosques and a Buddhist centre.