Edinburgh became the sister city of San Diego, USA in 1977. Sister cities were the result of an initiative by President Dwight D. Eisenhower who believed that twinning cities and connecting people at the community level would forge strong international relations and build trust which would result in a more peaceful world. These two cities shared […]
Let’s take a look at 12 amazing facts about the lochs of Scotland, and we’ll start with a wee bonus fact: Did you know there are over 760 lochs in Scotland? With that many of them we could give you interesting facts about them all day, but here’s what we thought the best were…
The thistle is the national flower of Scotland, much like the rose is the national flower of England and the United States. Today we’re going to look at two interesting things about this flower, the tale as to why it became the national flower and also the unofficial national anthem it inspired. There are […]
Painting the Peats is a project that began when artist Damian Callan and his family started helping crofter Chris Spears stack his peats at his peat bank on North Uist. The experience led to a series of ink and wash studies that combined groups of working figures in the Hebridean landscape and were developed into […]
Recently people living in Scotland witnessed spectacular displays of the Northern Lights far more than previous years. Even here in Edinburgh we saw them. Tim Peake up in the international space station also watched them. The northern lights are also known as ‘Aurora borealis’ and the southern lights as ‘Aurora australis.’ In Roman mythology Aurora […]
One of the things that discourages individuals from recognizing and exploring, not to mention enjoying, their Scottish Gaelic heritage is the widespread view that the only distinct aspect of Gaelic culture was, and is, its Celtic language. Many people consciously and unconsciously are assured that beyond “Ceud Mile Failte” and “Slainte”, Gaelic culture is basically little […]
Some of the advantages that accompany engagement with one’s Gaelic heritage are the wonderful and useful bits of relevance that a Gaelic past brings to modern life. That’s right. Lessons learned from a Gaelic perspective can be productively relevant to difficult problems we face today. Consider the following: Gaelic tradition introduces community oriented and inclusive perspective in an increasingly exclusive and inward looking […]
It just came to my attention that last night Earth experienced an earthquake just down the road from my home in Colorado. This quake measured 4.2 on the Richter scale and the likely cause of the shake is the practice of hydraulically (using water) fracturing the rock deep in the earth to facilitate collection and […]
Having seen dozens of top ten places to visit in Scotland, mostly compiled by tourist guides who’s writers have barely scratched the surface we felt it was time to weigh in with our personal view. At ScotClans we spend a lot of time travelling to parts of Scotland collecting stories and legends and capturing the […]
Here we are at the middle of the week! A good time to peek at what’s been going on in Scotland over the last few days: Scottish Environment: Scots Government Taking Heat For Banning GMOs August 11: Expert who advised SNP slams move to ban GMO crops (Herald Scotland) August 9: Scottish government under fire […]
