Fàilte!

Scotland is a constituent country of the United Kingdom, located on the island of Great Britain alongside England and Wales. In addition to the mainland, it includes over 790 islands, most of them uninhabited.

Scotland is split in two by the Great Glen Fault, a long, deep valley formed hundreds of millions of years ago. The fault itself is part of a much larger fracture, some geologists theoritizing it once stretched all the way to North America before the Mid-Atlantic Ridge broke it apart. This same movement also tore Scotland away from North America entirely.

Language

Scots are the people of Scotland and the vast majority of them speak English. Though, Scots also maintain their other original tongues, Scots (Lallans) and Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig). Scots forms part of the broader Germanic language tree (which English is also a part of) and was derived from Old English. Scots was, for a time, the primary language used by the Scottish court though it declined in usage after the royal marriage with England and the formation of Great Britain.

Gàidhlig is a Celtic language, related to Irish Gaelic and it was brought to Scotland by Irish settlers, called the Scoti, around 500 AD. It's spoken by around some 60,000 people and before the middle ages was the main language of Scotland. It started to decline in popularity after Malcolm III (1058-1093), king of Scotland, married Margaret of Wessex, who was an English-speaking Saxon princess which caused the royal court to adopt her language.

Highlands

The Highlands of Scotland is the upper portion of Scotland and has rough, high mountains. Gaelic is more prominent in the Highlands and is more Catholic by religion than the Lowlands, which is Protestant though the Highlands also converted as more time passed but is less homogeneously catholic than the south.

The Highland Clearances (1750-1860) was where Scottish landowners forced people to leave their homes so they could build more space for sheep farming, causing a large portion of the original Highland population to become displaced and migrate elsewhere which caused the already-smaller population to shrink further.

Lowlands

The Lowlands are the southern portion of Scotland and is the more populated part, housing big cities like Edinburgh and Glasgow. Because of its relatively flat and fertile terrain, it was able to house a larger population than the Highlands which only grew after the Industrial Revolution.

The Lowlands are generally more Protestant than the Highlands, having converted during the Reformation due to it having strong trade and political ties to other Protestant nations like England, the Netherlands and Germany, which the Highlands lacked due to having a smaller population and economic base, thus less attractive to foreign attention.