Scottish Highlands, Western Highlands, Scotland, United Kingdom, Europe

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• published: 09 Jul 2011
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The Highlands are a historic region of Scotland. The area is sometimes referred to as the "Scottish Highlands." It was culturally distinguishable from the Lowlands from the later Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands. The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. Before the 19th century the Highlands was home to a much larger population, but due to a combination of factors including the outlawing of the traditional Highland way of life following the Jacobite Rising of 1745, the infamous Highland Clearances, and mass migration to urban areas during the Industrial Revolution, the area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. The average population density in the Highlands and Islands is lower than that of Sweden, Norway, Papua New Guinea and Argentina. The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness. However, the Highlands also includes parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Moray, Perth and Kinross, and Stirling. Although the Isle of Arran administratively belongs to North Ayrshire, its northern part is generally regarded as part of the Highlands. Between the 15th century and the 20th century, the area was different from the most of the Lowlands in terms of language. In Scottish Gaelic, the region is known as the Gàidhealtachd, so named because it was traditionally the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland, although the language is now largely confined to the Outer Hebrides. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably but have different meanings in their respective languages. Scottish English (in its Highland form) is the predominant language of the area today, though Highland English has been influenced by Gaelic speech to a significant extent. Historically, the Highland line distinguished the two Scottish cultures. While the Highland line broadly followed the geography of the Grampians in the south, it continued in the north by cutting off the northeastern part of Caithness, Orkney and Shetland from the more Gaelic Highlands and Hebrides. In the aftermath of the Jacobite risings, the British government enacted a series of laws that attempted to speed the process of the destruction of the clan system, including a ban on the bearing of arms, the wearing of tartan and limitations on the activities of the Episcopalian Church. Most of the legislation was repealed by the end of the eighteenth century as the Jacobite threat subsided. There was soon a process of the rehabilitation of highland culture. Tartan was adopted for highland regiments in the British army, which poor highlanders joined in large numbers in era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (1790--1815). Tartan had largely been abandoned by the ordinary people of the region, but in the 1820s, tartan and the kilt were adopted by members of the social elite, not just in Scotland, but across Europe. The international craze for tartan, and for idealising a romanticised Highlands, was set off by the Ossian cycle, and further popularised by the works of Scott. His "staging" of the royal Visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 and the king's wearing of tartan, resulted in a massive upsurge in demand for kilts and tartans that could not be met by the Scottish linen industry. The designation of individual clan tartans was largely defined in this period and they became a major symbol of Scottish identity. This "Highlandism", by which all of Scotland was identified with the culture of the Highlands was cemented by Queen Victoria's interest in the country, her adoption of Balmoral as a major royal retreat from and her interest in "tartenry". The Highlands lie to the north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which runs from Arran to Stonehaven. This part of Scotland is largely composed of ancient rocks from the Cambrian and Precambrian periods which were uplifted during the later Caledonian Orogeny. Smaller formations of Lewisian gneiss in the northwest are up to 3,000 million years old. The overlying rocks of the Torridonian sandstone form mountains in the Torridon Hills such as Liathach and Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross. These foundations are interspersed with many igneous intrusions of a more recent age, the remnants of which have formed mountain massifs such as the Cairngorms and the Cuillin of Skye.