Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2024 i History Scotland

Welcome to the winter issue of History Scotland. As the days get colder and the nights progressively lengthen, we will all likely be spending more and more of our time safely tucked away inside, trying to keep cosy, and entertaining ourselves with books, TV, games, or scrolling through social media. As we do so, perhaps we’ll spare a thought for generations gone by, for whom the ravages of winter were much more dangerous. We may not like the expanding darkness, but at least we have central heating and imported food to carry us through until spring! To help pass the long winter evenings, this edition of History Scotland takes the form of a special issue on the ‘making of Scotland’. Our main feature articles all focus on Scotland before c.1100,…

‘The Scottish Community Heritage Alliance emerged in 2018 as an organisation to reflect the grassroots issues affecting local groups and to provide a way to network and communicate amongst network groups’, writes Susan Kruse, SCHA Trustee. Now the organisation is holding a series of roadshows to ‘assess the state of grassroots heritage post-pandemic’, while a directory of heritage groups, organisations and projects is being compiled. Find out more at: www.scottishcommunityheritagealliance.org The NationalTrust for Scotland recently celebrated 70 years of Fair Isle ownership following the acquisition of the island from ornithologist George Waterston in 1954, with expanded marine research funded by People’s Postcode Lottery. Studies include tagging seabirds, deploying underwater video equipment and monitoring cetaceans. The ‘Montrose Letter’ was recently displayed at Provost Skene’s House to mark the 380th anniversary of…

In the course of writing this column, I have regularly referred readers to the Society’s digital archive, extending from our first volume (published in 1887) until 2013. In this issue, however, I would like to focus on a more recent publication, one which can still be purchased and which is representative of some of the outstanding editorial work published by the Society in the past decade. This is the first volume of Norman Shead’s Scottish Episcopal Acta, a comprehensive edition of the 259 surviving documents issued by Scottish bishops in the 12th century. These documents are primarily either donations of land or confirmations of the same, but also include admissions to benefices, judgments, professions of obedience and similar administrative records. They come from the nine historical sees of Aberdeen, Brechin,…

It wasn’t fighting in the brutal war that took six brave Scots to Vietnam in 1967, but an eightnation football tournament held while conflict raged around the capital Saigon. The competition – theVietnam National Day Cup – was a preposterous propaganda exercise that was intended to show that South Vietnam was open to business despite the intense bombing campaign ofWashington’s Operation Rolling Thunder and the daily attacks by theViet Cong. The invites extended to Australia and New Zealand as they supported the SouthVietnamese militarily, and each squad included three Scottish players. One of the Kiwis, Glasgowborn Jimmy Ferrier, had moved to Dunedin in the South Island as a child. The red-haired 20-year-old was making his first international trip. He wasn’t the youngest in the squad, since three teenagers had been…

10 December, 6.30pm The Training Ship Mars, Dundee, Christine Whyte 3 December, 6.30pm Woodland Warrioirs: The Canadian Forestry Corps, David McVey 17 December, 6.30pm Edinburgh: Our Storied Town, Donald Smith 14 January, 6.30pm The Nuclear North, Linda Ross 23 January, 6.30pm The History and Traditions of Burns Night, Dr Pauline Mackay Book your place at: bit.ly/history-lectures…

Queer Trades, Sex and Society: Male Prostitution and the War on Homosexuality in Interwar Scotland Jeffrey Meek Routledge, (2023) pp. 198 Hardback £135.00; e-book £31.99 ISBN: 9780367683580 Jeff Meek follows his earlier work, Queer voices in post-war Scotland, with an exploration of some aspects of ‘queer’ life in the 1920s and 30s. The qualification ‘some aspects’ is not a slight but reflects the fact that the lives of gay or queer men, like the lives of many other marginalized people, were rarely recorded. Often it is only when marginalised people come into contact with the police or other authorities that our lives were recorded. Lest anyone be anxious about the use of the term ‘queer’, this is in fact an example of the (re)appropriation of a derogatory term which many LGBTQ+…

A History of Irish Republicanism in Dundee, 1840-1985 Rút Nic Forbeis Tippermuir Books, (Perth, 2024) pp. 560 Paperback, £15.00 ISBN: 978-1-913836-27-6 The Dundonian actor, Brian Cox, recently spoke of his own Irish-Scots ancestry and the jarring effects of dislocation and relocation from a rustic and impoverished background in Ireland to one characterised by dramatic industrial change and urban deprivation as ‘like a total kind of social engineering nightmare’. However, as this study on militant Irish nationalism in Dundee reveals, most migrants to the town by the silveryTay actually found a welcoming home and some sort of negotiated integration whatever their early experiences of exile and relations with the host community were. This book is a large tome both in terms of the physical size at more than 500 pages, and in…

In 1927 the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) acquired the new name of the Royal Scot, but it continued the same traditional run from London to Scotland every day since it started on 1 June 1862. Departing London’s Euston Station on the stroke of 10 am, it crossed the Midlands, the Lake District and passed the Scottish border with speed and style. Over the years it improved in many ways – the addition of dining coaches, more comfortable seating, large windows and fine service. In 1933 and 1937 new powerful engines made great improvements in speed – average of 50 miles per hour – and power as it climbed in the highlands to over 1,000 feet above sea level. Shortly before the end of the 299-mile journey, the train…

Dr Adrián Maldonado is Galloway Hoard Researcher at National Museums Scotland, specialising inViking-age silver and hoarding, and author of Crucible of Nations: Scotland fromViking Age to Medieval Kingdom (NMS, 2021). An archaeologist specialising in early medieval material culture and early Christianity, he has previously lectured at the University of Glasgow and the University of Chester. He joined National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh in 2018 as part of the Glenmorangie Research Project. Dr Russell Ó Ríagáin is currently a LeverhulmeTrust early career fellow in the School of History, University of St Andrews. Prior to this, he was an Irish Research Council postdoctoral fellow at University College Dublin, having worked at Queen’s University Belfast and Heidelberg University after finishing his doctoral research at the University of Cambridge. His research mainly focuses on the overlaps between…

Recently, the planned expansion of the Stornoway Port Authority (SPA) headquarters of Amity House prompted archaeological investigations at No.1 Pier in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. Targeted excavations were undertaken by AOC Archaeology in 2018 and 2019 on behalf of SPA after the unexpected discovery of a huge stone wall buried below the car park at Amity House. The presence of this substantial wall, a previously unmapped feature, prompted further investigation into the wider significance of the site – whether it formed part of fortifications attributed to the Cromwellian period or represented earlier remains associated with the medieval castle and associated settlement. The excavations aimed to define the character and extent of the archaeological remains surviving on the site – and sought to shed light on the potential for…

Despite the Reformation aim to have a school in every parish, if you lived in the highlands or islands of Scotland in the early 19th century it was unlikely that you would reach adulthood able to read or write very much at all. Many parishes were huge and intersected with mountains or rivers. The demands of weather and work kept the children from school. Additionally, teaching was in a foreign language: English. In 1811 a new charity appeared: the Edinburgh Society for the Support of Gaelic Schools. This missionary society funded teachers who taught children and adults how to read their native language free of charge, so that they could read the Bible. Any community that wanted a school had to provide a house where the teacher could live and…

YES! I WISH TO SUBSCRIBE TO HISTORY SCOTLAND BY DIRECT DEBIT & RECEIVE MY FIRST ISSUE FOR £2 AFTER WHICH I WILL PAY £25.99 PER YEAR 12 MONTH MINIMUM SUBSCRIPTION TERM APPLIES (CODE: HIS/WINTER24) history SCOTLAND The world’s premier Scottish history magazine SPECIAL OFFER YOUR FIRST ISSUE FOR £2 Subscribe to History Scotland and pay just £2 for your first issue. After this introductory period, your Direct Debit will continue at just £25.99 per year. JOIN TODAY bit.ly/history-sub OR CALL US 01778 392463 quoting code HIS/WINTER24 THE STORY OF SCOTLAND & ITS PEOPLE Our understanding of the past is always evolving, as new discoveries are made, the latest research is completed, more fascinating aspects of our history are revealed. History Scotland celebrates this spirit of discovery, presenting expert articles and…

Independence and the Border Reivers? Phil Allen seeks answers to a cheeky book blurb Crucible of Conflict: Three Centuries of Border War John Sadler Whittles, (2023) pp. 256 Softback, £18.99 ISBN: 978-184995-542-3 Borrowed from Polish and Old East Slavic, ‘ukraina’ is an obsolete Russian expression meaning ‘borderland’ or ‘marches’. A root of the word Ukraine, it is a reminder that borderlands remain places where the difference between settled home and contested territory can be nebulous and bloody. Which is why the question of how three centuries of conflict along the Scottish border may have shaped the second independence referendum debate attracts and intrigues. Indeed, in the introductory chapter to Crucible of Conflict, Sadler asks whether the reintroduction of a hard border between Scotland and England might not foment a ‘Balkan-style…

Edinburgh: a new history Alistair Moffat Birlinn, (Edinburgh, 2024) pp. 224 Hardback: £14.99 ISBN: 978 1 78027 905 3 Edinburgh: the autobiography Alan Taylor, ed Birlinn, (Edinburgh, 2024) pp. 368 Hardback: £20.00 ISBN: 978 1 78027 882 7 Reviewing these two very different histories of Edinburgh from the outset, it is clear that the authors share a love for the city. It shines out from every page. That is the strength but also the weakness of these two volumes. The closer one gets to the subject the more room it leaves for bias, distortion, nostalgia and subjectivity. Taylor recognises this in his ‘autobiography’, saying that the story it wishes to tell is ‘incomplete and subjective’; one might also add ‘eccentric’. It is important to recognise that these volumes are not works of…

For your book, what inspired you to focus on the specific experiences of Scottish miners during the 1984-5 strike? It’s deeply personal. The miners helped my generation, born in the 1960s and raised in the 1970s, to enjoy a good start in life. The coal which they won from beneath the ground provided us with heat and light, and their political organisation shaped the social democratic world where we were educated in decent local authority schools. Our mums and dads had steady jobs in a properly-funded public sector, or in buoyant private industries and services. When we were sick, we were cared for in well-resourced doctors’ surgeries and hospitals. Through their trade union, the NUM, the miners contributed greatly to the construction and maintenance of this world, which the Conservative…

‘Remarkable’ Pictish ring discovered at Moray fort A ‘remarkable’ Pictish ring with an intricate setting has been uncovered at a Moray fort previously thought to have been ‘archaeologically vandalised’ by the construction of a new town. The kite-shaped ring with a garnet or red glass centre had lain undiscovered for more than 1,000 years at the Burghead fort before it was uncovered by a volunteer in a dig led by the University of Aberdeen. Although known as a Pictish site, its historical value was widely assumed to have been lost when the town of Burghead was constructed in the 1800s, covering over much of the fort and dismantling the stone that remained for building. Among the families encouraged to relocate to the new town to support the fishing industry were…

In the National Records of Scotland (NRS) there is a wealth of material relating to Helen Duncan and her family. This can be found on Scotland’s People, which provides access to digital images of statutory registers of births, deaths and marriages, census returns and more. In this article we will explore these records and touch briefly on Helen’s extraordinary life using published resources. Birth and early life Victoria Helen McCrae Macfarlane was born at 3 am on 25 November 1897 at 96 Main Street, Callander in Perthshire. She was the fourth child of Archibald (Archie) Macfarlane and his wife, Isabella Rattray, who had married seven years previously on 13 November 1890 in Perth. The statutory register of marriages gives his occupation as a slater; he was still employed in this…

Pedigrees, Power and Clanship: Essays on Medieval Scotland David Sellar, ed Hector MacQueen Birlinn/John Donald, (Edinburgh, 2021) Pp. 416, 6 plates Paperback, £30.00 ISBN: 9780859767262 Hector MacQueen and publisher John Donald have done a great service in bringing together the most important scholarly writings of the late David Sellar. Before his appointment as Lord Lyon King of Arms (2008), Sellar taught for 40 years in the Edinburgh University Law School. MacQueen writes that Sellar intended to draw together his decades of scholarship upon retirement, but his death in 2019 deprived posterity of a new synthesis. This collection serves instead and MacQueen has sensitively brought Sellar’s work into conversation with the most recent scholarship via his introduction and editorial notes. These seventeen chapters invite readers to immerse themselves in the histories…

Cold War Scotland S.J.M.M. Alberti and N. Nehring with J. Douthwaite and S. Harper (Edinburgh: NMS Enterprises Limited, 2024) Pp. 128 Softback, £14.99 ISBN: 9781910682524 The ColdWar was different in notable ways from conventional ideas of warfare as the underlying conflict was essentially ideological, but with the ever-present threat of military confrontation. It was a period of geopolitical tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, theWestern Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, that extended from the end ofWorldWar II to the fall of the BerlinWall. Throughout this period, there was an alltoo pervasive fear of major conflict with nuclear weapons. The term ‘ColdWar’ was used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers; instead they each supported opposing sides in major regional…