Halò agus fàilte!
Nope, everyone is welcome. If you have an interest in Scottish culture, history or just want to query about anything, feel free to ask here. :'D
Enjoy!
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Gàidhlig / Scotland General
- Thread starter The Almighty Hamster
- Start date
Halò agus fàilte!
Nope, everyone is welcome. If you have an interest in Scottish culture, history or just want to query about anything, feel free to ask here. :'D
Enjoy!
Phew! I was really worried I wouldn’t participate due to language barrier and instead was just gonna drop comment saying ALL HAIL GLORIA! But… I had nothing to worry about! It’s the opposite, this is PERFECT for me. A topic where I can ask any questions about a different cultures to my heart’s content? Yes, please!
Feel free to ask anything fren. Born and raised in this mighty and proud country :'D
AND ALL HAIL GLORIA ! ! !
Y’know what? Why not hit two birds with one stone?
Does anything in particular about Gloria’s design that strikes you as “authentic” to your culture? If so, what it is?
I think she's a caricature of a rural Scot, no local I know would go around in thick leather laced boots unless they were in the Highlands. The bonnet and tartan-pattern are obviously two of the biggest Scottish-related designs. If I had to say? Probably her not being a ginger, that's refreshing to see. Most people here do have brown hair but we're always depicted as either having ginger or jet-black hair. Obviously, if you were to go to Glasgow or Dundee, you'd probably not see a local dressed up like this. But if you were in Skye, Inverness or Stirling? Yeah, probably. The wooly jacket with the little wooden-clips and the dress underneath fits as well. Reminds me of Isa off of Still Game lol.
Nice! Interesting tidbit about ginger people too!
She's a bit of a Walter Scott shortbread biscuit tin stereotype, but not in an "in your face" way, it's more mild. I think it's a positive image of Scotland. Celebrates our cultural heritage and traditional attire in a respectful albeit somewhat cliche.
I normally worry when I don’t get certain words but here I’m happy because I love learning this stuff. I think I get the gist of what you’re saying. That’s a nice way of describing her. I imagine this is referring to her stature or demeanor, no?
In any case, cool insight. Now I feel compelled to start a thread like this.
Sir Walter Scott popularized the image of Scotland as we see it today: big castles, mysterious ruins, bagpipes, kilts, warring clans - which it is, but there's way more to it than that. It was part of an effort to bring tourism back to Scotland by reinvigorating this romantic image. A shortbread biscuit tin is one of those tacky souvenir gift items you would be at a souvenir shop on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. It's an image literally sold to people. The king (forget which one) was invited to parade around Edinburgh and greeted as their monarch, and he wore a kilt during his visit. That's why people have somewhat of a stigma towards Americans and Canadians who obsess over tartan and clans because it is predominantly a 19th-century invention and viewed as a form of cultural imperialism / colonialist identity. King Charles still wears a kilt today.
The only thing realistic about Braveheart was that there was once a man named William Wallace who fought the English. Truth is, he was a Welsh nobleman; not just "some guy". And kilts didn't exist in the 13th century. I think the image resonates with New World Westerners as Scots are known for their love of freedom - appealing to people of all political spheres. Gloria is upbeat, loud and confident - like an average stereotypical Scot would be. My ancestral clan (Bell) was from the Lowlands in Dumfriesshire, which has its own very distinct culture and way of life centred around animal grazing and horse-riding. It's where the Lowland Scots language developed. They never wore kilts or tartan or ate haggis.
Scotland can be divided into different regions with their own ethnic group origins. The Southwest in Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire is lowland country and populated by urban towns that share a collective culture stemming from the Brythonic Iron Age people. A little bit up from that is Argyll and the Inner Hebrides, which is where the Gaels of Ireland came from - hence Gaelic. To the east coast is Aberdeenshire, the Mearns, Angus, Fife, Dundee and Perthshire, which all their own accent and marked by Pictish placenames - another Iron Age people wrapped in mystery, considered to be the founders of Scotland formed during an ethnogenesis between other groups.
Then there is the southeast in the Lothians - specifically Midlothian, or Edinburgh (Auld Reekie as it was called) which is the capital and financial, cosmopolitan and affluent middle-class centre of Scotland. The original name was Dun Eiddean meaning Fort of Eden. The area was part of the Kingdom of Northumbria, which was an early Anglo-Saxon kingdom. They spoke English and to this day there are still ties to Edinburgh being seen as not Scottish. It feels too socioeconomically and culturally disconnected to be so. Lots of posh Oxbridge, Eton types we nickname "rah's" flood there during events like the Fringe and take up all the local housing and university spots, turning their nose up at locals. It has the highest proportion of English people in the country as well. It is an ethnic enclave of England, an honorary borough of London pretty much. The California of Scotland.
The Northern Highlands in Caithness, Sutherland, Orkney and Shetland are Norse. They were colonized by Denmark and Norway and gifted back to Scotland after our monarchs married into their families. There is a language called Norn which was spoken up until 1900. There's a Viking festival in Shetland where they burn longship boats. Ironically, they want independence from us - independence inception. There are a couple of other groups too like the Normans, Flemish, Jutes etc. that left their mark. Point is, there is a lot of cultural diversity within Scotland and I am tired of people portraying it as just one homogenized nation of bagpipe playing kilt-wearing hippies.
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To put it this way, as a reference to your Kuwaiti culture, it's like when Westerners in Hollywood films depict all Muslim countries are nomadic camel-riders in the desert with robes and white palaces like it's Lawrence of Arabia. There's no distinguishment made between the different respective and rich cultures in the Middle East. Middle Eastern music in Hollywood uses Armenian instruments like the duduk. That's like if someone used a balalaika for French or Italian music. It can be seen as disrespectful or ignorant. It's just a stereotype.
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