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OpenCage 👉🌍

1/ Next week (26th March 🗓️) is the first ever Geomob Edinburgh, which is reason enough for us to turn this week's focus to Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

🌍🧵👇

Details of @geomob
thegeomob.com/post/mar-26th-20

2/ So first up Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 is in that it's not really clear what exactly it is. Is it a country? A region? A country within a country?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countrie

It's part of the UK 🇬🇧, but has its own legal system:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_la

Some day we'll do a UK thread, but be warned it will very, very long. No country (countries?) is/are as odd.

3/ Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 united in 1707.

The relationship between the "constituent countries" of the UK 🇬🇧 has evolved over time.

Fans of obscure political/geographic crossover references may recall the "West Lothian question" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Lot

in 1999 Scottish Parliament was (re)established. The popular Scottish National Party advocates for independence from the UK, and this culminated in the 2014 independence referendum, with "No" winning 55.3% to 44.7%

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Sco

4/ You may not have recognised the map of Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 in the toot that started this thread.

Traditionally many/most maps of Scotland or the entire UK 🇬🇧 have Shetland - the northernmost islands - in a box to save space.

In 2018 a law was introduced to ban "putting Shetland in a box", in an effort to combat "misconceptions about our islands"

bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-43574

5/ The Shetland boxing controversy lead to delightful "revenge maps" like this where the UK 🇬🇧 is boxed.

Perhaps fitting in that Shetland only joined Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 in the 15th century. Before that the Northern Isles (Shetland and Orkney) were part of the Kingdom of Norway 🇳🇴

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern

6/ Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 fields its own national teams in most sports, but in the Olympics Scottish athletes compete as part of the UK 🇬🇧 team.

The national football team will open Euro 2024 versus hosts Germany 🇩🇪 on June 14th.

Scotland has its own football leagues, which also include Berwick Rangers FC, a team based in Berwick-upon-Tweed which is just south of the border in England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwick_.

7/ Speaking of the border, many people mistakenly believe famous Hadrian's Wall to be the border between Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿.

In fact it lies entirely in England, and was built by the Romans, well before Scotland and England existed

The actual border has moved many times over the centuries.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debatabl

8/ Heading north we have another bit of Scottish - the island Lewis and Harris (Leòdhas agus na Hearadh in Scottish Gaelic), which, despite the dual name is a single island. 🤔
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_an

The Island is part of the Outer Hebrides, the area with the highest concentration of Scottish Gaelic speakers
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish

9/ Of course no mention of 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scottish would be complete without also mentioning that remote, uninhabited Rockall is - if you accept the British view - technically part of Scotland.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockall

Ireland 🇮🇪 does not recognise the 🇬🇧 UK's territorial claim to Rockall.

10/ Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and the striking Scottish landscapes have inspired many, not least British explorers as they mapped the world. To the annoyance of geocoding systems like ours - Scottish place names are common around the world.

Today Nova Scotia (Latin for "New Scotland") is a province of Canada 🇨🇦
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_Sco

New Caledonia 🇳🇨 (Caledonia being the Latin name for the Highlands) is a French 🇫🇷 island territory in the Pacific near Vanuatu 🇻🇺.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Cale

11/ In the 1690s, before unification with England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, there was a short-lived effort to establish a 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scottish colony - with the main settlement being named New Edinburgh - in what is today Panama 🇵🇦.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_s

The settlement failed and 80% of the settlers died in the first year. The resulting financial weakness of the backers was one of the reasons for unification with England.

12/ Finally we of course need to mention the "Great Polish Map of Scotland", a 50x40 meter concrete terrain relief model of Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (excluding the Northern Isles) built in the 1970s by 🇵🇱 Polish WWII veterans on the grounds of a hotel.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Po

And yes, of course the Great Polish Map of Scotland is itself well mapped in

openstreetmap.org/?mlat=55.711

13/ That's it for our look at 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scotland's

Thanks for reading and boosting. What did we overlook?

We have more threads about specific countries, border disputes, geocoding, etc linked on our blog.
blog.opencagedata.com/geothrea

If you like Scotland (or dislike 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 England) you may enjoy our thread about Ireland 🇮🇪
en.osm.town/@opencage/11142578

We hope you can make it to Geomob Edinburgh next week, hopefully the first of many to come.
thegeomob.com/post/mar-26th-20

Bonus toot: totally forgot to mention that the Scottish community is also here in the fediverse - give them a follow: @osmalba

@opencage @osmalba I, for one, welcomes you remembering your forgetfulness, because they gained a follower ;)

@opencage Thanks! We are looking forwared to GeoMob EDI tomorrow!

@opencage I really hope someone has added a Tiny Polish Map of Scotland in the right place on the Great Polish Map of Scotland 😃

@gravitystorm yes, if there is any justice on this earth then there needs to be a Tiny Polish Map of Scotland on the Great Polish Map of Scotland.

@opencage We're one "Great Scottish Map of Poland" away from a discussion on the OpenStreetMap mailinglists on how to map recursion 🫠

@opencage You gave me a damn idea for my garden !

@opencage
It looks to me that the Great Polish Map of Scotland is not oriented in congruence with geographical Scotland. Why is this? It’s disappointing that you can’t zoom out and recover the same view.
I suppose if the Great Polish Map of Scotland includes itself, you can zoom in and see Scotland spiraling into the microverse

@opencage Leòdhas and Na Hearadh are two islands because there's a high mountain range between them, so it used to be easier to get from one to the other by boat.

And a bit of naming weirdness: The areas with the highest number of Gaelic speakers these days have more Norse than Gaelic place names, due to Viking history.

@opencage My favorite place name is Eas Fors Waterfall:

So, the Vikings came along and found this waterfall, which they called "Fors", which means "waterfall" in Norse.

Eventually, they merged with the local population and became Gaelic speakers, so we have this waterfall there called "Fors", so that's "Eas Fors" in Gaelic.

Then OS comes along and maps a waterfall called "Eas Fors", so now we have "Eas Fors Waterfall", which means "waterfall waterfall waterfall"

openstreetmap.org/node/8270732

OpenStreetMapNode: ‪Eas Fors Waterfall‬ (‪8270732792‬) | OpenStreetMapOpenStreetMap is a map of the world, created by people like you and free to use under an open license.

@gunchleoc @opencage wait, is that why there's loads of waterfalls in the lake district called "force"? Evolved from "fors"?

@anthony @opencage It's possible - I don't know the linguistic history of that region, but it might indeed be a Scandinavian root.

BTW you also sometimes get waterfall pictures with the hashtag FOSS here as a geeky pun.

@gunchleoc @opencage It's like growing up with all these romantic-sounding Gaelic names for Scottish mountains, giving a sense of mystery and pondering what history is behind how they originally got these names.

Then finding out the are just called "Red Hill", "Brown Hill", "Big Hill", "Big Red Hill" and so on... 😂

@gravitystorm @opencage Yep. Also, "bod" (penis) got censored during Victorian times, while "cìoch" (female breast) still seems usually acceptable.

The most famous "bod" landscape feature is the "Old Man" of Storr

@gunchleoc @opencage I'd gotten confused about this two-names-one-island concept when I was working through Duolingo's Gaelic course. It's good to know the historical reason behind it 👍

@opencage As part of the UK team which, be it said, they call 'Team GB' in spite of it including sportspeople from Northern Ireland.

@opencage nitpick: that maps shows the UK *and Ireland* boxed

@opencage Yes, exactly. I was thinking of the youtube short video that covers all those curiosities of the Netherlands. Thanks!