The national collection is housed in the National Gallery of Scotland, located on the Mound, and now linked to the Royal Scottish Academy, which holds regular major exhibitions of painting.

The Scottish national team has occasionally played at Easter Road and Tynecastle.

Murrayfield | Murrayfield Stadium, home to the Scottish national rugby union team

The Scotland national rugby union team plays at Murrayfield Stadium, which is owned by the Scottish Rugby Union and is also used as a venue for other events, including music concerts.

The oldest national trophy is the Scottish Cup.

The Declaration has also been seen as one of the most important documents in the development of a Scottish national identity.

The Scottish Education Department introduced a Leaving Certificate Examination in 1888 to set national standards for secondary education and in 1890 school fees were abolished, creating a state-funded national system of free basic education and common examinations.

The Scottish National Party gained its first seat at Westminster in 1945 and became a party of national prominence during the 1970s, achieving 11 MPs in 1974.

He was also the first Scots Makar ( the official national poet ), appointed by the inaugural Scottish government in 2004.

The haggis is a traditional Scottish dish, considered the national dish of Scotland as a result of Robert Burns ' poem Address to a Haggis of 1787.

Irn-Bru is a Scottish carbonated soft drink, for long advertised as " Scotland's other national drink " ( next to Scotch whisky ).

Tommy Docherty gave Dalglish his debut for the Scottish national side as a substitute in the 1 – 0 Euro 1972 qualifier victory over Belgium on 10 November 1971 at Pittodrie.

The legacy of Gaelic as the first national language of Scotland does not obscure the foundational process in the establishment of the Scottish kingdom of Alba.

) was a Scottish footballer who played for the Scotland national football team in both the 1954 and 1958 FIFA World Cups.

* Scottish national identity

The Scottish Football Association adopted " Flower of Scotland " as its pre-game national anthem in 1997 although it was first used by them in 1993 ,.

In July 2006, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted an online poll ( publicised by Reporting Scotland ) in which voters could choose a national anthem from one of five candidates.

Executive power in the United Kingdom is exercised by the Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II, via Her Majesty's Government and the devolved national authorities-the Scottish Government, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Northern Ireland Executive.

The Scottish Parliament is the national, unicameral legislature of Scotland, located in the Holyrood area of the capital Edinburgh.

* William Wallace, Scottish national leader

The merger of Newcastle Breweries with Scottish Brewers afforded the beer national distribution, and United Kingdom sales peaked by the early 1970s.

They organized sports teams to entice the young and preserved an idealized Scottish national myth ( based on Robert Burns ) for the elderly.

In June 2005, the Scottish Executive announced their intention to create Scotland ’ s first coastal and marine national park.

In 2011 the Scottish Government rejected a proposal to create a national park on the Isle of Harris.

Walter Scott whose Waverley Novels helped define Scottish identity in the 19th century.

It launched a highly successful career that probably more than any other helped define and popularise Scottish cultural identity.

This new identity made it possible for Scottish culture to become integrated into a wider European and North American context, not to mention tourist sites, but it also locked in a sense of " otherness " which Scotland began to shed only in the late 20th century.

The designation of individual clan tartans was largely defined in this period and became a major symbol of Scottish identity.

The fashion for all things Scottish was maintained by Queen Victoria, who helped secure the identity of Scotland as a tourist resort, with Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire becoming a major royal residence from 1852.

This form of dress, previously proscribed after the 1745 rebellion against the English, subsequently became one of the seminal, potent and ubiquitous symbols of Scottish identity.

As well as recreational drug use, Welsh's fiction and non-fiction is dominated by the question of working class and Scottish identity in the period spanning the 1960s to the present day.

In modern times Celtic art is popularly thought of in terms of national identity and therefore specifically Irish, Scottish or Welsh.

In February 2000, the Salvation Army publicly ( in their publication known as " War Cry " and in a letter to a Scottish Parliament committee ) opposed the repeal of Section 28 of the Local Government Act ( 1988 ) However, The Salvation Army in the UK and Ireland website refers to the organisation offering ' unconditional assistance and support regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual choices, respecting the identity and choices of all those referred to them .... As well as having a right to be dealt with professionally, people can expect from us encouragement and a respect for their individual beliefs, ambitions and preferences.

Leith was the port of entry for the visit of King George IV to Scotland, and The Old Ship Hotel and King's Landing was then given its new name, to mark the King's arrival by ship's boat at Leith Shore for this event, which is remembered most for popularising and decriminalising symbols of Scottish national identity.

A nationalist and socialist, he moved from the Scottish National Party ( SNP ) to the Scottish Socialist Party, and though he cherished the Scottish republican spirit, he sought to challenge some of the popular myths surrounding the country's sense of national identity.

Questions of Scottish national identity assumed growing importance in the 1980s, and Calder became active in the debate.

A distinctive " Scottish social ethos " informed the activities of prominent Scots in the years of Empire, when they had invested heavily in the concept of Britishness, though he felt that the Scots had meddled much more overweeningly with the English sense of identity than the English ever did with the Scots '.

While the Church of Scotland traces its roots back to the earliest Christians in Scotland, its identity was principally shaped by the Scottish Reformation of 1560.

However, Justified Sinner remains his most important work and is now seen as one of the major Scottish novels of its time, and absolutely crucial in terms of exploring one of the key themes of Scottish culture and identity: Calvinism.

The Visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 and the subsequent rise in tartanry did much to reinvigorate a sense of a specifically Scottish national identity, which had been split between the Episcopalian and Roman Catholic-dominated Highlands and the Presbyterian-dominated Lowlands since the Glorious Revolution in 1688, and continued during the 18th century through the Jacobite risings, the Act of Proscription and subsequent process of Highland Clearances by landlords.

He helped inspire Robert Burns, considered by many to be the national poet, and Walter Scott, whose Waverley Novels did much to define Scottish identity in the 19th century.

Walter Scott whose Waverley Novels helped define Scottish identity in the 19th century.

It launched a highly successful career, with historical novels such as Ivanhoe, Rob Roy and The Heart of Midlothian, probably doing more than any other figure to define and popularise Scottish cultural identity.

Scottish clans ( from Gaelic, " progeny "), give a sense of identity and shared descent to people in Scotland and to their relations throughout the world, with a formal structure of Clan Chiefs recognised by the court of the Lord Lyon, King of Arms which acts as an authority concerning matters of heraldry and Coat of Arms.