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In 2018, at the same time as Tiril Kaar was mulling over the style of their Norwegian folk dress, Swedish artist Fredy Clue was thinking about culottes. Clue, who also uses they and them pronouns, was searching for their own space in the Swedish folk culture. Eventually, as the trouser skirt became the basis for the design of a non-binary Swedish folk dress, they realised that they, too, were non-binary. "My inner self spoke through my ideas," Clue tells BBC Culture. Clue developed the Bäckadräkten unisex folk dress with the help of artist Ida Björs. The two studied historical clothes...

photo: Rob Knell and Rob Lee The ancestors of modern Scottish people left behind mysterious, carved stones that new research has just determined contain the written language of the Picts, an Iron Age society that existed in Scotland from 300 to 843. The highly stylized rock engravings, found on what are known as the Pictish Stones, had once been thought to be rock art or tied to heraldry. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, instead concludes that the engravings represent the long lost language of the Picts, a confederation of Celtic tribes that...

US ambassador said Donald Trump's abrasive style came from Scottish heritage Woody Johnson said Trump 'speaks in very clear and unusual way' for a politician The US president is due to come to Britain for talks with Theresa May on July 13 Critics have vowed a 'carnival of protests' on the streets when he visits the UK Donald Trump rubs people up the wrong way because he is so Scottish, the US ambassador suggested today. Woody Johnson said the US president's 'tough and argumentative' streak came from his heritage in Scotland. The claim came as Mr Johnson shrugged off the...

Police are asking for the public's assistance in locating two people who officers suspect of assaulting a female restaurant owner and her teenage daughter at a Georgia restaurant Thursday afternoon. According to Baxley Police, the assault took place at a Quik Chik after customers were unhappy about an order, which escalated from a verbal altercation to the restaurant owner being knocked to the ground. As the two customers were leaving the scene one of them struck the owner's daughter, knocking her to the ground, police say. The two customers fled the scene by driving off in what police believe is...

The Society of Classical Poets today published their poem for the inauguration of the 45th President of the United States. Donald J. Trump. The poem draws on Trump’s noble Scottish roots and is written by New Mexican native and decorated poet Joseph Charles MacKenzie. The inspiration behind the poem is to touch on the classical poetry existing throughout American history, and the inauguration poem marks important moments in US political history. Traditionally, the poem began with President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in January, 1961, the inaugural poem and has, until now been a purely Democratic Party tradition. “ The Society’s...

It seems President-elect Trump admires not only Scottish golf courses, but also Scottish philosophy, as shown by the coterie of advisers and Cabinet members he's selected for his administration. In the 19th century, Scottish philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle developed a theory of historiography which he coined "The Great Man Theory." This theory postulated that the process of historical examination is akin to a series of chronological biographies of these so-called "Great Men." These great generals, artists, philosophers, theologians and entrepreneurs were the ones who truly had decisive impacts on society, rather than the other way around. Caesar, Muhammad, Shakespeare,...

Divers in Madagascar have found a silver bar weighing about 50 kilograms (110 pounds) that they believe was part of the treasure of pirate Captain Kidd. The bar was presented to Madagascar's president, Hery Rajaonarimampianina, in a ceremony Thursday on the island of Sainte Marie, near the country's northeast coast. The bar was found in a bay off the island, the diving team said. The team was led by Barry Clifford, an American undersea explorer who has been searching for pirate treasure for many decades. Clifford believes there could be more treasure on the bay floor where he found the...

Underwater explorers in Madagascar say they have found what is thought to be the treasure of notorious Scottish pirate William Kidd. Soldiers on Sainte Marie island have been guarding the 50kg silver bar after divers brought it to shore. Madagascar's president as well as UK and US diplomats received the suspected treasure at a ceremony on the island. Capt Kidd was executed in 1701 for piracy after returning from a voyage to the Indian Ocean.

EDINBURGH—If Scottish nationalists win independence from Britain in this week’s referendum, they will owe at least some thanks to an unlikely ally: the late, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. The current Scottish referendum on independence, coming down to a too-close-to-call finish on Thursday, has reignited the fire under Scotland’s long-standing resistance to Conservatism in Britain, especially the Thatcher brand of the 1970s and 1980s. “I came over to independence as a result of Thatcher,” says Douglas Campbell, a 65-year-old Yes campaigner who showed up at a canvassing push near Scotland’s Parliament in Edinburgh on the last Sunday of the...

Right: it’s time to speak for Britain. If these polls are right, then we are on the verge of an utter catastrophe for this country. In just 10 days’ time we could all be walking around like zombies – on both sides of the Scottish border. I don’t just mean that we will be in a state of shock, though that will obviously be true: most people (especially the Scots) have yet to think through the horrific financial and constitutional implications of an English-Scottish divorce. I mean that we will be zombies, walking dead, because a fundamental part of our...

I have been doing this Ancestor stuff, because I am getting old and I have verified that my dads family were exactly what the claimed to be, Limeys. My Old Ma's family were Harps from Northern Ireland and possibly Scotland, Gaelic is not a language a civilized person would speak and tracing these Names is driving me to drink. Old Ma was black Irish on The J2c2e scale of MTDNA which means her family were Polocks, this thing has me confused.

From studying the present day population of the Orkneys, a small archipelago off the northeast coast of Scotland, geneticists from University College, in London, have gained a deep insight into the earliest inhabitants of Europe. Of the medley of peoples who populated Britain, neither the Anglo-Saxons nor the Romans ever settled the distant Orkneys. The Romans called the islands' inhabitants picti, or painted people. The Celtic-speaking Picts dominated the islands until the arrival of the Vikings about A.D. 800. The islanders then spoke Norn until the 18th century when this ancient form of Norse was replaced by English, brought in...

People looking for an explanation for the rise of the Tea Party need to look no further than America’s Scots-Irish heritage, according to Sen. James Webb (D-Va.). The movement has its roots in the populist-style, bottoms-up democracy that emerged from Scots-Irish migration to America, he said.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/features/Scots-and-the-American-Civil.6750042.jp IN May, 1864 a young Glaswegian by the name of Bennet Graham Burley stared at the dark, dirty water rising up through a grille and flooding over the floor of his cell and considered his alternatives, neither of which were good. He could remain in this dank, filthy cell in the Union prison on Pea Patch Island in the middle of the Delaware

Michelle Obama Cartoon: First Lady Drawn As Fat, Binging On Burgers. Presidential First Lady, Michelle Obama has been pegged as a gluttonous, portly hypocrite in a cartoon drawing posted on Biggovernment.com One year ago, Mrs. Obama initiated her "Let's Move!" campaign to thwart childhood obesity by stressing the importance of activity and nutritious eating in young adults. The problem is she has been caught on camera more than once eating foods that contradict her movement. Couple that with the recent revealing of the fatty foods served at The White House's Super Bowl party and Conservatives are having a field day...

A US government delegation has been invited to Scotland in a bid to overturn its 40-year ban on haggis. Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead's invitation comes two days ahead of Burns Night, when suppers are held in honour of poet Robert Burns.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Scots-troops-find-Afghans-love.6647111.jp

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/2010/09/06/scots-dad-makes-history-as-he-and-his-two-sons-prepare-to-take-on-taliban-86908-22541053/ A DAD and his two sons are flying out to take on the Taliban. Captain Alan Grant, 44, and lance corporals Connor, 22, and Warren, 20, are among a 1000-strong contingent of Scots troops heading to Afghanistan this month

A linguistic mystery has arisen surrounding symbol-inscribed stones in Scotland that predate the formation of the country itself.The stones are believed to have been carved by members of an ancient people known as the Picts, who thrived in what is now Scotland from the 4th to the 9th Centuries. These symbols, researchers say, are probably "words" rather than images. But their conclusions have raised criticism from some linguists. The research team, led by Professor Rob Lee from Exeter University in the UK, examined symbols on more than 200 carved stones. They used a mathematical method to quantify patterns contained within...

LONDON: British prime minister David Cameron apologized on behalf of his country Tuesday for the 1972 slaughter of 13 Catholic demonstrators in the Northern Ireland town of Londonderry, an outrage that became known as "Bloody Sunday." In a solemn statement to the British House of Commons, Cameron said that a mammoth, 12-year investigation into the killings left no doubt that the soldiers confronting crowds of Catholic demonstrators in Londonderry's hard-line Bogside district mowed down unarmed protesters without provocation. "What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong," Cameron said, as a crowd watching him from Londonderry...