Scottish Highlands
historic region of Scotland
The Highlands (Scottish Gaelic: a' Ghàidhealtachd [ə ˈɣɛːəl̪ˠt̪ʰəxk], lit. 'the place of the Gaels'; Scots: the Hielands) is a historical region of Scotland, comprising the Northernmost mountain ranges on the island of Great Britain, divided by the Great Glen between the Grampian Mountains to the southeast and the Northwest Highlands, divided from the islands of the Hebrides by the Minch. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, see Gask Ridge although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east.
Originally home to the Caledonians/Picts, the region came to be the mainland stronghold of the Hebridean Gaels, whose Q-Celtic language succeeded that of their P-Celtic neighbours. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands.
The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the population of the Highlands rose to around 300,000, but from c. 1841 and for the next 160 years, the natural increase in population was exceeded by emigration (mostly to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and migration to the industrial cities in Scotland and England.) The area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. At 9.1/km2 (24/sq mi) in 2012, the population density in the Highlands and Islands is less than one seventh of Scotland's as a whole.
The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Scottish Highlands” as historic region of Scotland. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q106652. The Library of Congress control number is sh85060768. Authority coordinates are 57.120, -4.710. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1841 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Scottish Highlands” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.