Douglas MacQueen's blog

Ultima Thule is said to be a distant northern place located beyond the known world. In classical European literature and cartography at various times it has been placed in Norway, other parts of Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland, into the Celtic world of Ireland, the Western Isles of Scotland and Orkney and Shetland. It was Pytheas, the Greek explorer who was the first to have written of Thule, in his lost work On the Ocean, about his travels between 330-320 BC.

The Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Scottish SPCA) were called to deal with an unusual incident at a house at Beecraigs Country Park in Linlithgow (Scottish Gaelic: Gleann Iucha) this week. An opportunist badger had sneaked into the house through a cat flap, ate the cat's food then promptly made itself cosy on its comfy bed for forty winks.  

Animal rescue officer Connie O'Neil said: "I got a surprise when I arrived at the property and saw a badger having a nap.

An exhibition is underway at the National Museum of Scotland on Scotland’s Early Silver. Supported by The Glenmorangie Company the exhibition shows how for Scotland, unlike other parts of Europe, it was silver, not gold, that became the most important precious metal over the course of the first millennium AD. Scotland's Early Silver traces the first thousand years of the Scottish love affair with silver.

There has has been much reported in recent months about community groups seeking to buy the lands in which they live and those trying to reclaim lands from which their ancestors were evicted during the notorious highland clearances.  Scotland has one of the highest concentrations of land ownership in Europe.

The Royal National Mòd (Scottish Gaelic: Am Mòd Nàiseanta Rìoghail),  referred to as the Mòd, is underway in Lochaber in the west of the Scottish Highlands. The event takes place from 13th to 21st October and began with a torchlit procession through the streets of Fort William (Scottish Gaelic: An Gearasdan). The Royal National Mòd is the most important of a number of  Mòds that are held annually in Scotland and is a festival that celebrates Scottish Gaelic literature, song, arts and culture.

The Scottish Wildlife Trust, RSPB Scotland, Buglife Scotland, Plantlife Scotland, Butterfly Conservation Scotland and the Marine Conservation Society have combined to urge the public to oppose a proposed gold course at Coul Links in Sutherland, Scotland. They point out that the 18-hole golf course would be on land they describe "an irreplaceable piece of Scotland's natural heritage" and  that the golf course would destroy one of Scotland's last remaining coastal dune systems.

Nicola Sturgeon will take part in the Arctic Circle Assembly during a visit to the Icelandic capital Reykjavik. As well as meeting Iceland's president she will also talk with representatives of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Ulva (Scottish Gaelic: Ulbha) is a 4,500-acre (seven-sq-mile) island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, off the west coast of Mull. The island has been populated since the Mesolithic period and has a number of Neolithic remains. There are some dolmens and standing stones on the island dating back to 1500BC. Archeologists from Edinburgh University researching remains in the island's large Livingstone Cave indicate people lived here from as far back as 5,650BC.

An item in yesterday's Scottish newspaper, the Scotsman, reports that a site where Norse leaders gathered for parliamentary meetings may have been discovered in Caithness (Scottish Gaelic: Gallaibh) in the northeast of Scotland. Features identified as resembling such a site have resulted in archeological work being undertaken at Thing’s Va Broch near Thurso.

The mystery of the final resting place of Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, Chief of Clan Fraser, known as "the Old Fox" could be moving closer to being solved. He lived from about 1667 to 9 April 1747. Beheaded in London as a supporter of Bonnie Prince Charlie, his headless body is said to lie in a lead casket at Wardlaw Mausoleum at Kirkhill, near Inverness. A body, minus the head is in the casket but is it that of Simon Fraser?