Sylvia's Journal

Axel is in ancestral lands. I am in the neighborhood of mine, now buried deep beneath the North Sea but that was thousands of years ago. Axel’s link with Scotland is closer. His maternal grandfather was a red-haired Scott who passed that gene to his mom (recessive) who passed it to him (red beard only) who passed it to Tessa with her copper tresses.

We expected to see many redheads when we first arrived on Tuesday but we saw none. We started to count. By the end of Tuesday, when we tumbled exhausted in our bed, the tally was only 1. By then, all we had seen was the airport and the Portobello section of Edinburgh.

On Wednesday we continued the count as we made our way in to Edinburgh. During those moments that the sun shines, the redheads stand out. Our lunch waitress was red. By the time we were done with lunch we had counted about 15 redheads who had passed us as we were sitting in one of the rare moments of sun on an outside terrace. Once we started walking around we stopped counting because they were everywhere. 

Our waitress told us that 34% of Scotts have red hair. It turns out she got that slightly wrong:  DNA research on the British isles, and particularly the south east of Scotland, has found that about 40% of the population has the gene for red hair, though  that doesn’t mean they have it.  The numbers of actual red heads differ. There is a lot of boasting between Ireland and Scotland about who has the most redheads – one or the other claims to have 10% of the population, the loser with only 6%. A quick search on Google however,  indicates that most agree that Edinburgh is the red head capital of the world.