Inverness Highland Games

The Inverness Highland Games (official name: City of Inverness Highland Games), is a Highland games event in the city of Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. The modern Games at Inverness have their origin in 1821. That year, the Inverness Courier reported that fundraising was taking place in the town by members of the Northern Meeting Society in order to revive the ancient traditions and to bring a Highland games event to the capital of the Highlands. The Games took place in October 1822 at the end of a summer which saw numerous Highland Gatherings taking place across Scotland as part of the celebrations that were being held to mark the visit by King George IV. The 1822 Games held in Inverness were called a “True Highland Games” and featured three cows killed by sledgehammer in order for a competition to take place between teams of men to see who could pull a leg off one of the unfortunate animals the fastest and win a prize of five guineas.

Organisation

The Inverness Highland Games are organised by the Highland Council in partnership with a committee representing the various organisations which participate in the Gathering.

In July 2010 the date of Games was moved from the third weekend of July to the penultimate weekend in July to enable the Games to connect with the staging of the Inverness Armed Forces Day Celebrations and create one of Scotland's largest traditional Gatherings.

The 2010 Games also saw one significant other change in that the event was relocated from Bught Park at the west end of Inverness to its former home in Northern Meeting Park which is located just outside Inverness city centre.

Northern Meeting Park had been the venue for Highland Games organised in Inverness by the Northern Meeting Society from 1864 to 1938. In July 1939 the Northern Meeting Society decided that they wished to stop organising the Games after losing money for nine years. It was agreed that the Inverness Shopkeepers Association would be invited to take over the running of the Games but plans for a September 1939 event was abandoned as a result of the outbreak of the Second World War. The Games were staged in Northern Meeting Park for a final time in 1948 before it was decided that they would be moved to Bught Park.

While the heavy events at Inverness remain the highlight of the Gathering, the Inverness Games are fampous for being a celebration of all aspects of Highland culture and for regularly featuring performances from overseas groups.

In 2009 Inverness played host to a full scale Basque Rural Games staged by the group Nazioen Mundua from Northern Spain and adopted an official Games Tartan - the Inverness Basque Tartan - which featured the Green, Red and White colours of the Basque flag. The strengthening of the links between the two regions has led to plans for the Inverness Highland Games to go on tour for the first time in its history in October 2010 when a "Taste of the Inverness Highland Games" will be staged in Pamplona

External links

• Official website

In 2006 Inverness hosted the Masters World Championships which was being held in Europe for the first time. In 2007 Inverness hosted the World Highland Games Heavy Championships which was being staged on Scottish soil for the first time since it was staged in Kilmarnock in 1995. The World Championship was won by Gregor Edmunds of Scotland with Larry Brock and Ryan Vierra of the USA finishing in second and third positions. In 2009 the Masters World Championships returned to Inverness for the second time and took place the week before "The Gathering" celebrations organised as the centre piece of Scotland#s Year of Homecoming.