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Albannach: Scottish roots in Hungarian land
2005-01-17
A young cultural society, dedicated primarily to the familiarisation of Scottish values and Scottish culture, has just started its work in Hungary with encouraging enthusiasm and dynamism. The founding members of Albannach Scottish Cultural Society are young Hungarians, most of whom work in the media and in the field of mass communication, which means an obvious advantage in realising the target of cultural events and news. The president of Albannach, Lajos Tamás Szalay, as he puts it, a “foolish and faithful” admirer of Scotland for years, is devoted to act as a voluntary ambassador, spreading the beauty of Scottish culture, the values of the country and its people. In 2003, with the help of VisitScotland and Hungary’s market leading publishing company, Szalay published his guidebook on Scotland. Due to the financial contributions of several generous sponsors, an album-like, descriptive and informative guidebook was put together. According to the publishing company, reprinting has become necessary, as each copy has been sold out. Szalay offered his royalties to a school supporting the education of blind children. The book has recently been registered by the National Library of Scotland and an article was also published about it in the prestigious Glasgow Herald. The primary aim of founding Albannach was to establish still closer links between Scotland and Hungary on the basis of common, but at least similar historical and cultural events, memories. The society firmly believes that the enlargement of the European Union provides an excellent opportunity to build a bridge between the Scottish and Hungarian cultural world. It is important to help Hungarian people learn more about the Scottish and to have more and more Hungarians visit and understand Scotland. As a first step, Albannach bought the www.skocia.hu domain on the Internet (Skócia=Scotland) to create a regularly updated information portal. Besides containing a number of important and interesting news and data, the website also gives continuous and accurate information on Scottish and Hungarian events, cultural initiatives. Albannach has been establishing more and more contacts both in Scotland and in Hungary. Besides the leadership of VisitScotland, several MPs of the Scottish Parliament, the operative colleagues of Scottish Executive, the vice-president of the National Bank of Scotland and several key personalities of Scottish cultural life have already assured the society of their personal support. Kálmán Kovács, Hungarian Minister of Informatics and Communications, was among the first to welcome the initiative and the successfully launched information portal of Albannach. The Hungarian society is about to establish better and tighter cooperation with Hungarian fellow societies, including the Scottish-Hungarian Friendly Society, which was founded several years ago, and the Budapest Scottish Dance Club. While acknowledging the results achieved by its fellow societies in the last years, the leadership of Albannach is willing to point out that besides charitable and diplomatic events, much more emphasis should be laid upon the organisation and management of programs propagating and supporting Scottish culture. They believe that despite the previous work of fellow societies, not enough emphasis and support has been dedicated to Scottish cultural initiatives and programs in Hungary. Therefore Albannach is primarily planning to improve this situation and become the flagship of a related movement – in accordance, of course, with its possibilities. It is, however, encouraging that although the society was officially founded not long ago, it has already been registered both in Scotland and in Hungary.
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