This article investigates the significance of frontiers in the making of Scottish identity in the early modern period. As a geographically remote country often perceived as culturally different, Scotland itself represented a northern frontier. Its reputation for impassability and the actual physical barriers to its exploration are still part of our current understanding of the country. The creation of burghs was based also on the tracing of a frontier between a regulated 'inside', and a wild 'outside' with urban walls and civic gates, such as the Netherbow in Edinburgh, marking the border. This piece however questions such strict notions, proposing a more permeable, attractive, and well-connected identity for Scotland, its frontiers acting as porous points of access rather than firm obstacles.