Birlinn Limited is an independent publishing house based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Established in 1992 by Managing Director Hugh Andrew, Birlinn Limited is composed of a number of imprints, including:
Birlinn publishes Scottish interest books, from biography to history, military history and Scottish Gaelic. The name comes from the old Norse word birlinn, meaning a long boat or small galley with 12 to 18 oars, used especially in the Hebrides and West Highlands of Scotland in the Middle Ages.
Polygon Books publishes literary fiction and poetry, both classic and modern, from Scottish writers such as Robin Jenkins, George Mackay Brown, and the author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith. Polygon Books was originally set up by students of Edinburgh University in the late 1960s.
Mercat Press, founded in 1970 and acquired by Birlinn in 2007, now an imprint publishing walking and climbing guides. Mercat is the Scots language word for "market" or "trade".
Academic books about Scotland are published under the imprint John Donald.
