It is likely that curling has its origins in Scotland, in the early part of the sixteenth century, as a primitive game of quoits on ice. Major events such as the introduction of rounded stones, of artificial ice, of playing four-aside, and the discovery of the "curl' or the 'twist', can be chronicled in Scottish curling records. At the same time, one can relate the evolution of the game to improved organisation; from early inter-parish bonspiels to the formation of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club and, more recently, to the establishment of the International Curling Federation and modern world championship play. Scottish settlers took the game to Canada in the eighteenth century. The first Canadian curling club was founded in Montreal in 1807. It was almost a hundred years later that Scots curlers took up the challenge to visit Canada and match themselves against the Canadian players. Excerpt from .. Cowan, Bob. CURLING and the SILVER BROOM. Glasgow, Scotland: Richard Drew Publishing Limited, 1985. It's often said that the Flemish population of Belgium introduced Curling to the Scots.

There is also a theory that curling actually began in Holland because paintings found in Holland contain what are thought to be people playing a sport related to curling around the time of the scottish origins. Two oil paintings by the Dutch master Pieter Bruegel, entitled "Winter Landscape with Skaters and a Birdtrap" and "Hunters in the Snow", show eisschiessen or "ice shooting", a Bavarian game played with a long stick-like handle, that is still enjoyed today. Another work, an engraving by R. de Baudous (1575 - 1644) after N. van Wieringen, entitled "Hyems" or "Winter", shows players who appear to be sliding large discs of wood along a frozen water-way. Other sketches from around the same time show a Dutch game called kuting, played with frozen lumps of earth. The real controversy over the birthplace of the game was initiated by the Reverend John Ramsay of Gladsmuir, Scotland. In his book, An Account of the Game of Curling (Edinburgh 1811), he argued in favor of Continental beginnings. His research into the origins of curling words (examples: bonspiel, brough, colly, curl, kuting, quoiting, rink, and wick), led him to conclude that they were derived from Dutch or German. Claiming that most of the words were foreign, he wrote, but the whole of the terms being Continental compel us to ascribe to a Contintental origin.