Chess is such an ancient game, I'm really curious to know if it might have a different culture, or if there was a general "European" etiquette of Chess.
I only know a little bit, but from reading it looks like there's a bunch of risky, almost gambly moves. Like a risky open, or stuff like that. But a lot of what I read tends to talk about the Cold War. What about chess earlier in the mid 1700's?
You ask several questions, so let me try to unpack them one by one.
Very little is written about chess in Scotland in the 1700s. We know the Edinburgh Chess Club was founded in 1822, and we have records showing that the monks at Lindores Abbey in the 15th century played chess, but very little has been written about the interval in between. Chess would certainly have been a pursuit of the nobility, ensconced in institutions such as the Edinburgh Chess Club, and later the Scottish Chess Association.
In terms of risky moves, we call those gambits. Typically, one side offers material (like a pawn) for some sort of compensation, like faster development of pieces to launch an attack. Yes, lots of authors write about games like that, mostly because the alternative is boring. It's hard to insert drama into a slow positional struggle (but chess enthusiasts still rave about Anatoly Karpov's "boa constrictor" style). We know of two gambits from Scotland (or Scottish players) in the period you reference:
Cunningham Gambit: Pioneered by a Scottish player named Alexander Cunningham, who reportedly lived in The Hague in the early 18th century and pioneered this system.
Scotch Gambit: The Scotch Opening arose from a correspondence match (played over four years) between Edinburgh and London in the 1820's (Edinburgh won). Many openings featured the solid Scotch Opening, but some spiced it up by playing the Scotch Gambit, which can lead to an explosive attack for white. Here's a game demonstrating that opening, and which an author would love to write about.