The 1970s were a paradoxical decade for the Scottish National Party: one which gave the party its first general election seats, and therefore its first parliamentary group, as well as (in October 1974) its best general election results until 2015; but also one which ended with its collapse – though the SNP did not return to its pre-1970 state. What lay behind the SNP's rise in the first half of the 1970s and its retreat in the late 1970s? Why was the spectacular march of Scottish nationalism so short-lived? The main aim of this article is to attempt to draw a comprehensive list of answers that have been given to these questions, and thereby provide the reader with a historiographical and analytical account of the rise and fall of the SNP in the 1970s.