The Final Days of St Kilda: A Remote Scottish Community’s Relocation
By Ingles
One hundred and ten miles (176 km) off the west coast of Scotland lies a small group of volcanic islands. They are variously called Hirta, Boreray, and other local names, but together they are known as St Kilda. Their cliffs rise more than four hundred meters (one thousand four hundred feet) above the grey water and are home to over a million seabirds. Until 1930, they also supported a small colony of Scottish-speaking people whose community had survived for more than two thousand years.
Life on the Edge: St Kilda’s Precarious Existence
Life was precarious on St Kilda. It lies in the Atlantic Ocean, out beyond the protective barrier of the Outer Hebrides, with a mean January temperature of -10 to -20°C. The islanders were frequently cut off for months at a time by bad weather, and they lived as they had always done: on a few sheep and the wild birds.
The Fowlers: Sustenance from the Cliffs
They had no money and used a bartering system to share their livelihoods. Those who harvested the birds were called fowlers. Attaching ropes to the tops of the cliffs, the fowlers would let themselves down to collect eggs and trap birds. They would:
- Eat the flesh
- Use the wings for brooms
- Use the skins for shoes
- Use the beaks for nails to fasten down the roofs of their huts
The St Kilda Parliament: A Glimpse into Island Life
A photograph of the St Kilda Parliament shows thirteen men, all equally hirsute with shaggy whiskers and uncut beards, and identically dressed. Their attire consisted of:
- A rough, whitish shirt
- A dark-coloured woollen jerkin
- Rough dark trousers
- Woollen berets with a bobble
The only differences were their height and that roughly half are wearing boots while half are barefoot. They are standing on either side of a rough flag street with grass growing up between the flags; six of them are leaning against a hut wall no taller than the tallest, and seven against a dry stone wall.
External Influence and Economic Disruption
St Kilda was ignored by the people of mainland Britain until towards the end of the 1800s, when the community began to attract a mixture of social reformers and tourists. The latter came to ogle the last surviving example of subsistence living and introduced money into the islands for the first time. This upset the delicate economy by which they had survived for two millennia. Teachers and priests brought news, education, social improvement, and redemption.
The Final Chapter: Evacuation of St Kilda
News of towns, work, and a better way of life persuaded many of the young to leave the islands, making life harder to sustain for those who stayed. By 1929, only 36 crofters remained. That winter was particularly severe, and faced with a reduced population and ruined economy, they nearly starved. Some of the remaining families decided to leave, and a nurse from mainland Scotland called Williamina Barclay persuaded them to petition the government to relocate them.
On 28 August 1930, three ships took the three dozen islanders off the islands and brought them to the mainland. With them, they brought:
- Five hundred sheep
- Ten cows
- A few possessions
Their dogs they threw into the sea with stones tied around their necks, and thus the two-thousand-year-old community died.