From Oban, Scotland, we cross the sea, through the Sound of Mull; past the Inner Hebridean Islands of Rum and Canna, gentle in the evening sun with night approaching. And then - a spectacular piece of water through a narrow gap, with Barra Head Lighthouse flashing in the fading light; the Island of Mingulay to port and rocky outcrops to starboard. The seas of the Atlantic push wildly towards us, the bow rising up the 6 metre swells and then plunging headlong down the other side. We stand holding the railings - gasping with excitement and fear, the spray salting our faces.
The morning mist lingers and the Cliffs of Boreray emerge from the ocean, a profusion of gannets, fulmars and puffins swirling in waves around their nests and the ship. The gannets soar in their hundreds above us, dressed up for the occasion with their yellow heads and black eyeliner; the fulmars cruise curiously past and the puffins, always in a hurry, skim past fluttering their wings and paddling their bright orange feet.
And then we see Hirta, the largest island of the St Kilda group, standing sharply, a volcanic remnant with impressive sea cliffs, green hillsides and stony outcrops. The “Professor Multanovskiy”, an expedition ship taking tourists to remote places, anchors in the protected waters of Village Bay.
The rubber zodiacs take us to shore where we are greeted by Sue Bain, a conservation officer, who apologetically explains the importance of the many large army buildings and power generator that stand prominently before us, and the radar tracking station that sits like a giant puffball on the hilltop. The village of St Kilda to the casual observer is a collection of rocks, rounded grey rocks, organised rocks. Rock walls encompass the fields around the bay; rock walls protect the vegetable gardens from the salty air and the raggedy brown Soay sheep. Rocks have been built into hundreds and hundreds of cleits, rounded store houses with open doorways and topped with berets of green turf where the little goatlike lambs climb.
We pass a feather store, a tiny church and school and on toward a dozen stone cottages lying in an avenue curving around the bay. Built in 1861 by the island’s owner, the Laird MacLeod from Dunvegan, the cottages look almost modern with their masoned rectangular stonework and tarred iron roofs.
And between them and behind them lie the remains of the black houses, rebuilt and redeveloped for hundreds of years re-using the stones from the previous homes. Small houses with thick stone walls and no windows, a half-dividing wall inside where the “central heating” - the milking cow was housed in the winter. There can be seen the remains of the open hearth to cook on and we imagine a roof thatched with heather or cornstalks to let the smoke go through. Sue recreates an image of the smells and the thickness of the air.
We walk higher up the hillside, the sun is shining but the wind is cold. We stoop to admire the bright purple heath spotted orchids, the flycatcher sundew plant in the sphagnum moss, and the other many flowers of blue and yellow and white. The great skuas fly past, scouring the hillside for nests with eggs to steal.
The prolific numbers of birds probably attracted the first settlers in the Iron Age. These Neolithic people were probably from Northern France and made a good livelihood from the rich grassy islands, building houses and large stone walled corrals for sheep and cattle higher on the hillside.
The Celts and Vikings followed but it is difficult to establish how many stayed, and as Christianity developed in Ireland, monks settled in the isolated islands off the west coasts of Britain, including St Kilda. There doesn’t appear to be a Saint named Kilda and the name was probably derived from Childa, a Norse name for a spring on the island.
As we stop for a breather and look back a helicopter buzzes in like a giant dragonfly. The working parties (organised by The National Trust of Scotland) rush eagerly to the landing site in little jeeps that look like toys from our vantage point on the hillside. Supplies and fresh fruit and vegetables have arrived for the next 2 weeks and some people will be going home and others arriving for their stint of volunteer work counting sheep, mending houses, studying the plant life and doing archaeological digs. Everyone who comes is enthusiastic about being here and it is almost a holy journey for some of the Scottish people on the ship. Coming on expedition ships like ours is one of the few ways an ordinary person can get to St Kilda.
The St Kilda people developed a society apart from the rest of the world, one dependent on the environment and on each other. The women and children tended the sheep and gardens, and walked long distances to the grazing pastures to milk the cows and bring the milk home for drinking and making cheese. Carrying was women’s work and they also cut the peat and carried it to the cleits to dry. When the peat was drier and lighter they would carry it home, precious fuel for cooking right into the 20th century. Each morning the men would meet and discuss the immediate needs of the community, allocating jobs for the day. During the spring and summer 10 men would be chosen to climb the cliffs to retrieve birds and birds’ eggs from the fulmars, gannets and puffins. These were their staple diet adding a strong oily flavour to the tasteless porridge they made from corn and other grains. The excess birds were hung to dry in the cleits along with the extra eggs which they stored in peat ash for up to 8 months to improve the flavour! (And I worry about eating garlic!).
We climb to the top of the hillside and it stops abruptly, unexpectedly, on a cliff edge, falling sharply 400 meters to the sea. The cold up draught takes my breath away or is it fear. The rush of sound from the sea and the wind fills my senses. I giddily look over at the clouds of birds, coming and going from their nesting sites, crying and wailing as only seabirds do, safe now from the agile and daring St Kildans.
For the St Kildans have gone. In 1851 many immigrated to Australia, names like Gillies, MacDonald, MacQueen, MacCrimmon and Ferguson. The following years saw illnesses and a decreasing population that eventually could not support itself or continue and so in 1931 the remaining 36 residents evacuated voluntarily mainly to Argyll in Scotland.
As we descend following the steep tracks made by the sheep through the heather, we are drawn down through layers of history, past remnants of people’s lives that have covered thousands of years. It is an eerie feeling and I almost look over my shoulder to see the presence I feel, but now it is the fulmars and petrels living in the stately homes provided by the broken rock walls.
We come back to civilisation at the bottom of the hill and buy some postcards, but we can’t buy stamps because they don’t have a licence. We look out across the bay to our ship waiting to take us to other remote places and know that this island is unique.
June 2002
St Kilda
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