A new book by a leading academic seeks to tell "the forgotten" histories of a group of four Scottish islands, before they are lost forever.
Today the Small Isles live under four different systems of ownership. Eigg was the subject of a famous community buyout in 1997, while the National Trust for Scotland was bequeathed Canna. Muck is privately owned and Rum has Scottish Government advisers Scottish Natural Heritage as landlords.
Lying to the south of Skye and north of Mull and Ardnamurchan, the most westerly point of mainland Scotland, the islands have around 200 residents, but were once home to over 1,600 people. But in the early 19th century people were cleared to allow the introduction of sheep farming.
Islanders ended up on the Scottish mainland, many ultimately going on to North America.
But the new book reveals how the Small Isles had been at the heart of key moments in Scottish history.
It charts their story from the 10,000-year-old human settlements established for trading ‘magical’ bloodstone, to the murders of early Christian pilgrims; the social and economic devastation of the Highland Clearances and the construction of elite Victorian sporting retreats - such as the extraordinary Kinloch Castle built on Rum by an industrialist from Lancashire.
Author of 'The Small Isles' archaeologist Professor John Hunter, was commissioned by Historic Environment Scotland, official guardians of historical environment, to write the book. He said: “These quiet-seeming landscapes hide centuries of hardship, intrigue, controversy and violence. They are small islands with big histories. Yet, over the last two centuries, the traditions, customs, buildings and even place-names of these four islands had been depleted and erased. They had become islands without memories.”
He continued: “The islanders took their traditions and memories with them. They were economic migrants. All that remain are ruined townships, like Port Mor on Muck, where islanders, forced off the land, tried to make a living before leaving for the New World.”
Professor Hunter has travelled extensively across the islands, and has also drawn on 150 years of archaeological source material. This includes many never before published maps, drawings, and photographs from the collections of Historic Environment Scotland, and field surveys carried out by the organisation’s archaeologists.
These include rock shards that speak of prehistoric trading networks, and forts built by ancient warlords, to the chassis of a 1930s sports car dumped in the sea by its aristocrat owner, the stories of the islands are told through the objects and landscapes left behind by generations of islanders.
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