St. Kilda in the Hebrides

St. Kilda in the Hebrides (Click photographs to view an enlargement)

41 miles west of the Outer Hebridean island of North Uist, the remote islands of St. Kilda were inhabited for maybe 2000 years until they were evacuated at the inhabitants request in 1930.

The islands are in fact an archipelago, comprising of four islands of Hirta, Dun, Soay and Boreray and the sea stacs of Stac an Armin, Stac Lee and Levenish. They are probably the remains of a now extinct volcano. The islands contain towering sea cliffs with teeming sea bird colonies - the largest colony of gannets in Europe breeds on Boreray and there are large numbers of guillemots, kittiwakes and puffins.

The origins of the name St. Kilda are shrouded in mystery - there certainly was no St. Kilda - the most likely derivation is because the Gaelic name for the main island Hirta was pronounced K-hilta by the islanders and it was mistranslated.

In its long history of inhabitation, it was owned by the absentee landlords of the MacLeods of Harris and Dunvegan - rent was paid in the form of tweed, feathers, wool, grain and dairy produce. A deputy lived on the island and the MacLeod's steward visited once a year to collect the 'rent'.

The islanders formed the perfect political system of inclusive democracy - there was no monetary system and all decisions and laws were made every morning in a mass meeting outside what eventually became the Post Office. Virtually the whole of the day for the entire able population was taken up by seasonal agricultural activity - the collection of birds eggs from sea cliffs in the spring, grain in the autumn and peat in the summer. This was then divided equally at the end of each day amongst every islander. Crime was unknown.

Life was very hard at the best of times - made worse by the arrival of new diseases like smallpox and cholera which revaged the population in the 18th century. The final nails in the coffin was the slow cultural death of the population in the 19th century. First came the missionaries of the Free Church - this caused much of the time to be taken up in church attendance when there should have been egg-collecting. Many came close to starvation. In the late 19th century, packet steamers brought tourists to gaze at the curiousity of "savages, living within the British Isles, the like of which were to be seen in the remote reaches of the Empire". Tourism caused the islanders to change their ways and longer after a better, material life they hitherto had not known about.

After the final evacuation of 1930, the islands remained uninhabited until the coming of the military. A remote listening station was placed here and the army remain to this day.

You can discover more about St Kilda in our more recent article following a visit - St Kilda / Hirta