Book 2 - St Kilda: A Portrait of Britain’s Remotest Island Landscape

St Kilda: A Portrait of Britain’s Remotest Island Landscape by Colin Baxter (photographs) and Jim Crumley (text) – first published 1988

This isn’t a chronological history of the islands but rather a poetic description of the landscape and wildlife interwoven with snippets of what life used to be like on St Kilda.  The text is interspersed with beautiful photographs of the natural wonders of the islands – sea stacks, dramatic cliffs, arches, seabirds – and the stone remains of hundreds of years of human occupation.

Much of the text is worthy of quotation but here are my 3 favourite ones:

"It matters that a place like St Kilda exists and that within it there should be places left to their own devices, wild for their own sake."

Referring to the west coast of Hirta: "You cannot tramp such a coast and feel indifferent, or emerge from the experience anything other than a gladder and a wiser man."

"The sound and the sight and the smell of the world's oldest and largest gannetry amount to an experience to rival anything which might occur in a lifetime's explorations of the wildest places on earth."  

7/10

Islands covered - St Kilda Archipelago - Hirta, Soay, Dun and Boreray

First glimpse of Boreray

 

Soay in the distance across Glen Bay and An Cambar

 

 Looking south east towards The Gap and Oiseabhal

 

Dun across Village Bay

 

Village Bay from The Gap

 

Boreray, Stac Lee and Stac an Armin

 

Stac Lee, Boreray

 

Stac an Armin, Boreray

Book 1 - Island of Wings

Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg - first published in 2011

The St Kilda archipelago is located 34 miles WNW of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides.   The islands are sometimes referred to as the Islands on the Edge of the World.   The largest island is Hirta.  Soay and Dun are close to Hirta and Borerary is 4 miles to the north east.   There are also several large sea stacks.  The islands were inhabited from prehistoric times until 1930 when the remaining St Kildans asked to be evacuated.  The St Kildans, who lived on Hirta, caught seabirds for food, feathers and oil.  They also fished and kept sheep, cattle and grew a few crops like oats, barley and potatoes.

I haven’t yet had the privilege of visiting St Kilda but it is number 1 on my wish list. (Update June 2018 - I finally made it to St Kilda - an amazing place).
 

This is a fictionalised account of the lives of Neil Mackenzie, a Church of Scotland minister and his wife Lizzie, who lived on St Kilda from 1830 until 1843.  Neil was determined to get the islanders to abandon the last of their heathen beliefs and rituals and to improve their social conditions.  At this time the neonatal death rate on St Kilda was 60%.  This was mainly due to neonatal tetanus, which killed babies within a couple of weeks of their birth due to high levels of the tetanus toxin in the soil and the unhygienic conditions in which the islanders lived.  Three of Lizzie and Neil’s children die of tetanus and their marriage suffers because Neil is too busy trying to improve the spiritual and physical lives of the islanders to pay her much attention.  This is the only novel I have come across set on St Kilda and it brings the island to life in a way than non-fiction books cannot. 8/10

Islands covered – St Kilda archipelago – Hirta, Soay and Dun

Dun across Village Bay

 

Village Bay from The Gap

 

Village Bay and Soay sheep

 

Village Bay from Mullach Mor

 

Boreray from The Gap

 

Church

 

Inside the church

 

Houses in Village Bay

 

Village Bay

Introduction

I have always loved islands.  I think it is something to do with them having well defined boundaries and a remote feeling.  I also agree with the Celtic view that islands are a bridge between heaven and earth. 

I have just returned from my 3 year reading challenge of Around the World in 80 Books and wanted something closer to home for a change.  Therefore I have decided to combine my 2 of my hobbies - 'collecting' islands and reading.  I intend to read 80 books about or set on British/Irish offshore islands.  I will start with St Kilda, which is west of the Outer Hebrides and work my way round the British Isles in an anticlockwise direction, finishing in the Shetland Islands.  Most of the books will be fiction with a few biographies and other non-fiction books.  Some will be children's books and some are set on fictional islands, so I will read them where I think the fictional island would be located.