St. Kilda (Scotland)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
St. Kilda
Satellite image with names of the islands
Satellite image with names of the islands
Waters North Atlantic
Geographical location 57 ° 50 ′  N , 8 ° 33 ′  W Coordinates: 57 ° 50 ′  N , 8 ° 33 ′  W
Map of St. Kilda
Number of islands 7th
Main island Hirta
Total land area 8.546 km²
Residents uninhabited
Topographic map of St. Kilda
Topographic map of St. Kilda

St. Kilda ( Scottish Gaelic Hiort [ hirˠʃt̪ ]) is an isolated volcanic island group that belongs to Scotland . The islands are located about 64 kilometers west-northwest of North Uist in the North Atlantic and are occasionally counted among the Outer Hebrides . The main island is Hirta , whose cliffs are the highest in the United Kingdom . Politically, the islands belong to the Na h-Eileanan Siar Council Area .

St. Kilda was permanently inhabited for at least two millennia, the number of inhabitants probably never exceeding 180 and constantly below 100 after 1851. In 1930 the population of the time decided to give up life on the island. At present, military personnel are the only residents.

The origin of the name St. Kilda can only be surmised. The islands' human heritage consists of numerous architectural sites from both historical and prehistoric times, while the earliest written records of island life date back to the late Middle Ages . The medieval village on Hirta was abandoned in the 18th century and rebuilt elsewhere. Later, the influences of religious fervor, diseases introduced through increased external contacts and the consequences of the First World War contributed to the evacuation of the island in 1930. The story of St. Kilda has given rise to artistic interpretations, including an opera .

The entire archipelago is owned by the National Trust for Scotland . In 1986 it became the first of five (as of July 14, 2020) Scottish World Heritage Sites . It is the only site in the UK to have status for both its cultural and natural riches. The islands are a breeding area for many seabirds , including gannets , puffins and fulmars . The St. Kilda wren and St. Kilda field mouse are endemic subspecies. During the summer, groups of volunteers work on the islands to restore ruins of the houses that the islanders left behind during the evacuation. They share the islands with the residents of a small military base established in 1957.

Origin of the names

The Street with dilapidated houses

There are no known saints with the name Kilda, which is why numerous theories try to explain the origin of the name, which dates back to the later 16th century. Haswell-Smith (2004) states that the full name of St. Kilda was first found on a Dutch map dated 1666 and may come from the Norwegian sunt kelda ("sweet well water") or based on the erroneous assumption that Tobar Childa is named after a saint. ( Tobar Childa is a tautological place name formed from the Gaelic and Old Norwegian words for fountain .) Martin Martin , who visited St. Kilda in 1697, believed that the name “comes from a certain Kilder who lived here; and the great Toubir-Kilda well takes its name from him ”.

The Carte of Scotlande from 1580 with Hyrth (Hirta) on the left and Skaldar (Haskeir) in the northeast

Maclean (1972) further suggests that the name is a corruption of the Old Norwegian name for the source on Hirta, Childa , and states that a map from 1588 names the archipelago as Kilda . He also speculates that the name could refer to the Culdeer , monastic hermits who possibly brought Christianity to the islands. Another possibility is a corruption of the Gaelic name for the main island, since the islanders pronounced “r” rather than “l” in their dialect and usually referred to the island as “Hilta”. Steel (1988) endorses the idea, noting that the islanders pronounced the "H" in a "fairly guttural way," meaning that Hirta was almost pronounced as a kilta .

According to Maclean, there is also the possibility that the Dutch simply made a mapping mistake and mistook Hirta for Skildar , the old name for the island of Haskeir , which is much closer to the Outer Hebrides. Quine (2000) hypothesizes that the name comes from a series of cartographic errors that begin with the use of the Old Icelandic Skildir ("shields"), which appears as a skildar on a map by Nicholas de Nicolay (1583). Following the hypothesis, this was wrongly adopted by Lucas J. Waghenaer on his maps from 1592 without the r and with a point after the S, from which S. Kilda emerged. Others assumed the abbreviation stood for a saint and created the shape of St Kilda , which has been in use for several centuries.

The Street with restored houses

The origins of the name Hirta , which is significantly older than St Kilda , is similarly open to interpretation. Martin (1703) claims that "Hirta comes from the Irish Ier , which means 'West' in this language". Maclean suggests several alternatives, including a (unspecified) Celtic word meaning “darkness” or “death”, or the Scottish Gaelic h-Iar-Tir (“Westland”). Referring to an Icelandic saga that describes a trip to Ireland in the 13th century and mentions a visit to the islands of Hirtir , he speculates that the shape of Hirtas resembles a deer, Hirtir ("stag" in Norwegian). Steel (1988) quotes the opinion of Reverend Neil Mackenzie, who lived there from 1829 to 1844, that the name came from the Gaelic I-Àrd ("High Island") and that it also came from the Norwegian Shepherd ("Shepherd", "Shepherd ") could come. Murray (1966) similarly speculates that the Norwegian Hirðö ("herd island ") could be the word's origin. All the names of and on the islands are discussed by Coates (1990).

geography

The St. Kilda Archipelago

With 670  hectares , Hirta is the largest island in the group and comprises 78 percent of the land area of ​​St. Kildas. The next largest islands are Soay ("sheep island") with 99 hectares and Boreray ("the fortified island") with 77 hectares. Soay is about 500 meters northwest of Hirta, Boreray 6 kilometers northeast. Other small islands and pinnacles are Stac an Armin (9.9 hectares) ("The warrior's rock needle"), Stac Lee (2.3 hectares) ("Gray rock needle") and Stac Levenish (2.43 hectares) ("Strom "Or" torrent "). The island of Dùn ("fortress"), which protects Village Bay from the prevailing southwest winds, was once connected to Hirta by a natural arch. MacLean (1972) explains that the bow was broken by a Spanish galleon that fled after the defeat of the Spanish Armada , but other sources such as Mitchell (1992) and Fleming (2005) suggest that the bow was swept away by a violent winter storm.

Hirta and Dùn

The highest point of the archipelago, Conachair ("the beacon") at 430 meters, is on Hirta, directly in the north of the village. In the southeast are Oiseval ("east") and to the west of it Mullach Mòr ("large hilltop"), which rise 290 and 361 meters respectively. Ruival ("Red Fjell ", 137 meters) and Mullach Bi ("Column Summit", 358 meters) dominate the western cliffs. The highest points on Boreray and Soay are 384 and 378 meters above sea level, respectively. Stac an Armin is 196 meters high and Stac Lee is 172 meters high, making them the two highest sea pipefish in Britain.

In modern times the only settlement on St. Kilda at Village Bay ( Scottish Gaelic Bàgh a 'Bhaile or Scottish Gaelic Loch Hiort ) was on Hirta. Gleann Mòr on the north coast of Hirta and Boreray also show traces of early settlement. When approaching Village Bay from the sea, the scene is reminiscent of a small settlement surrounded by hills in a semicircle. However, this impression is misleading. The entire north slope of the Conachair is a vertical cliff of up to 427 meters that drops straight into the sea and forms the highest sea cliff in the United Kingdom.

The face-like cliffs of Stac Levenish

Although St. Kilda is 40 miles from the nearest land area, the archipelago can also be seen from the Cuillin Hills on Skye, 80 miles away . The climate is oceanic, with high precipitation values ​​(1,400 mm) and high humidity. Temperatures are generally cool with an average of 5.6 ° C in January and 11.8 ° C in July. The prevailing winds, especially strong in winter, come from the south and south-west. The average speed of the winds here is around 85% of the time around 13 km / h and over 30% of the time around 24 km / h. Storm-like winds occur less than 2% of the time, but gusts of 185 km / h and more occur regularly at the higher elevations, and speeds of up to 209 km / h have also been observed at sea level. The mean tidal range is 2.9 meters, the wave height is about 2 meters on average, but 5 meters during 10% of the year, which can make landing difficult or even impossible all year round. However, its location in the ocean protects the island from snow, which is only around twelve days a year.

Only a few small islands in the British Isles such as the Flannan Isles , North Rona , Sula Sgeir or the Bishop's Isles at the southern end of the Outer Hebrides can match the remote location and oceanic climate of the archipelago . Administratively, St. Kilda was part of the parish of Harris in traditional County Inverness-shire . Today the archipelago is part of the Na h-Eileanan Siar Council Area (Western Isles).

fauna and Flora

Soay rams on St. Kilda

St. Kilda is a breeding ground for many species of sea birds . The archipelago is home to the world's largest colony of gannets ; a total of 30,000 couples, 24% of the world's population live here. There are also 49,000 breeding pairs of wave walkers , almost 90% of the European population; 136,000 puffin pairs (30% of the breeding population of the United Kingdom), and 67,000  Northern Fulmar pairs (around 13% of the total population in the UK). Before 1828 St. Kilda was the only breeding ground for fulmars in the United Kingdom, and since then they have spread and established other colonies, for example in Fowlsheugh near Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire . The last giant aalk ( Pinguinus impennis ) of the British Isles was shot on Stac an Armin in July 1840.

Two animal taxa are endemic to St. Kilda: the wren subspecies ( Troglodytes troglodytes hirtensis ) and the St. Kilda field mouse ( Apodemus sylvaticus hirtensis ), a subspecies of the wood mouse . The St. Kilda house mouse ( Mus musculus muralis ) was also endemic here, but disappeared completely after the evacuation of the human population from the islands, as their livelihood was based on settlements and buildings. It had some traits in common with the subspecies Mus musculus mykinessiensis , which lives on the Faroese island of Mykines . The Gray Seal uses Hirta since the evacuation of 1930 as union square.

Soay in the fog

The residents of St. Kilda kept up to 2000 sheep, which were removed from the archipelago during the evacuation, but a herd of 107 indigenous Soay sheep were brought from Soay to Hirta and are now living there in the wild. Soay sheep are a very primitive breed that does not require shearing. Between 600 and 1700 of the sheep live on Hirta, 200 remain on Soay. Some individuals have been exported to form breeding populations in other states, valued for their toughness and relatively small stature. On Hirta and Soay they prefer plantain willows , which are often found in places exposed to the surf and on which the common red fescue , beach plantain and beach carnation grow. There is also a breed of wild sheep on Boreray ( Boreray sheep ) which is one of the most threatened British sheep breeds.

The isolation of the islands led to a very limited biodiversity . There are only 58  species of butterflies here (compared to 367 known in the Outer Hebrides ). The flora is heavily influenced by the salty spray, strong winds and acidic, peaty soils. No trees grow on the archipelago. There are numerous rarities among the 194 species of lichen . There are 162 different mushrooms and 160 types of moss . The more than 130  flowering plants include some endemic species. In 2011, another was discovered, namely Taraxacum pankhurstianum , a daisy family . Seaweed grows in the surrounding sea and is inhabited by a wide variety of invertebrates.

The beach at Village Bay consists of sand in summer; in winter the water retreats, revealing larger stones on which the sand lies. A study from 1953 found only one species, the wood louse Eurydice pulchra .

Way of life

St. Kilda residents paid their taxes in part by hunting seabirds; Hooks like this enabled them to rappel down to the nests

The most important characteristic of life on St. Kilda was isolation. When Martin Martin visited the islands in 1697, open longboats were the only way to travel, which took several days and nights of rowing and sailing across the open sea and was practically impossible in autumn and winter. Waves up to twelve meters high break in Village Bay year-round , and landing on the slippery rocks can be dangerous even on quieter days. Cut off from the outside world by distance and weather, the islanders knew little of the rest of the world. After the Battle of Culloden in 1746, rumors arose that Charles Edward Stuart had fled to St. Kilda with some of his key Jacobite supporters. An expeditionary force set out, and after a while British soldiers came ashore in Hirta. They found an abandoned village because the islanders had fled to caves in the western part of the island for fear of pirates. After losing their shyness, the British soldiers learned that they knew nothing about the prince and had never heard of George II either .

Until the late 19th century, the islanders only ways of communicating with the rest of the world were by lighting a beacon on the Conachair and hoping a passing ship would see it, or the St. Kilda mail boat ". The mail boat was invented by John Sands , who visited the islands in 1877. During his stay nine Austrian sailors came to the islands as a result of a shipwreck, and in February supplies began to run out. Sands attached a note to a lifebuoy rescued by the Peti Dubrovacki and threw it into the sea. Nine days later the lifebuoy was found in Birsay , Orkney , and a rescue was organized. Sticking to the idea, the islanders made a piece of wood in the shape of a boat, attached it to a sheepskin swim bladder, and placed a small bottle or jar with a message in it. If left in the sea in north-westerly winds, two-thirds of the messages were later found on the west coast of Scotland or Norway .

Puffin ( Fratercula arctica ). Seabirds formed the bulk of the islanders' diet.

Another specialty of life on St. Kilda was the diet. The islanders kept sheep and some cattle, with barley and potatoes they could also grow limited crops on the better drained land at Village Bay . Samuel Johnson reported that sheep's milk was used to make cheese in the 18th century. Due to the high waves and the unpredictable weather, fishing played only a subordinate role. The mainstay of their food supplies were the islands' numerous birds, especially gannets and petrels. They collected their eggs and hunted the young birds, which were eaten fresh as well as cured. Adult birds were also shot. According to Henry Brougham , however, this peculiarity of island life resulted in "the air being filled with an almost unbearable stench - a mixture of rotten fish, all sorts of dirt and stinking seabirds". An excavation of the Taigh an t-Sithiche (the "House of the Fairies", see below) by Sands in 1877 brought the remains of gannets, sheep, cattle and limpets as well as various stone tools to light. The building is between 1700 and 2500 years old, suggesting that the diet had changed little in the millennia in between. In addition, the tools were recognized and named by the inhabitants of the islands, as similar tools were still used.

The locals' bird hunting required considerable climbing skills, especially the steep pinnacles. An important tradition on the islands required young men to perform a ritual at the so-called mistress stone , a door-shaped opening in the rock northwest of Ruival over a deep fissure, in order to prove themselves fit for marriage. Martin Martin writes:

The Mistress Stone

“In front of the cliff, south of the settlement, is the famous stone, known as“ mistress stone ”; it is like a door and is right in front of this cliff, which is twenty or thirty fathoms in the vertical, and its shape can be seen from about a mile away. An old custom now obliges every suitor in his honor to give proof of his appreciation of the love of his bride on the fall of this door, and it goes like this: He must stand on his left foot, with his sole half over the cliff, and then he pulls his right foot further to the left, and in this position, bent, he stretches both fists further towards his right foot; and after doing this he has earned no small reputation and from now on would have deserved the best bride in the world according to general opinion. "

Another important aspect of life on St. Kilda was the daily "parliament". This meeting was held every morning after morning prayers in the village street; in its course the adult men determined the activities of the day. Nobody presided and everyone had the right to speak. According to Steel (1988) "the discussion often caused dissatisfaction, but the feuds in known history never became so decisive that they resulted in permanent division of the community". This idea of ​​a free society influenced Enric Miralles ' vision for the new Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh, which opened in October 2004.

Despite the losses that the isolation of the islanders brought with it, it spared them from many other things. Martin noted in 1697 that residents appeared "happier than most of humanity, being almost the only people in the world who feel the sweetness of true freedom," and by the 19th century their health became positive with conditions elsewhere in the Hebrides compared. It wasn't a utopian society; the islands' inhabitants had wooden locks for their property, and material penalties were imposed for misdemeanors. Yet there is no known St. Kilda resident who has ever participated in a war or committed a serious crime.

history

Cleit above Village Bay

prehistory

It has been known since the 1970s that St. Kilda was permanently inhabited for two millennia or more, from the Bronze Age to the 20th century. In 2005 the first evidence of an earlier Neolithic settlement was discovered - pottery shards from Unstan Ware , found in the east of the village. The discovery of a stone tool quarry at Mullach Sgar above Village Bay led to the discovery of numerous stone blades, mortars and Skaill knives in the Cleitean of Village Bay - stone storage buildings (see below). The tools found probably also come from the Neolithic .

14th to 17th centuries

The first written record about St. Kilda could be from the year 1202, when an Icelandic cleric wrote about having sought refuge on "the islands called Hirtir". Early reports mentioned finds of brooches, an iron sword and Danish coins. The enduring Nordic place names suggest a longer presence of the Vikings on Hirta, but all visible evidence has disappeared. It was first mentioned in English in the late 14th century, when John of Fordun mentioned "the island of Irte, which, according to a consensus, lies under the Circius and on the edges of the world". The islands were historically part of the sphere of influence of the MacLeods of Harris , whose steward was responsible for collecting taxes in kind and other duties. The first detailed account of a visit to the islands dates back to 1549, when Donald Munro noted that “the inhabitants of there are simple poor people, barely versed in religion, but M'Cloyd von Herray, his stewart, or whom he is with entrusted with this task, sails there once a year, at midsummer, with a chaplain to baptize the children. "

Despite this chaplain, the residents' religion contained as much druidism as Christianity until the Reverend John MacDonald came to St. Kilda in 1822. Macauley (1764) reported the existence of five Druidic altars, including a large circle of stones standing vertically in the ground near the Stallir House on Boreray.

Coll MacDonald from Colonsay attacked Hirta in 1615, stealing 30 sheep and a certain amount of barley. As a result, the islands were considered a place of abundance. At the time of Martin's visit in 1697, the population was 180 and the steward traveled in a party of up to 60, “choosing the leanest of his friends on the neighboring islands and taking them to St. Kilda from time to time so that they could enjoy the nutritious and plentiful, albeit primitive, food of the island and regain their normal strength and health. "

18th and 19th centuries

The classroom (on the right side of the photo), built in 1884 as an extension to the church.
Map and ocean view of St. Kilda and Soay 1888.

In the 18th century, ships visiting the islands brought cholera and smallpox with them. In 1727 so many residents had died that the survivors could no longer man the boats, whereupon new Harris families were settled to replace the dead. By 1758 the population had risen to 88 and reached almost 100 by the end of the century. This number remained relatively constant until 1851, 36 islanders emigrated to Australia on board the Priscilla . The island never fully recovered from this loss. The emigration was partly a reaction to the fact that the Laird kept the church and rectory closed for several years during the clashes that led to the establishment of the Free Church of Scotland in 1843 (the so-called "disruption" ).

A missionary named Alexander Buchan came to St. Kilda in 1705, but despite his long stay, the idea of ​​an organized religion did not prevail. That changed in 1822 when Reverend John MacDonald, the "Apostle of the North" arrived. He began his missionary work with great zeal, giving thirteen long sermons during his first eleven days. He returned regularly and raised money for the islands' inhabitants, even if he was secretly bothered by their lack of religious knowledge. The locals themselves welcomed him with enthusiasm and wept when he finally left St. Kilda eight years later. His successor, who arrived on July 3, 1830, was Reverend Neil Mackenzie, a Church of Scotland clergyman who significantly improved the living conditions of the locals. He reorganized agriculture on the island, played an important role in the rebuilding of the village and oversaw the construction of a new church and a new rectory. With the help of the Gaelic School Society , MacKenzie and his wife introduced a regular education system to Hirta. They founded a school that taught reading, writing and arithmetic on weekdays, as well as a Sunday school for religious education.

Mackenzie, who had remained in the Church of Scotland, left St. Kilda in 1844. Although he had achieved much and was valued by the residents, they opted for the Free Church in the wake of the schism . With the arrival of the Reverend John Mackay, the new clergyman of the Free Church, in 1865, the weakness of the islanders' dependence on non-island authorities became apparent. Mackay took religious observance unusually seriously. He made three two to three hour services every Sunday the rule, attendance of which was practically compulsory. In 1875, a visitor remarked, “The Sabbath was a day of excruciating gloom. At the sound of the bell, the entire flock rushes into the church with a sad expression and downcast eyes. It is considered sinful to look to the right or left. "

The interior of the church at Oiseabhal, St. Kilda

The time spent in religious gatherings seriously disrupted the day-to-day work of island life. Old women and children who were too loud in church were reprimanded extensively and warned of terrible punishments in the afterlife. A supply ship arrived on a Saturday at a time of food shortage, but the preacher demanded that the islanders spend the day preparing for church on the Sabbath so that supplies could not be brought ashore until Monday. Children were not allowed to play and always had to carry a Bible with them. Mackay stayed at St. Kilda for 24 years.

Tourism had a different but similarly destabilizing effect on St. Kilda. During the 19th century, steamers began calling at Hirta, which allowed islanders to make money selling tweed and bird eggs but also deprived them of their self-esteem as tourists viewed them as curiosities.

The infant mortality rate was very high: In the years 1860-69 20 died of 29 newborns. In many cases the cause was a tetanus infection. The symptoms of the disease had already been described on the island by Macaulay in 1764. The reasons for this accumulation have not been clarified; it is suspected in particular that an infection occurs via the severed umbilical cord , which could have been facilitated by the use of improperly cleaned tools and insufficient care of the wound. After the implementation of appropriate preventive measures , child mortality decreased significantly; the last case of neonatal tetanus was reported in 1894. Reverend Mackay had still refused to provide better help with births.

At the turn of the century, schooling began again on the islands, and in 1906 the church was expanded to include a schoolhouse. All the children were now learning English and Gaelic. From the 1880s onwards, trawlers fishing in the North Atlantic brought additional trade through regular visits. The islanders had already discussed an evacuation in the Mackay period in 1875, but despite occasional food shortages and a flu epidemic in 1913, the population remained stable between 75 and 80.

First World War

The naval cannon on Hirta in the direction of Dùn

At the beginning of World War I , the Royal Navy established a signaling station on Hirta and, for the first time in St. Kilda's history, daily communications with Britain were established. On the morning of May 15, 1918, the German submarine SM U 90 appeared in Village Bay and, following a warning, began bombarding the island. 72 shells were shot down, the radio station destroyed and the rectory, church and a warehouse at the pier damaged; no people were killed. An eyewitness described the bombardment: “I wouldn't say it was a really enemy submarine as it could have destroyed any house because they were all lined up. They just wanted the Admiralty's property. A lamb was killed ... all the cattle were running from one side of the island to the other when they heard the explosions. "

In response to this attack, a Mark III QF cannon was set up on a ledge over Village Bay , but it was never used. Of greater long-term importance for the island's population were the introduction of regular contact with the outside world and the slow development of a money-based economy. This made life easier for the residents of St. Kilda, but also restricted their self-sufficiency. Both were factors in the island's evacuation a little more than a decade later.

evacuation

Boreray, Stac Lee and Stac an Armin (left) seen from the Conachair

Numerous factors led to the evacuation. The islanders had lived in relative isolation for centuries until tourism and the presence of the military during World War I led them to seek alternatives to the hardships they had previously accepted as normal. The changes that 19th century visitors brought to St. Kilda alienated residents from the life that had allowed their ancestors to survive in this setting. Although a small pier was built in 1902, the population of St. Kildas remained dependent on the weather.

After the First World War, most of the young men left the island and the population decreased from 73 (1920) to 37 (1928). The death of four men from flu in 1926 was followed by a series of crop failures. Research of the cultivated soil by the University of Aberdeen showed that there was contamination from lead and other pollutants caused by the use of sea bird birds and peat ash as fertilizer. This happened over a longer period of time as the fertilization became more intensive and could also have been a triggering factor for the evacuation. The death of young mother Mary Gillies from appendicitis in May 1930 contributed to residents asking for an evacuation. The Secretary of State for Scotland consulted the residents and accepted the request. On August 29, 1930, the remaining 36 residents were evacuated to Morvern on mainland Scotland. The cattle had been brought in another boat two days earlier while the herding dogs were drowned.

“The morning of the evacuation seemed to promise a perfect day. The sun rose from a calm and shiny sea and warmed the impressive cliffs of the Oiseval ... Following the tradition, the islanders left a Bible and a small pile of oats in each house, locked all the doors and boarded the Harebell at 7am ... They are said to have remained cheerful throughout the operation. But as the long outrigger of Dun drew closer to the horizon and the well-known outlines of the island faded, the separation of an old connection became a reality and the St. Kilda gave in to their tears. "

- Maclean (1977), 142

John Crichton-Stuart bought the islands from Reginald MacLeod in 1931. For the next 26 years, the islands remained largely untouched, with the exception of occasional summer tourists or a family of former islanders returning to visit. With the evacuation, the post office that had existed there since 1900 was also closed. The owners gave the island in the aftermath private mail - postage stamps bearing the imprint of St. Kilda out, but they could be practically hardly used well and were. At Dunvegan Castle , the ancestral home of the MacLeods on Skye , a small exhibition with photos and everyday objects documents the life of the former residents of St. Kilda.

In April 2016, the last surviving resident who was still born on the island died in Clydebank, Scotland .

Later military developments

Target acquisition tower at Mullach Sgar

The islands had no meaning in World War II and were deserted during that time. However, three plane crashes occurred. A Beaufighter stationed in Port Ellen on Islay crashed into the Conachair 100 meters below the summit on the night of June 3rd to 4th, 1943. A year later, was short Sunderland - flying boat destroyed shortly before midnight on June 7, 1944 as the summit of Gleann Mòr. A small plaque in the church commemorates those who died in this crash. A Wellington crashed on the Soays south coast in 1943. It was not until 1978 that an official attempt was made to investigate the wreck and its identity has not been fully clarified to this day.

In 1955 the British government decided to incorporate St. Kilda into a missile launch site on Benbecula , where test kills and flights would be carried out. For this reason, St. Kilda has been permanently inhabited again since 1957. Various military buildings and masts have since been erected, including the islands' first eatery, the Puff Inn . The Ministry of Defense is renting St. Kilda from the National Trust for Scotland for a nominal amount. The main island of Hirta is still inhabited year-round by a small number of civilians who work in the military base.

natural reserve

After the death of the previous owner on August 14, 1956, the archipelago fell through his will to the National Trust for Scotland , provided that the latter accepted the offer within six months. After some hesitation, the Executive Committee agreed in January 1957. The tedious repair and maintenance of the village began, much of it with the help of volunteer groups in the summer. In addition, scientific research began on the wild Soay sheep population and other aspects of the natural environment. In 1957 the area was declared a national nature reserve.

In 1986 UNESCO declared the islands to be the first Scottish World Heritage Site due to their natural features . In 2004, she expanded the World Heritage Site to include not only the islands themselves but also part of the surrounding marine space. In 2005 St. Kilda also became one of around two dozen sites worldwide that have the status of a World Heritage Site for both natural and cultural features.

The World Heritage Site of St. Kilda covers an area of ​​24,201.4 hectares. The land area occupies 854.6 hectares.

St. Kilda is part of a number of other protective systems. In addition to some British awards, the islands are also a European bird sanctuary . Yachts are allowed to anchor in Village Bay , but visitors wishing to go ashore should contact the National Trust for Scotland beforehand. There are concerns about the possible introduction of foreign animal and plant species into the relatively fragile natural area of ​​the islands.

St. Kilda's marine nature with underwater caves, arches and crevices offers a challenging but promising diving environment. The swell of the Atlantic is strong enough to feel the effect of the waves up to 70 meters below the surface of the water. In 2008, Scottish Environment Minister Michael Russell helped the National Trust for Scotland prevent rats from being introduced from the Spinningdale , a fishing boat stranded on Hirta. There were concerns that the island's bird life could be seriously affected. Dutch waste management company Mammoet successfully removed potentially contaminating materials such as fuel, oils, bait and supplies from the ship before the bird breeding season in early April.

architecture

Prehistoric Buildings

Ruins in Gleann Mòr

The oldest structures on St. Kilda are the most enigmatic. Large sheep pens are located inland near the village of An Lag Bho'n Tuath (“The Depression in the North”) and contain strange “boot-shaped” stone rings. Soil samples suggest a date around 1850 BC. They can only be found on St. Kilda and their purpose is unknown. In Gleann Mòr (northwest of Village Bay beyond Hirta's central ridge) there are 20 "horned structures", essentially destroyed buildings with a 3 x 3 m courtyard, at least two smaller cells and a forecourt surrounded by two curved or horn-shaped walls is formed. Again, nothing comparable can be found in the UK or Europe, and the original purpose of the structures is unknown. The Taigh na Banaghaisgeich , the "House of the Amazon", is still located in Gleann Mòr . As Martin (1703) reported, there were many stories about a female warrior.

“This Amazon is known in her traditions: her stone house or dairy farm is still there; some locals live there in the summer, although the building is about a hundred years old; the whole thing is made of stone, with no wood, lime, earth or mortar to hold it together, and it is round and pyramid-like at the top, with a vent because the fire is always in the center of the ground; the stones are long and thin, which makes up for the lack of wood, the interior of the house accommodates no more than nine seated people; there are three beds or low vaults that lead into the wall, a column between each bed that can accommodate five men each; at the entrance to one of these low vaults there is a fixed stone at one end; it is said that she usually put her helmet on; there are two stones on the other side on which she is said to have placed her sword: she is said to have been very addicted to hunting, and in her day the whole area between that island and that of Harries was said to have been a continuous strip of dry land. "

Similar stories of a warrior who hunted on the now sunken land between the Outer Hebrides and St. Kilda are known from Harris. The forecourt of the structure is similar to the other “horned structures” in the immediate vicinity, but like Martin's Amazon, its original purpose is more mythical than an archaeological fact.

Of the hundreds of unique cleitean that are scattered across the archipelago, more is known. These dome-shaped structures consist of flat boulders with a peat finish. This allows the wind to blow through cavities but keeps rain out. They were used to store peat, nets, grain, canned meat and eggs, manure and hay, and in winter also as a shelter for lambs. The date of origin of this islander's invention is unknown, but it was in constant use from prehistoric times until the 1930 evacuation. There are more than 1,200 destroyed or intact Cleitean on Hirta , and another 170 on the neighboring islands. House number 16 in the modern village has an early Christian stone cross built into the front wall, which could date from the 7th century.

Medieval village

The village. Tobar Childa in the top left, 19th century street in the middle and the new military base on the right. The entire settlement is surrounded by the enclosure wall from the 19th century.

At Tobar Childa there was a medieval village about 350 meters from the coast at the foot of the slopes of the Conachair. The oldest building is an underground passage with two small extensions called Taigh an t-Sithiche ("House of the Fairies") and dates from the period between 500 BC. The islanders believed it was a house or a hiding place, although a more recent theory suggests it was an ice cellar .

There are also extensive ruins of field walls and cleitean as well as the remains of a medieval "house" with a beehive-shaped extension. Nearby is the Bull's House, a roofless, rectangular structure that was used to keep the island's bull in winter. Tobar Childa himself is supplied by two springs just outside the surrounding wall. The wall was built around the village to prevent sheep and cattle from gaining access to the cultivated areas inside. There were around 25 to 30 houses in total. Most of them were black houses, typically Hebridean in design, but some older buildings were cantilevered stone and covered with peat instead of thatch. The peat was used to keep wind and rain out. The older beehive-shaped buildings look more like green hills than buildings.

Younger buildings

The Feather Store , where the feathers of fulmars and gannets were kept and sold to pay the dues

Another ruin on Hirta is that of "Lady Grange's House". Lady Grange had been married to Jacobite sympathizer James Erskine of Grange for 25 years when he decided she probably overheard too many of his treason plans. He had her kidnapped and held in Edinburgh for six months . From there she was taken to the Monach Islands , where she lived for two years while he spread the story of her death and prepared for her funeral. From 1734 to 1742 she was imprisoned on Hirta, which she described as "a hideous, ugly, smelly, poor island". After a failed rescue attempt, Erskine brought her to the Isle of Skye , where she later died. Her house is a large cleit near the village.

Boswell and Johnson discussed the subject in 1773 while traveling through the Hebrides. Boswell wrote: “After dinner today we discussed the extraordinary fact that Lady Grange had been sent to St. Kilda and held there for several years without any life-saving appliances. Dr. Johnson said that if M'Leod announced that he had such a place for naughty ladies, he could make the islands very profitable. "

The surrounding wall was built in 1834 when the medieval village was abandoned and a new settlement was planned some 200 meters further down the slope between Tobar Childa and the sea. This was a result of the visit to the islands by Thomas Dyke Acland, the House of Commons for Devon . Shaken by the primitive conditions, he made a donation that led to the construction of a completely new village with 30 black houses. These houses had thick dry stone walls and peat roofs. Typically they only had a small window and a small opening to vent the smoke from the peat fire that was burning in the middle of the room. As a result, the inside was blackened with soot. In winter the cattle lived in half of the house. During a severe storm in October 1860, several of these houses were damaged and only restored to such an extent that they could only be used as stables afterwards. According to Alasdair MacGregor's analysis of the settlement, the sixteen modern zinc-roofed houses between the Black Houses and the land manager's new house were built around 1862.

This “International Sea & Airport Lounge” is located by the helipad and the boat landing stage.

In the 1860s attempts were unsuccessful to improve the landing possibilities by blasting rocks. A small landing stage was built in 1877, but it was washed away by a storm two years later. In 1883 the Napier Commission, which was studying the living standards of residents of remote Scottish areas, recommended building a replacement. But it was not until 1901 that an engineer came to the island to make a new landing stage possible, which was completed the following year.

There were once three churches on Hirta. The thatched church in the cemetery in the center of the village was the largest, but the building was too small to accommodate the entire population and the congregation had to gather in the churchyard during services. St. Brendan's Church was over a kilometer away on the slopes of Ruival, and St. Columban was at the west end of the village street, but not much of these buildings has survived. At the eastern end of the village a new church and a new rectory were built in 1830; in addition, the administrator's house was added in 1860.

Buildings on other islands

Dùn seen from Ruival on Hirta with Stac Levenish in the background on the left

Dùn means “fortress”, but there is nothing on the island but a ruined wall, the building of which is said to have been built by the Firbolg a long time ago . The only "dwelling" is Sean Taigh ("old house"), a natural cave that was sometimes used as a shelter by the islanders when they were grazing the sheep or catching birds.

On Soay there is a primitive hut called Taigh Dugan ("Dugan's House"). The structure is little more than an artificial hole under a huge stone with two simple walls on the sides. The story of the creation tells of two sheep-stealing brothers of Lewis who only came to St. Kilda to cause further trouble. Dugan was exiled to Soay, where he died; the other named Fearchar Mòr was sent to Armin in Stac, where he found his life so unbearable that he threw himself into the sea.

Boreray has the Cleitean MacPhàidein , a collection of Cleitean consisting of three small shelters that are regularly used during bird hunts . There are also the ruins of the Taigh Stallar ("the house of the steward"), which resembled the Amazon's house in Gleann Mòr, although it was slightly larger and had six notched beds. According to local tradition, it was built by the "rock man" who led a revolt against the administrator of the island owner. It is possibly an example of an Iron Age wheelhouse . As a result of an outbreak of smallpox on Hirta, three men and eight boys were kept in quarantine until the following May. There are 78 cleitean camps and a small refuge on Stac an Armin . There is also a refuge used by bird hunters on the steep Stac Lee.

Media and art

Stac to Armin with Boreray on the left and Stac Lee on the right in the background

Paul Robello and Bobbie man led to the 1928 premiered silent film St Kilda - Britain's loneliest island ( St Kilda - Britain's Loneliest Isle ) directing, a production that had given the Glasgow ferry company in order. The 18 minute long film shows documentary scenes with residents of St. Kilda.

Michael Powell produced the film The Edge of the World about the danger of island depopulation in 1937 after learning of the evacuation of St Kilda . However, the film was not shot on St. Kilda, but on Foula , one of the Shetland Islands . Writer Dorothy Dunnett wrote a short story set on St. Kilda, "The Proving Climb"; it was published in 1973 in the anthology Scottish Short Stories .

In 1982, under the Scottish filmmaker Bill Bryden, the Channel 4 film Ill Fares The Land was made about the last few years before the evacuation on St. Kilda.

The fictional island of Laerg featured in Hammond Innes' 1962 novel Atlantic Fury is based on St. Kilda.

The Scottish folk rock band Runrig recorded the song Edge of the World , which is about the isolated existence of the islanders. In a 2005 opinion poll of Radio Times readers , St Kilda was voted the ninth greatest natural wonder in the British Isles. In 2007 an opera in Gaelic called St Kilda: A European Opera on the History of the Islands received funding from the Scottish Government. It was performed simultaneously on the solstice day of 2007 in six locations in Belgium, Germany, France, Austria and Scotland. As a permanent legacy, this production left a long-term time-lapse camera on Hirta. Britain's Lost World , a three-part BBC documentary series about St. Kilda, aired on June 18, 2008.

The British Post issued postage stamps depicting St. Kilda in 1986 and 2004.

In the ballad of St. Kilda on her CD Sehnsucher , published in 2006, the German pop singer Juliane Werding celebrates the evacuation of the archipelago.

literature

  • Colin Baxter, Jim Crumley: St Kilda: A portrait of Britain's remotest island landscape . Colin Baxter Photography, Biggar 1998. ISBN 0948661038
  • Margaret Buchanan: St Kilda: a Photographic Album . W. Blackwood, 1983. ISBN 0851581625
  • Richard Coates: The Place-names of St Kilda . Edwin Mellen Press, Lampeter 1990
  • Frank Fraser Darling, John Morton Boyd: Natural History in the Highlands and Islands . Bloomsbury, London 1969, ISBN 187063098X
  • Andrew Fleming: St. Kilda and the Wider World: Tales of an Iconic Island . Windgather Press, 2005, ISBN 1905119003
  • Angela Gannon / George Geddes: St Kilda. The Last and Outmost Isle . Historic Environment Scotland, Edinburgh 2015, ISBN 9781902419916
  • JA Harvie-Brown, TE Buckley: A Vertebrate Fauna of the Outer Hebrides. Pub. David Douglas, Edinburgh 1888.
  • Hamish Haswell-Smith: The Scottish Islands . Canongate, Edinburgh 2004, ISBN 1841954543
  • Roger Hutchinson: St Kilda. A People's History . Birlinn, Edinburgh 2016, ISBN 978-1-78027-293-1
  • J. Keay, J. Keay: Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland . HarperCollins, London 1994, ISBN 0002550822
  • Charles Maclean: Island on the Edge of the World: the Story of St. Kilda . Canongate, Edinburgh 1977, ISBN 978-1-8476-7472-2
  • Alasdair Alpin MacGregor: The Farthest Hebrides . Michael Joseph Ltd., London 1969, ISBN 0718106911
  • Martin Martin, 1703: " A Voyage to St. Kilda " in A Description of The Western Islands of Scotland , Appin Regiment / Appin Historical Society. Accessed March 3, 2007
  • WH Murray: The Hebrides . Heinemann, London 1966.
  • David Quine: St Kilda . Colin Baxter Island Guides, Grantown-on-Spey 2000, ISBN 1841070084
  • Tom Steel: The Life and Death of St. Kilda . Fontana, London 1988, ISBN 0006373402
  • Kenneth Williamson, J. Morton Boyd: St Kilda Summer . Hutchinson, London 1960.

further reading

  • Robert Atkinson: Island going to the remote isles, chiefly uninhabited, off the north-west corner of Scotland . William Collins, 1949. (Reprinted from Birlinn, 1995, ISBN 1874744319 )
  • Mark Butterworth: Destination St. Kilda. From Oban to Skye and the Outer Hebrides . The Islands Book Trust, Lewis, 2010. ISBN 9781907443039
  • Bob Charnley: Last Greetings of St. Kilda . Richard Stenlake, 1989. ISBN 1872074022
  • Richard Coates: The Place-Names of St. Kilda . Edwin Mellen Press, 1990. ISBN 0889460779
  • O. Gilbert: The Lichen Hunters . St Kilda: Lichens at the Edge of the World, The Book Guild Ltd., England 2004. ISBN 1857769309
  • Mary Harman: An Isle Called Shepherd: History and Culture of St. Kilda to 1930 . MacLean Press, 1996. ISBN 1899272038
  • Richard Kearton: With Nature and a Camera . Cassell and Company, London 1898
  • Campbell McCutcheon: St. Kilda: a Journey to the End of the World . Tempus, 2002. ISBN 0752423800
  • Michael Robson: St Kilda. Church, Visitors and 'natives' . The Islands Book Trust, Lewis, 2005.
  • Geoffrey P. Stell, Mary Harman: Buildings of St Kilda . Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, 1988. ISBN 011493391X

Film documents

  • St. Kilda - Britain's loneliest island ( St Kilda - Britain's Loneliest Isle ), GB 1928 (35 mm, 328 m, 16 fps, 18 min) created by Paul Robell and Bobbie Mann on behalf of the Gesellschaft für Schiffahrt , which operates between Glasgow and St Kilda was wrong. The film has been preserved and was shown during the 2010 International Silent Film Festival in Bonn.

Web links

Commons : St. Kilda  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Steel (1988), p. 254.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Hamish Haswell-Smith (2004): The Scottish Islands . Edinburgh. Canongate. Pp. 314-26
  3. ↑ See especially Maclean (1977), Steel (1988), Fleming (2005).
  4. ^ McMillan, Joyce (March 3, 2007) "St Kilda the Opera brings out the bully-boys" . Edinburgh. The Scotsman . March 3, 2007.
  5. ^ "World Heritage: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" . UNESCO. January 3, 2007.
  6. ↑ Steel (1988), p. 273.
  7. ↑ Buchanan (1983), pp. 2-6.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g Martin, Martin (1703).
  9. ↑ Tobar Childa and Toubir-Kilda are one and the same
  10. ↑ a b c d Maclean (1977) p. 33.
  11. ↑ Steel (1988) p. 27.
  12. ↑ Fleming (2005) p. 27. Maclean does not state which island caused the confusion, but Fleming equates Skildir with Haskeir.
  13. ↑ Quine (2000) p. 21.
  14. ↑ Nicholas de Nicolay (1583): Vraye & exacte description Hydrographique des costes maritimes d'Escosse & des Isles Orchades Hebrides avec partie d'Angleterre & d'Irlande servant a la navigation . Edinburgh. National Library of Scotland. Accessed December 22, 2007.
  15. ↑ Martin (1703) states: "All sailors call it St. Kila, and St. Kilder on nautical charts, especially on a Dutch nautical chart from Ireland to Zealand, published in 1663 by Peter Goas in Amsterdam". At this point, Waghenaer's maps had been published for almost a hundred years, but it is unclear whether his misspelling led to slang usage or whether the spoken version has a completely different origin. In a later section on the Flannan Isles traditions, Martin adds: "It is absolutely unlawful to call the island of St. Kilda (which is thirty miles south) by its Irish name Shepherd, but only the High Country". This refers to the habit of the inhabitants to refer to Hirta as "the high country" and Boreray as "the north country". See Fleming (2005).
  16. ↑ Haswell-Smith (2004) suggests that it could be EI hirt , which means dangerous or dead-like.
  17. ↑ Steel (1988) pp. 26-27.
  18. ^ WH Murray (1966) The Hebrides . London. Heinemann, pp. 196, 236.
  19. ^ Richard Coates (1990).
  20. ↑ Quine (2000) pp. 99, 109, 111, 125, 137, 145.
  21. ^ Maclean (1977), p. 18.
  22. ↑ Fleming (2005) p. 64.
  23. ^ "Dual World Heritage Status For Unique Scottish Islands" . National Trust for Scotland. Accessed January 6, 2007.
  24. ↑ Heights given are from Haswell-Smith (2004), although the National Trust website states 191 and 165 meters.
  25. ^ Maclean (1977), p. 19.
  26. ↑ Baxter and Crumley (1988), p. 87. "Village Bay and its hills ... an amazing illusion, a masterful St. Kilda illusion."
  27. ↑ a b c d e J. Keay and J. Keay (1994) Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland . London. HarperCollins. Pp. 840-2.
  28. ↑ See e.g. Steel (1988)
  29. ^ Murray (1966), p. 163.
  30. ↑ a b c d F. Fraser Darling and JM Boyd (1969) Natural History in the Highlands and Islands. London. Bloomsbury.
  31. ^ A b "Protected Areas and World Heritage — St Kilda". ( Memento of July 5, 2007 in the web archive archive.today ) United Nations Environment Program: World Conservation Monitoring Center. Accessed March 18, 2007.
  32. ↑ a b "St Kilda World Heritage Site Management Plan 2003 - 2008" (pdf; 1.07 MB) National Trust for Scotland. Accessed January 24, 2007.
  33. ↑ Steel (1988), p. 199.
  34. ↑ Benvie, Neil (2000) Scotland's Wildlife . London. Aurum Press.
  35. ↑ James Fisher and George Waterston (November 1941) The Breeding Distribution, History and Population of The Fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis) in the British Isles . Edinburgh. The Journal of Animal Ecology, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 204-272. Accessed March 24, 2007.
  36. ^ "The mammals on Mykines" Heima.olivant.fo. Accessed May 22, 2007.
  37. ^ "Soays of America" ( Memento of the original from August 17, 2001 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. soaysofamerica.org Accessed December 24, 2007. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.soaysofamerica.org
  38. ^ "Livestock breeds" Oklahoma State University Department of Animal Science. Accessed March 15, 2007.
  39. ↑ Quine (2000) p. 30.
  40. ↑ "St Kilda National Nature Reserve: A world apart." ( Memento of the original from February 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (pdf) Scottish Natural Heritage. Accessed March 18, 2007. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.snh.org.uk
  41. ^ AJ Richards, CC Ferguson-Smyth: Taraxacum pankhurstianum (Asteraceae), a new dandelion endemic to St Kilda, Outer Hebrides, Scotland , in: New Journal of Botany 2.1 (2012) 16-19.
  42. ^ R. Gauld, TE Bagenal, JH Connell: The marine fauna and flora of St. Kilda, 1952 . In: Scottish Naturalist 65 , 1953, pp. 29-49, cited in Darling and Boyd (1969), p. 184.
  43. ↑ Steel (1988), p. 32.
  44. ^ "Life in St. Kilda," a report by J. Sands in "Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Art," 1877. Accessed April 1, 2007.
  45. ↑ Maclean (1977), pp. 136-8.
  46. ↑ "St Kilda mailboat" Glasgow Digital Library. Accessed March 4, 2008.
  47. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1775) A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland . Republished, Chapman & Dodd, London, 1924. p. 121.
  48. ^ Cooper, Derek (1979) Road to the Isles: Travelers in the Hebrides 1770-1914 . London. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
  49. ^ Maclean (1977), p. 26.
  50. ^ Steel (1988), pp. 44-6
  51. ^ Balfour, Alan, and McCrone, David (2005) "Creating a Scottish Parliament" Edinburgh. StudioLR. ISBN 0955001609 . Accessed January 4, 2008. Miralles wrote:
    St. Kilda's Parliament of the late 19th
    Remembering this is not an archaic activity
    My generation (myself) experienced this feeling
    Think about the different movements that exist today
    Architecture should be able to talk about it.
  52. ↑ See, for example, Steel (1988), p. 71, citations from Macauley (1756), MacCulloch (1819) and Ross (1887).
  53. ↑ Fleming (2005), p. 107 110.
  54. ↑ Steel (1988), pp. 33-4.
  55. ↑ A nineteenth-century commentator wrote, “If St. Kilda isn't the long-sought eutopia , where are we going to find it? Where is the country that knows neither weapons, money, medicine, care, politics nor taxes? This land is St. Kilda. ”Maclean, Lachlan (1838) Sketches on the Island of St Kilda . McPhun.
  56. ↑ St Kilda: Revised Nomination of St Kilda for inclusion in the World Heritage Site List (January 2003) (pdf; 7.46 MB) National Trust for Scotland. Last accessed on June 19, 2012.
  57. ↑ A Skaill knife is a stone with a sharp end that you can cut. This Neolithic tool was named after Skaill Bay , where the World Heritage Site of Skara Brae is located. See “Skaill knife” (pdf) Historic Scotland. Accessed on March 21, 2007 ( Memento of February 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  58. ↑ Fleming (2005), pp. 37-56.
  59. ↑ Fleming (2005), p. 27, quotation from: AB Taylor (1968) "The Norsemen in St Kilda". Saga book of the Viking Society . 17 . 116-43.
  60. ↑ Fleming (2005), p. 63.
  61. ↑ Maclean (1972), p. 34, citing John of Fordun's Scotichronicon from around 1380. Circius is the Latin name for the northwest wind.
  62. ↑ D. Munro (1818) Description of the Western Isles of Scotland called Hybrides, by Mr. Donald Munro, High Dean of the Isles, who traveled through most of them in the year 1549. Miscellanea Scotica, 2.
  63. ^ Reverend Kenneth Macauley (1764) History of St Kilda . London
  64. ↑ Fleming (2005), p. 28.
  65. ↑ JA Harvie-Brown and TE Buckley (1888) Facing P. XXIV.
  66. ↑ This date is given by Quine (2000) for the stranding of the group on Stac an Armin, (see “Buildings on other islands”), although Steel (1988) states that the eruption took place in 1724.
  67. ^ Maclean (1977), p. 125.
  68. ↑ Fleming (2005), p. 32.
  69. ↑ Maclean (1977), pp. 115-6.
  70. ^ John Sands , cited in Maclean (1977), p. 117.
  71. ↑ Maclean (1977), pp. 116-119.
  72. ↑ However, the residents of St. Kilda were not as naive as they sometimes appeared. "For example, when they boarded a yacht they pretended to think that all the polished brass was gold and that the owner must be immeasurably rich." Reverend Neil MacKenzie, quoted in Fleming (2005), p. 8.
  73. ↑ Collacott R. Neonatal tetanus in St Kilda. SMJ 1981; 26: 224-7.
  74. ^ Stride P: St Kilda, the neonatal tetanus tragedy of the nineteenth century and some twenty-first century answers. JR Coll Physicians Edinb. 2008; 38 (1): 70-7. PMID 19069042 full text (PDF file; 226 kB)
  75. ^ Steel (1988), pp. 150-5.
  76. ^ Maclean (1977), p. 140.
  77. ↑ Fleming (2005), p. 165.
  78. ↑ http://www.mnb.seekrieg14-18.de/MNB_004_IV-2010.htm
  79. ↑ Steel (1988), p. 167.
  80. ^ Neil Gilles, quoted in Steel (1988), p. 167.
  81. ↑ Steel (1988), p. 168.
  82. ↑ The Evacuation kilda.org.uk Accessed December 2, 2008
  83. ↑ This is still a problem even in the 21st century. The National Trust announced in 2006 that planning for the 2007 working groups would be halted as "adverse weather conditions prevented our supplies from reaching St. Kilda and our next opportunity to move supplies out would not be until May 2007." "Work party information “ National Trust for Scotland. Accessed March 18, 2007.
  84. ^ "Poison in Paradise" National Trust for Scotland. Accessed June 20, 2008.
  85. ↑ Andrew A. Meharg, Clare Deacon et al. a .: Ancient manuring practices pollute arable soils at the St Kilda World Heritage Site, Scottish North Atlantic. In: Chemosphere. 64, 2006, p. 1818, doi : 10.1016 / j.chemosphere.2006.01.076 .
  86. ↑ a b 80 years ago St. Kilda was evacuated - Today one of only two survivors remembers leaving the island. The Scotsman, August 17, 2010, accessed June 3, 2014
  87. ^ Maclean (1977), p. 142.
  88. ^ Francis Thompson: St Kilda and other Hebridean Outliers . David & Charles, 1970, ISBN 071534885X .
  89. ↑ Steel (1988), pp. 229-32.
  90. ↑ Last surviving St Kildan Rachel Johnson this - BBC News. In: BBC News. Retrieved April 7, 2016 (UK English).
  91. ↑ Steel (1988), p. 234.
  92. ↑ Quine (2000), p. 90.
  93. ^ A b David W. Earl and Peter Dobson: "Scottish Island Air Crashes" , wanadoo.co.uk. Accessed June 27, 2008.
  94. ^ Steel (1988), p. 236.
  95. ↑ John C. Barry (1980): "Wartime Wrecks on St. Kilda" After the Battle . 30 p. 28.
  96. ↑ Steel (1988), pp. 238-55.
  97. ^ "Advice for visitors" (2004) National Trust for Scotland. Accessed March 18, 2007. Also states that the Puff Inn name is misleading as the establishment is not open to the public.
  98. ↑ Steel (1988), pp. 256-7.
  99. ↑ "Scotland's National Nature Reserves — St Kilda" ( Memento of the original from May 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. National Trust for Scotland. Accessed March 16, 2007. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nnr-scotland.org.uk
  100. ↑ "Scotland's National Nature Reserves — News and Events" ( Memento of the original from January 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (December 9, 2004) National Trust for Scotland. Accessed March 17, 2007. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.snh.org.uk
  101. ^ Marine Environment gains World Heritage Protection (July 2, 2004) The National Trust for Scotland. Accessed December 4, 2008.
  102. ^ "World Heritage Sites in Scotland" ( Memento of May 29, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (July 21, 2007) Scottish Parliament Information Center. Research Note RN 01/73. Accessed January 3, 2007.
  103. ^ "Dual World Heritage Status For Unique Scottish Islands" (July 14, 2005) National Trust for Scotland. Accessed January 6, 2007.
  104. ^ "Protected Areas and World Heritage - Factsheet" ( Memento from July 5, 2007 in the web archive archive.today ) UN Environment Program. Accessed January 24, 2007. The site defines the site as within a square with coordinates 57 ° 54'36 "N / 08 ° 42'W, 57 ° 46'N / 08 ° 42'W, 57 ° 46'N / 08 ° 25'42 "W, 57 ° 54'36" N / 08 ° 25'42 "W.
  105. ^ "St Kilda National Nature Reserve" ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) National Trust for Scotland. Accessed March 16, 2007.
  106. ↑ Richard Booth: "St Kilda: The Holy Grail of UK Diving?" ( Memento of October 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (July 2005) BSAC Travel Club. Accessed March 18, 2007.
  107. ↑ Alan McKirdy, John Gordon and Roger Crofts: Land of Mountain and Flood: The Geology and Landforms of Scotland . Edinburgh, Birlinn 2007. p. 220.
  108. ↑ "St Kilda Update" ( memento of the original from November 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . NTS. Accessed February 10, 2008. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nts.org.uk
  109. ^ "Rats probe under way on St Kilda" BBC. Accessed February 10, 2008.
  110. ↑ Jack Gaston: Early bird saves UK heritage site . In: Lloyd's List Daily Commercial News , Informa Australia Pty Ltd, May 29, 2008, p. 22. 
  111. ↑ Quine (2000), pp. 91-2.
  112. ↑ They are possibly of Pictish origin and date from 400 to 900 AD. Fleming (2005), p. 23.
  113. ↑ Maclean (1977), pp. 27-8.
  114. ↑ Maclean (1977), pp. 65-6.
  115. ↑ Quine (2000), p. 32.
  116. ↑ Quine (2000), p. 51.
  117. ↑ Quine (2000), pp. 52-3
  118. ↑ Quine (2000), p. 30.
  119. ^ Maclean (1977), p. 66
  120. ↑ Quine (2000), p. 48.
  121. ^ Steel (1988), pp. 31-2.
  122. ↑ Keay & Keay (1994), p. 358.
  123. ^ "St Kilda: Fascinating Facts" National Trust for Scotland. Accessed August 19, 2007.
  124. ↑ James Boswell (1785) Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. [1]
  125. ↑ Steel (1988), pp. 72-3.
  126. ^ MacGregor (1969), p. 129.
  127. ↑ Steel (1988), p. 29.
  128. ↑ Quine (2000), pp. 29-30.
  129. ^ Maclean (1977), p. 31.
  130. ↑ Quine (2000), p. 37.
  131. ^ Maclean (1977), p. 29.
  132. ↑ Maclean (1977), p. 28.
  133. ↑ Fleming (2005), p. 58.
  134. ↑ Maclean (1977), pp. 48/9
  135. ↑ Quine (2000), pp. 142 and 146.
  136. ^ Scottish Screen Archive: ST. KILDA - BRITAIN'S LONELIEST ISLE . Retrieved August 16, 2010
  137. ^ The Edge of the World IMDb. Accessed May 25, 2007.
  138. ^ Scottish Arts Council: Scottish Short Stories . Collins, 1973, ISBN 0002218518 .
  139. ^ "Ill Fares The Land" BFI. March 1, 2008.
  140. ↑ Edge of the World (lyrics) Accessed January 17, 2016.
  141. ^ "Caves win 'natural wonder' vote" (August 2, 2005) BBC News. Accessed May 25, 2007.
  142. ^ "St Kilda: A European Opera (MacTalla nan Eun)" ( Memento December 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Events Scotland. Accessed March 3, 2007.
  143. ↑ Steven McKenzie (June 23, 2007). "Opera celebrates St Kilda history" BBC Scotland. Accessed August 11, 2007.
  144. ^ St Kilda Timelapse ( March 1, 2012 memento in the Internet Archive ) designiscentral.com. Accessed May 7, 2007.
  145. ^ "Britain's Lost World" BBC. Accessed June 20, 2008.
  146. ↑ St. Kilda (1986, 2004) worldheritage.dk. Accessed on December 8, 2008 ( Memento from September 30, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 9, 2009 .