Am Bratach No. 198
April 2008
editor@bratach.co.uk

by Jaqqi Carney
St Kilda — the edge of the world

It is no easy feat getting your feet on St Kilda, writes JAQQI CARNEY. After a week on the Western Isles, with daily phone calls to see if the boat was sailing, I eventually was asked to be at the boat in Leverburgh at 7.00am on my last day and was told that the conditions looked good for a landfall, but there was no guarantee of this as the weather can change her mind faster than I can! Many people plan their holidays in the hope a trip to St Kilda will be the highlight but due to the unpredictability of the weather this is often not the case, so I was extremely lucky to make it.

To get to such a remote, rugged and staggeringly beautiful landscape it needs a mode of transport to match — exhilarating and unforgettable. We got this from Kilda Cruises. The “Orca” is a very fast boat (twenty knots) and if you likes high speed thrills and those scary fairground rides, you will be quite at home being tossed on the open seas with your stomach near your mouth for a large proportion of the journey. Not for the faint hearted I was told. However our skipper, Angus, having lived and fished here all his life, is no stranger to these waters and I had no doubt we were in safe hands.

The unique archipelago of St Kilda, the remotest part of the British Isles, lies forty-one miles west of Benbecula. It is a hauntingly beautiful place and the first glimpse of these monolithic islands rising out of the sea is simply breathtaking.

St Kilda sits on the Atlantic Continental Shelf and comprises of a group of four small islands: Hirta (the main island), Dun, Soay and Boreray, plus the islets of Stac Lee, Stac an Armin and Levenish. They are the remains of a Tertiary ring volcano.

The weather is strongly influenced by the North Atlantic Drift, with cool summers and mild winters. The wind often blows at Force 3, although gales with gusts of over 100 knots are not uncommon. It is wise to dress appropriately and like most of northern Scotland it is best to be prepared for all eventualities (winter woollies and suncream).

However, they do get some good weather too. On the day I visited it was a grey, dreich start, but the sun came out at lunchtime, so I was glad I had heeded my mother’s advice and worn layers. You have to land by dinghy as big boats can’t land at the pier, and the first thing which strikes you is the MoD buildings which on landfall partly hide the village from view. They sit uncomfortably in their typical military architectural style, but the presence of the MoD is vital for ongoing work on the island, and they are now another chapter in the history of St Kilda.

I spent an amazing afternoon wandering round the “street” which includes a museum in a restored blackhouse; and the many cleiteans, small storehouses that the islanders built to store and dry their goods (there are approximately 1,400 of these on the islands and they are a striking feature from both the approach to the island and on landing). I explored the beach and upper slopes and was closely followed by a flock of Soay sheep; we had been told not to disturb them or follow them; but they were following me so I had to stand still until they all dispersed to higher slopes than I would have dared try!
Although very quiet when outwith the village area, it was all go in the centre, as it was supplies day; so when the helicopter landed, three vehicles appeared from nowhere to stock up with vital supplies. There was also a research party trying to catch the Soay sheep which had us all in stitches, as the sheep are not used to being penned in, which left them escaping and the research party exhausted as Hirta seems to be all uphill.

The sheep have been preserved on the island almost unchanged in 4,000 years and are one of the most primitive breeds in the world. The island also has two unique subspecies: the St Kilda fieldmouse, and the St Kilda wren which is a larger sub-species of the mainland wren. I only saw one in the roof structure of one of the older houses.

The cliffs of Boreray rise sheer to 382m (higher than the Empire State Building) and the north face of Conachair on Hirta is 426m high. The two rock stacs off Boreray are the highest in the British Isles: Stac an Armin 191m and Stac Lee 165m. Cruising round the cliffs and stacs was like being in another world: I cannot explain in words the sheer height and atmosphere which encompassed us all whilst the “Orca” anchored quietly beside them.

These remote high cliffs provide a refuge for some of the most important colonies of seabirds in the Atlantic, and St Kilda is a major breeding site for puffins, northern fulmars, leach’s petrels and northern gannets. The sight and sound of hundreds of these birds — in particular the gannets — among the stacs is an awesome experience and not one I can describe adequately to you.

For more than 4,000 years, a fragile community lived in this stark but beautiful environment, catching seabirds for food, feathers, oil and rent, crafting and fishing. The birds were taken during the breeding season from March to September, and involved bare foot climbing on precipitous cliff faces. Today it is hard to imagine how they clung on (in more ways than one) in this most remote place.

However, as contact with the outside world increased in the mid-nineteenth century, they began to rely more on imports and on revenue from tourists. Finally, on August 29 1930, the evacuation of the remaining thirty-six islanders brought to a close an extraordinary story of survival.

As a result of its special significance, St Kilda has been awarded an assortment of important designations, and it is, since July 2005, one of only twenty-four “mixed” World Heritage Sites in the World.

Today, three organisations, The National Trust for Scotland, Scottish Natural Heritage and the MoD, work in partnership to further a continuing programme of conservation and research on the islands to ensure the care and protection of this World Heritage Site
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James Fisher, a naturalist, wrote in 1947: “Whatever he studies, the future observer of St Kilda will be haunted the rest of his life by the place, and tantalised by the impossibility of describing it, to those who have not seen it.”

Jaqqi Carney, who comes from Bettyhill, works in Inverness.

|| The islands, whose exiled Gaelic-speaking population now only numbers two, was the focal point of “St Kilda, A European Opera”, performed simultaneously in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and Stornoway last summer.