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Foula - The Edge of the World

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St. Kilda and Foula.

An Islands Book Trust Event

Holbourn         Randall           Robson
15th August 2002

Contents

1   St Kilda and Foula — Report On Discussion by John Randall

2   Why not to live in St Kilda by Michael Robson          

3   Foula and St Kilda by Isobel Holbourn       

3.1    Introduction       

3.2    Comparison between Foula and St. Kilda  

3.2.1    Similarities  

3.2.2    Differences 

1    St Kilda and Foula — Report On Discussion by John Randall

Following the talks from Michael Robson and Isobel Holbourn there was a lively discussion on the issues raised. People from the Western Isles were clearly fascinated by Isobel’s account of the determination of a small com­munity in another island to survive, and many questions were asked about this. Isobel reckoned that perhaps 9 of the 29 current residents of Foula were descended from families who had lived in the island for over 100 years, and the point that incomers with the right attitudes could strengthen a community was made.

 There seemed to be agreement that the factors mentioned by Isobel were likely to be relevant to explaining the differing fortunes of St Kilda and Foula, although Michael commented that in his view almost everything Isobel had said about Foula was also true of St Kilda. Why then the different outcome? Perhaps I could offer some personal thoughts to stimulate further discussion.

 First, we must beware of the risks of rewriting history with the benefit of hindsight. The fact that St Kilda was evacuated in 1930 tends to colour our view of its previous history, as though everything which went before led inevitably to decline and depopulation. We must remember that St Kilda survived as a community for many centuries. The greatest challenges which it and Foula experienced to their survival came relatively very late on in their periods of human history, and relate fundamentally to growing interaction with the outside world and how increased knowledge of the outside world affected the attitudes and expectations of the islanders.

 I suspect that it is in the different ways in which the two communities dealt with these challenges that we must seek an answer to the basic question posed by the seminar. An important aspect of interaction with the outside world was tourism, a point brought out in the discussion. It seems relevant that St Kilda for various reasons became a fashionable place for tourists to visit in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on a scale and in a way Foula did not. Moreover, it seems the case that Foula in more recent years has been better able to deal with the impact of visitors — Isobel was clear that the islanders saw tourism as an opportunity to further Foula's development but were determined to ensure it happens on their terms in a way which does not undermine the independence and self-respect of the islanders. Accounts of tourists visiting St Kilda to inspect and trade goods with the natives suggest that the islanders there were certainly not in control of the process, and some have argued that it was the pernicious effects of this tourism which undermined the confidence of the St Kildans in their traditional economic activities and in their whole outlook on the future.

 Were there deeper reasons for this relative failure on St Kilda? This is perhaps where the ideas floated by Isobel about the different background of the people and the influence of the Church may be relevant. Land tenure and attitudes towards authority in the two island groups may also have a part to play. As Michael emphasised, and Isobel recognised, it is dangerous to generalise about such matters. Some Ministers on St Kilda were certainly more involved in and supportive of the material needs of the islanders than others. At the end of the day, there is no conclusive answer to the questions posed, and it was no surprise that the discussion session following the talks did not find one.

 The Islands Book Trust would welcome views on the issues raised. I be­lieve the St Kilda/Foula event demonstrated the scope for organising more events of this nature involving comparative research and the bringing to­gether of people from different backgrounds to discuss issues of common interest. My thanks to both speakers, and to all who attended and took part in the discussion, for their contributions to a successful first event for the Trust.

  2    Why not to live in St Kilda by Michael Robson

In the course of the nineteenth century the island of Foula, Shetland, was called "the St Kilda of the north", and in the 1930s it served, rather curi­ously, as the setting for a film made about St Kilda. Certainly the two have some points of resemblance. Both have high sea cliffs, sweeping slopes, and landing places difficult to negotiate except in the calmest of weather. They also had populations experiencing comparable opportunities and difficulties. But Foula today is still inhabited, while St Kilda was abandoned in 1930. To examine why requires a much wider exploration into the occupation and de­sertion of remote islands than is possible here, and only the St Kilda aspect can be touched on.

 Foula is a single island some 15 to 20 miles from the rest of Shetland, whereas St Kilda is a group forty or fifty miles out into the Atlantic from the main chain of the Outer Hebrides. "Foula" is the island's real name, but "St Kilda" is a misleadingly false name arising possibly from a mistake on a map or chart. Distance and name may both have played a part, though an indirect one, in the ultimate fate of the community on St Kilda, yet the origins of its decline are many and difficult to trace.

St Kilda seems of old to have been considered a dark, gloomy and un­appealing place, and an early record suggests that it was thought of as a prison, its captive inhabitants being victims either of isolation or of a de­liberate policy. One tradition says that when most of the people died of smallpox in the late 1720s the settlement there was replenished by sending unwanted offenders from Skye or Uist; and until very recently irritated par­ents in Lewis, Barra and other islands would tell unruly children to "get away to St Kilda". A really bad situation in Tiree might give rise to "I'd rather be in St Kilda", the epitome of bad places. One theory about the true name of St Kilda, "Hut", which is of uncertain significance, is that it meant "death".

 It may be wondered why, over many centuries, St Kilda was inhabited at all, yet it had occupants in prehistoric times, and within the recorded period a population that may have averaged rather more than a hundred after about 1650. Birds from the cliffs were a main and normally reliable source of food, so the ability to work the nesting and roosting ledges was an essential requirement of the people. Fishing would have needed knowledge of the sea and of boats, but the absence of timber meant that boats had to be supplied from elsewhere and there was a persistent belief among many outsiders that St Kilda did not produce very skilful seamen. Whether this was true or not, the surrounding ocean and the equally dangerous landing place limited the opportunities to fish in reasonable safety and there was in any case no means of export.

 Accounts of St Kilda from the seventeenth century until around 1850 were largely, though not entirely, the work of Protestant visitors whose approach and attitudes were coloured by their religious beliefs. Several of them were churchmen, including missionaries to the people who had started on their careers as teachers or catechists and were ordained specifically to St Kilda only, in order that they might baptise and marry. Their congrega­tion was a captive audience. When Alexander Buchan went there in 1705 he felt he had to try to eradicate ancient practices associated with the old Catholic faith, while at the same time finding the daily living conditions and the loneliness almost unbearable. He survived there for over twenty years, but his successors were often absentees, leaving the islanders to their own devices. Neil MacKenzie in the 1830s sought like Buchan to get rid of island customs of which he disapproved such as dancing and singing, though some­what secretively, it seems, he made a collection of island songs. The Free Church minister from 1865 to 1889, John MacKay, was described by visitors as a sort of religious tyrant dominating life, and he has been blamed as a root cause of the eventual abandonment of the island. However descriptions of him in the 1870s and 1880s were unfortunately by commentators heavily biased against him and his church, and are therefore of little value. Al­though the missionaries presumably had some success in blocking the flow of long-established native traditions, there is no sound evidence that any church doctrine led directly to evacuation.

 A blend of many influences and agents may have done so. From early times the dark, depressing image, the restricted nature of life, the compul­sions under which people struggled, the treatment by proprietors and tacks-men, these and other aspects cannot have encouraged an existence amid a remoteness preventing communication, contact, and help in an emergency. Disease too came to play a significant part in the matter of survival. The smallpox epidemic might have led to the desertion of St Kilda, and what is surprising is that this did not happen, but that from an economic stand­point it was considered worth allocating people to fill up the space. Soon afterwards the deaths of young children from a form of tetanus which may have been introduced by one of the newly arrived immigrants were to be an important factor in limiting the size of the population and in adding further gloom to the scene, a factor that was not eliminated until the Free Church minister Angus Fiddes managed to do so in the 1890s. And in conjunction with the infant mortality problems of marriage and interbreeding were a natural outcome.

 Perhaps the outside world was the main cause behind the eventual depar­ture of the remaining St Kilda population. In the later eighteenth century visitors began to appear on sailing ships, eager to see what Martin Martin had described a century earlier and motivated by curiosity. For all they knew, in St Kilda was a community of barbaric natives to be seen within the bounds of Britain, a tribe speaking a strange language, living in an ex­traordinary island over which distance and an odd name cast an enticing, romantic glow. In 1838 the first steam-powered vessel arrived full of tourists, one at least of whom was aware that such visits might bring corrupting forces. By 1900 regular tourist cruises were frequent, with a standard form of three-stage island entertainment to amuse them — trade of produce for gifts, houses opened to satisfy peering passengers, and displays of fowling on the cliffs. The islanders became increasingly dependent upon the world outside, a dependence fostered by some islanders such as Alex Ferguson, one of a conspicuously intelligent and leading family, who migrated to Glasgow and established a business.

 Emigration itself was an attraction long before the evacuation. People left to live in Harris and elsewhere or to seek medical care when transport made it possible. In 1852 a large proportion of the inhabitants set off for Australia, thereby dealing an unbalancing blow to those who stayed at home. Thought of emigration tempted the islanders from then on, and a proprietor who found the St Kilda islands an uneconomic possession and an increasing liability was similarly tempted to be rid of the people if not the place. The difficulty of persuading government to assist life caused added frustration.

 For Foula and St Kilda the problems of one must have lessons for the other and many were common to both. They are, however, more likely to be or to have been of a practical kind, though some would claim a detectable difference between racial origins may have to bear some responsibility for a contrast in the history of the two places.

3    Foula and St Kilda by Isobel Holbourn

3.1    Introduction

    St Kilda and Foula, likely to be very similar you would think, both islands consigned to boxes on the map of Scotland, one west, the other north-west, away out in the Atlantic, both with massive sea cliffs and huge seabird colonies, both islands with small vulnerable communities trying to make a living from land and sea.

I've never made it to St Kilda, yet, but I've been fascinated by its story since my first connection with Foula at the age of 15 when my Dad became the school-teacher and lay preacher in the island in 1956. My first summer there I saw an old 8mm version of the film about the evacuation of St Kilda which was made in Foula in 1936, Michael Powell's "The Edge of the World". Most of the community in Foula then took part in that film, and there's an old lady of 84 who tells me she was paid sixpence an hour as an extra at the cliff scene, and to dance the Foula Reel.

 But unfortunately for 50 years and more after 1936, Foula suffered greatly from that association by proxy as it were, with island decline and evacuation. Over and over again in my early days in Foula we heard from authority that they wouldn't repair the school, they wouldn't pipe in water, they wouldn't improve the pier, because Foula would be empty in 10 years time. They said it immediately after the war in 1946, they were saying it when my Dad took up the teacher post hi 1956 with a population of 59; they would only put in a dilapidated wooden hut in 1966 as a school building to see through the last of the bairns they said, my 3 boys among them. A public water scheme had been drawn up in 1961 but was refused spending consent — WHY? because Foula couldn't guarantee the size of population in 10 years time — 10 years later in 1971 spending consent was refused a second tune as "it would be a waste of money." It's banging your head against a brick wall constantly coming up against that insidious underlying negative attitude. We eventually got a public water supply in 1982 when Foula's population had not only refused to lie down and die, but was actu­ally increasing. And running water allowed us to exploit the potential for tourism. But there was a difficult time before that ...

 In the late 1960's 2 families left the isle, 4 adults and 9 children, because the oldest child of each family had reached 12 and had to go to the mainland to secondary school. Foula only had a small 30 foot mailboat to cross 20 miles of open Atlantic — crossings were only possible in the best of weather and the boat was hauled up in davits between times as the only landing place was exposed and dangerous. The secondary school-children never got home the whole of term-time and had to stay in the school hostel. I remember my Highers year going back to school in Lerwick from Foula at the end of August, and not getting home until Easter the following year, 7 months later, having sat my Prelims and Highers in that time. It fairly taught you to be resourceful and independent, but it was lonely at times, and certainly not a lot of fun for a 12 year old.

   So in 1968 Foula was left with a population of 27 men, women and children — and maybe here at this point we have the crunch. When St Kilda's population fell to that level they felt their way of life couldn't be maintained, and it seems they were unable or unwilling to change. The request for evacuation in 1930 was the result.

Foula folk are an independent and tenacious lot, and we all love the island passionately and were determined to stay, whatever it took. In 1969 with the coming of Loganair to Shetland, the Foula community saw their opportunity and took the hank in their own hand and we set to and built an airstrip, starting in 1969 and finishing in 1972. No mean feat for 27 men, women and bairns, 2 grey Fergy TF20 tractors, one trailer and a back-actor. Every single person, old and young, contributed in whatever way they could. The only suitable site on the common grazings had to be de-crofted, tons of peat moor had to be carted off an area 500 yards long by 25 yards wide, the underlying clay coated with hardcore from the local quarry, then top-surfaced and rolled. The younger physically able folk did the harder work, the pensioners looked after the youngest bairns, the primary school boys broke stones after school, women-folk kept the croft work going and did the paper-work. We carefully recorded every hour of voluntary labour at a pound an hour, which the Highlands & Islands Development Board matched pound for pound — this grant money kept the vehicles fuelled and repaired. No-one was paid a penny for their labour.

3.2    Comparison between Foula and St. Kilda

   So what were the similarities and significant differences between the two island communities? Of course no-one can be definitive or comprehensive about this, but I can offer you my thoughts from the Foula perspective for discussion later.

3.2.1    Similarities

First the similarities:

    Both islands were largely "closed" communities for the greater part of the year and had to live off the natural resources of land and sea. Both islands had limited arable areas with extensive steep hill grazing. The crops were similar — tatties, barley & oats, vegetables, and hay; hardy indigenous sheep and kye produced milk, butter, beef, mutton, and wool; and there were fish, seabirds, shellfish, and feathers, (but I want to say more about fish and seabirds later). Both islands developed ways of preserving food for winter, but a poor growing season, or natural occurrences like tattie blight or accidents to livestock, could severely curtail food supplies. Long hard winters often left food shortages in the spring, and the ravages of deprivation on both people and livestock. The return of the seabirds and the laying of eggs was often the first relief, too late for some with deaths often occurring in February and March. The population in both islands were particularly vulnerable to infection having little outside contact in winter and no resistance to even the mildest common cold.

   Also both communities were thrown back on their own human resources for most of the year. In Foula certainly this developed certain social mecha­nisms and procedures which enabled a small population to endure the long periods of isolation with hardiness and humour. It was never spoken about but there was an underlying recognition that we were all in the same boat, no-one had much money, we depended on the island's resources and on what our labours during spring, summer and autumn provided for the long dark winter months. The pattern of life during the crofting year was much the same for everyone, with peats being cut and cured, crops sown and har­vested, fish and flesh salted and dried in the roof, or wet-salted in tubs. Households with no able-bodied men were able to "bid casters" — that was to set on a day where they asked about 6 or 8 men to cut the household's peats for the year. It was done voluntarily and turned into a social occasion with much leg-pulling and fun and games as the ladies of the house provided a hot dinner and a bottle of beer by way of thanks. This way the community recognised each other's essential needs and tried to fulfil them — fishermen freely handed out fish and shellfish to all islanders who wanted them when they had a good catch, and would draw extra boxes of piltocks and mackerel for their neighbours to salt and dry for winter fish. There was exceptional generosity and sharing in good times and in bad.

 I remember my astonishment during one long dearth in the winter (a dearth was when the mailboat was storm-stayed for a long time) when one man halved the tiny amount of tobacco he had left and gave it to his neigh­bour who had none. I remember another dearth when we had a whist drive to cheer us all up and the prize was half a pound of Echo margarine. Dearths were strange, there would be shortages of certain things, usually tobacco, sugar, paraffin maybe, soap on one occasion, but big supplies of other com­modities. I still have difficulty looking porage and lentil soup in the face after the 77-day dearth in 1961.

    Foula had its winter activities too — lasses were "bidden" to carders weekends where they would card large quantities of wool ready to spin, and all sleep on a muckle flatchie on the floor. Again work was turned into fun and a social occasion. Throughout the winter women knitted for their families, and haps and spencers to sell, men wove cloth, made shoes and clogs, and did woodwork in the barn. Some were expert boat-builders, some made the famous Foula barrows, others practical things like furniture or spade or tushker hefts. There were at least 2 smiddies in the isle, doing repairs and providing all the metal work, tusker blades, spade irons, rims for barrows, and the like.

    But in spite of everyone's efforts, at the end of a long winter Foula is prone to suffer from barbed wire disease, Foula-it-is I call it, when folk are at a bit of a low ebb, and get narky with each other, get things out of proportion, quarrel and get upset too readily. Women-folk recognise the need for creating pleasant little social occasions, taking time off from chores to meet and share hobbies. Men start getting boats and creels ready for the sea, looking forward to the better weather.

3.2.2    Differences

So what are the differences that I can identify?

1. Firstly the different time in the century — the request to evacuate St Kilda in 1930 was early in the Depression years; and in 1969, nearly 40 years later, at the end of the swinging sixties, the Foula community built an airstrip in order to survive. 1 don't know enough about the different philosophies and economic factors in 1930 and 1969 — perhaps our discussion later can throw some light on this.

2. Secondly geographic distance - isolated and difficult to get to as it is, Foula is 20 miles from the nearest land in Shetland, but had ongoing contact with the outside world through herring gutting, whaling and the merchant navy. St Kilda is more than double that distance from the nearest land and outside contact was much more limited. The community there would I expect suffer much more from being enclosed and the social effects of isolation would be more extreme. Foula had some services, St Kilda precious few. Again a point for debate.

3. The third factor which I personally think was very significant was the different culture of the two communities. The St Kildans were Gaelic speakers, Celts, with I assume a good measure of Celtic fatalism. Their houses were built close together for mutual support, and decisions about daily and seasonal work were taken communally. OK if the decision was sound, but could have dire consequences for food supply if not. I'll be interested in the discussion later to hear from those who know more about their psyche than I do.

   The Foula folk on the other hand were of Norse origin — sturdily independent, mentally and physically tough, with a tradition of revelling in the challenge of wresting a living from land and sea. I mentioned earlier about the role of fish and seabirds as resources. Most Foula men are skilled boatmen, and fishing in the rich grounds off Foula was one of the staple sources of food. Fresh fish and fish liver dishes were eaten all summer, with all households getting a share, and the roof filled with salt and dried saithe and ling for the winter, and tubs filled with salt mackerel and herring. Foula folk would have been gey hungry without plentiful fish. Birds eggs were harvested in the spring to boost the diet as the spring digging and planting was underway, and young puffins and guillemots and shags were taken occasionally as a change from fish in the summer. Apart from a few eggs, fulmars weren't used at all.

And in the 3 crofting townships, Foula crofters built their houses round the edge of the arable land, at a distance from each other, and each made their own decision about when and how the work was done. There were one or two common rules of course, the individual crofts within the township weren't fenced so the sheep were put out and township hill gates closed on the 14th April, to keep the crops safe. All crops had to be harvested and in the yards before the township hill gates were opened again on the 15th November. But daily independence of decision spread any risk, and allowed folk to try their own ideas and improve their lot in their own way by their own efforts, and gradually good practice was copied and the whole community benefited.

 4.  Factor number four which I think which made a significant difference between the communities was the role played by both education and the church. Foula benefited from the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge in the middle of the 19th century, and an official island school was opened in August 1879. An extract from the School Log of 11th May 1883 reads "On the whole the children have shown much intelligence, and when attending have made very fair progress. Bad weather and scarcity of suitable text books have done much to keep them back." (And purely as an aside another entry dated August 27th 1936 states "The school children were allowed out in the afternoon to take part in the making of the film The Edge of the World. They saw the camera, the sound apparatus, the transport by car and yacht, the generator for the batteries.") The role of the Church was strict about the Sabbath, but not so joyless and generally dominant in daily life in Foula. Up to the beginning of the 20th century there were 2 denominations, Congregationalist and Church of Scotland. About 1912 common sense and the sheer practicality of maintaining the old pre-reformation kirk enabled the 2 congregations to amalgamate amicably. "Da Helly"-the Sabbath—was strictly observed, only works of necessity and mercy, only the Bible and the Christian Herald could be read. The wireless could only be switched on for the shipping forecast. Two barrows of peats and extra water were fetched in on Saturday, to do over Da Helly. Women couldn't knit or hang out washing, men couldn't look along the banks for wood. But after Sunday midnight nothing would stop them if it was a banks airt!

Like the St Kildans, Foula folk were great musicians and singers, and wrote much humorous story poetry about happenings in the isle. The harmony hymn and psalm singing in the church was exceptional, with the Muckle Kirk hymn book being used at the morning service, and Moody and Sankey in the evening. Women's Guild met on a Tuesday night in the Manse, and a peerie service of readings and prayers and favourite hymns and gospel songs was held in the schoolroom on a Thursday night in the winter, as part of the social activities. Folk would gather in a neighbour's house spontaneously on a winter evening to play and sing, and cast guddicks (special kind of riddle) and the preacher would often be there too. There was general unspoken recognition that activities like these helped the whole community get through the winter.

5. And the fifth and last difference about Foula, and maybe in the end the most significant, was the fact that new blood married into the isle in the 19th and 20th centuries, absorbing the old island customs and way of life, but not totally constrained by tradition. This helped to avoid the problems of too much inter-marrying, and allowed incomers to try new things and helped the community to change when it had to, and move forward into modern times. Some islands have had implants of whole new families who bring their own culture with them, and although they make their contribution to an island community, don't quite provide the cohesion and continuity that brings necessary change smoothly while maintaining what's best from the past.

And what can I possibly say about the infant mortality in St Kilda? Was it hereditary? Was there another cause? I had my three sons in Foula in the early 60's, difficult enough with no running water or electricity, poor transport and no ante or post-natal care. But how would I have coped in my head with the remorseless certainty that the child I was carrying probably wouldn't survive more than a week? How many pregnancies did the St Kildan women have to undergo to achieve a family? How awful that first week of waiting for the dreaded symptoms must have been, and so much grief and suffering. It's a miracle that the community survived as long as it did, and just maybe the fact that it did was down to the courage of the women. 

    It always makes me sad that there seemed to be no other option for the St Kildans than evacuation. I believe that remote wild places like Foula and St Kilda have much to offer the world for mental and spiritual renewal - like the rainforests are needed to keep the world breathing. Living in a fragile community you learn how vitally important community way of life and social cohesion are. You understand the value of the intangible qualities of sense of place, passion for the land and the landscape, closeness to nature, which are more important to some people than making a lot of money. These are powerful spiritual qualities that don't have a direct obvious monetary value, but which more and more people in the world are seeking to counter-balance the crazy life they're forced to live. We have a huge asset to offer the world, but we need to retain viable communities in remote areas to keep that asset available to the wider public. I don't believe we can ever measure what we lost when St Kilda's community died.

So these are my thoughts, far from complete. I look forward to hearing what you all think.

 http://www.theislandsbooktrust.com/events/stkilda_and_foula.pdf

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“The Decline and Fall of St Kilda” 

A 3 day international conference to mark the 75th anniversary of the evacuation of St Kilda

26^th August 2005  2.30pm. 

 Foula’s fight for survival: ISOBEL HOLBOURN –

    Isobel is a resident of the Shetland island of Foula which has often been compared with St Kilda. She has been and still is centrally involved in tackling the many problems confronting her island, and she will give a personal insight into island life and why Foula has not (at least yet) suffered the fate of St Kilda 

Introduction   

Foula from the air

  Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.  My name is Isobel Holbourn, I’ve lived in the island of Foula in Shetland for nearly 50 years.   To give you a little of my background - my parents moved from Peebles in the Borders in 1956 to take up the posts of teacher/missionary and District Nurse in Foula.  I went to secondary school in Lerwick, and later married a Foula crofter and fisherman.   I brought up my family in the island in the 1960s and except for 4 years I’ve lived in Foula ever since.

 This conference is called “The Decline and Fall of St Kilda”.  I want to say from the start I’m not a sociologist or a scientist - I’ve no academic qualification or research background to contribute on that level.   Other people have specialist views on how various sectors from the outside world impacted on the community in St Kilda.   I would simply like to offer a comparison of like for like from my own experience living as an islander in Foula.  I’d like us to consider what might have happened to the dynamics of the St Kildan community from the inside out rather than from the outside looking in.

  I’ve divided this paper into 2 main parts – Part 1 offers three theories on the internal dynamics of a remote community which could have affected the chances of survival for St Kilda.  In Part 2 I'll relate these same 3 theories to reality in present-day Foula, and show how outside impacts are bringing Foula to its knees in spite of so-called 'regeneration' policies.

 PART 1 will look at the internal dynamics of an isolated community.

  Foula was still a virtually closed community when I first went there in the spring of 1956.  The basic subsistence lifestyle living off the land and sea in the 50’s and 60’s was very close to that of St Kilda even 26 years on.   So first I’d like to show you some pictures to establish the credibility of the comparisons I hope to make.

  First the Shetland map showing Foula, 20 miles west of the Shetland mainland

The map of Foula itself, with a reasonably flat coastal strip and the hills rising steeply to the west.

This shows croft houses lining the shore at the N. end of Foula.  You can see rigs of corn and the township dyke above them.

And here the houses lining the shore in St Kilda, closer together but the same arable land in front and the township dyke behind.

More houses at the S. end of Foula you can see groups of stone-built plantie crubs out on the hill beyond the township dyke.

And here stone-built cleits inside and outside the township dyke in St Kilda.

A black house in Foula before improvements

And a black house interior in Foula, pot hanging in the crook, teapot keeping warm on the brandiron over peat embers, dried fish and reestit mutton hanging in the roof, wooden restin shairs either side and wooden kists for storing personal belongings

And the St Kilda Post Office – we never had a chair outside, what a good idea.

Here’s the Foula Post Office 30 years ago.

A tiny porch built on to a house.

Stone enclosures in St Kilda

and the same in Foula

A St Kilda lady demonstrating spinning…

…and a Foula lady doing the same.

An old Foula man going about his business, cap on head…

And an old St Kilda man doing the same

A St Kilda lady mowing with a scythe…

…and one in Foula doing the same nearly 100 years later.

An elderly Foula lady with her head covered…

and an elderly St Kilda lady in Sunday best, her head covered too.

This is a Foula family group in Sunday best, again women with heads covered

The exposed pier in St Kilda

and the pier in Foula with the earlier mailboat "Advance"

The hills of St Kilda make a distinctive shape

and the Foula hills do the same

And so for the famous cliffs - here Conachair at 1400' - I'm sorry this picture doesn't do it justice

and here the Kame in Foula, a few feet lower.

Cliffs in St Kilda

and the 700ft wall of the Nort Bank in Foula

The geology makes strange shapes and holes, this is Dun      

and this is Kittiwakes’ Haa in Foula

Some of the stack shapes are strangely alike, this one in St Kilda

and the Stab in Foula

the spectacular sea stacks of St Kilda

and Gaada Stack in Foula

even Foula sheep …

…would look at home on Soay.

 Change even in the 50’s and 60’s still came very slowly to remote rural communities.

  30 years after the evacuation of St Kilda Foula could still be totally cut off from the Shetland mainland for 3 months in winter.  So the isolated island life I knew, both physical and social, was introverted, thrown back on its own resources, totally geared to small community subsistence living off land and sea.  Everyone recognised the social patterns and essential unspoken rules which made living in such close proximity possible.  This was the kind of lifestyle I became part of in 1956 and came to know so well – not so very different from life in St Kilda 26 years before.

  But I soon discovered you had to learn how to cope mentally as well as physically, you had to be tough and resilient in mind as well as body.   The short summer soon slid into uncertain autumn and the long dark months of winter with only 6 hours of daylight on better days.  That was when you had to work at personal survival.  As well as the basic physical requirements of food, warmth and safe shelter, everyone had to find ways to care for their own mental, emotional and spiritual well-being.  In the long run that was equally important.    But I’ll return to this concept of personal psycho-dynamics later.

 1.    The first idea I’d like to consider is this – does a remote island community need a critical mass of physical and mental energy to ensure it survives?

How reserves were depleted

  In St Kilda and Foula the reality of physical and mental survival could be harsh and challenging. 

Therefore a large proportion of individual and community energy had to be channelled into basic physical survival. 

   Food, shelter, fuel and physical safety for everyone were the most immediate and greatest demands on the community’s energy reserves – a pretty relentless lifestyle season after season for a community of 30 or 40 people.  But after every event in the island which disturbed the population or distressed one individual or family, the community would have to deal with the problem and provide comfort and emotional support to each other.  There was little chance of outside help, they were thrown back on their own resources, and thus the community’s reserves of physical and mental energy would be further depleted.

  For example, dealing with a violent storm and its aftermath absorbed part of that precious store of physical energy over the winter.

 But as well as making good the actual damage throughout the island, a great deal of time and effort had to be spent raising each other’s spirits after the fear and stress of a severe gale.

 Everyone would have suffered, but each person had to contribute to everyone else’s mental recovery, and so a bad storm took its toll on the community’s reserves of mental endurance as well

 Every human being, whatever his circumstances, has a finite reserve of physical energy and mental resilience depending on the state of his own personal psycho-dynamics at the time.  So it was in St Kilda and Foula.  Therefore survival depended on the total mass of physical and mental energy being sufficient for the community’s needs, and this in turn would depend on the capacity of the population. 

 So somehow the community had to continually replenish its reserves of energy and resilience from within.  There had to be social mechanisms to counter-balance what could be very harsh reality.

  In Foula these could be evenings of making music together, or re-telling old traditional stories, sharing humorous songs and poems about funny incidents or major events, playing harmless pranks on your neighbours, and watching out for the retaliation.  All were as important to the health of the community as providing food and fuel.   After a bad storm these were the kinds of mechanisms used to ease the mental stress.

  A neighbour would come to check you were safe and offer practical help and compassionate humour if there was damage or loss, he would describe some odd minor idiosyncrasy of the strong wind with droll understatement rather than dwell on the more serious damage.  Someone would write a funny poem about a lost hen turning up unharmed some distance from home under a pile of storm debris.

  These were the Foula community's ways of minimising fear and trauma, and they helped everyone return to normal as quickly as possible.  I wonder what effect the teachings of the Church in St Kilda had on this type of survival mechanism?  Did the Church's spiritual teaching make enough of a practical contribution to restoring energy and morale?

 Personal psycho-dynamics

  But of course the social mechanisms I've described are only possible if general morale is reasonably high.  Community morale and energy reserves depend on the input from each individual, which in turn depends on the well-being of each person’s internal psycho-dynamics.  Every human being lives within himself as well as being part of a community.  We have physical, mental, emotional and spiritual strands which are all interlinked.   We all know that mental or emotional trauma can produce physical symptoms.  We also know that each person’s internal psycho-dynamics are individual and different, reacting to the same set of circumstances in a particular way.  This in turn affects their behaviour to other individuals and their ability to contribute towards the community as a whole.  Therefore community morale and reserves of energy are constantly varying according to the ability of each individual to contribute, and the demands being made on the reserves for support.   

  1c. So how does an individual in a remote community look after his own internal needs?

  Life was tough, every person needed a strong positive incentive inside beyond physical survival to keep going in the hard times.  Different people looked for different solutions.

  One means of support is the relationship, the passionate attachment, which each islander forms personally with the island itself.  It creates a force, a powerful dynamic, which is intangible and difficult to identify and define exactly, but it’s there nevertheless… to different people it’s a sense of place, or a sense of identity, an appreciation of beauty or spiritual comfort and renewal.

  Whatever it is, it’s a significant element for every individual in the replenishment of their energy reserves. 

  And secondly islanders are aware of each other’s strong attachment to the island, and this in turn forms an unspoken bond between people, a cohesive force, which strengthens the community spirit and provides solace and healing.

  Thirdly each individual learns through experience where he himself can find personal healing and renewal within the island’s resources - walking the hills.

 Taking the boat off fishing on a fine evening, sharing quality time with friends, again different things for different people.

  And finally each person knows he can ask for community support, part of the familiar age-old way of life which had sustained the community for countless generations.  The role of the Church is part of the community support structure, though it can be less of a contribution to some individuals than to others.

  But there can be times when these complex inter-dependent support systems fail.   If the community has taken a lot of heavy blows, and individuals’ personal psycho-dynamics are damaged or taxed to the limit, personal morale will sink, community reserves will suffer accordingly, and support systems will fail.  I'll describe a present-day example of this in Part 2.

MODEL 1

I’ve tried to draw a simple model of the energy flow of these support structures: 

-         the blue cylinders in the centre are the people

-         the dotted red square represents the community as an entity

-         the green hexagon the island itself 

-         the small black arrows show the people’s  interdependence on each other for mutual support

-         the orange arrows demonstrate an individual's input to community morale and energy reserves, and the support they receive from it

-         the narrower green arrows represent the personal bond each individual has with the island

-         and the broader green arrow shows the community’s two-way relationship with the island, using its natural resources sustainably

-         the dotted blue line represents the outside world

-         and the shaded blue area the very limited zone of interaction which the St Kildan community had with the outside world

 The model shows that the dynamics of the St Kildan community with a small number of people had to be complex and constantly changing, regulated by the ebb and flow of general morale, energy and well-being among individual members and their ability to input into general welfare.  It also shows that the St Kildans' capacity and experience of interacting with the outside environment was very limited and undeveloped.

In contrast, MODEL 2 shows Foula's much greater interaction zone with the outside world.

MODEL 3

  And here in model 3 I’ve tried to show what may have happened in the run-up to the St Kildans’ request for evacuation.  The heavy blue inward arrows show how outside influences changed and increased dramatically with the islanders not having the experience or enough time to interact with them in a balanced way.

  Increasing tourism brought different economic values and opportunities for easy personal gain.  This would have undermined the communal work ethic, and unbalanced the principles of economic equality and interdependence.  It also brought greater risk of disease against which islanders had no resistance.   

  Journalists produced romantic and sensational writing using alien outside values to make their simplistic judgements.  Outside attitudes would have shaken the islanders’ confidence in themselves and their tried and tested community structures and values.

  The efforts of some churchmen could have affected some of the valuable support and recovery mechanisms used by islanders to counterbalance hard times – some of these were described earlier.  Church teaching would also have substituted a different spiritual dependence which might have sat uneasily within the complex balance of community and personal dynamics and the ebb and flow of community energy reserves.

  In the 30 years before the evacuation the islanders' reserves had become seriously depleted.  Different outside influences came thick and fast in a comparatively short timescale.  The community didn’t have the experience or internal resources to manage their interaction with the new outside influences constructively or enough time to adapt to the changes.  The critical mass of energy and the complex interdependent structures which ensured community survival were so disrupted they started to fail, with nothing to take their place.  I believe that it wasn’t any one particular outside influence that caused this to happen but the holistic effect of them all.

 2.  And here I come to the second main point of this first section – the fact that in a small isolated community everything is holistic, every single thing that happens affects everything else in some way.   There’s a great deal of discussion about the influence of different outside sectors, Church, Education, Government, tourism, journalism, whatever, on the survival of the St Kildans’ way of life.  In my view this concept of sectorism has become a convenient ‘outside-looking-in’ means of analysis.   In reality everything that happens in life in small isolated communities like St Kilda and Foula, is totally holistic.  Any event, good or bad, large or small, has a knock-on effect on life in the community in some way.  This can manifest itself physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually in different individuals, and therefore affects the welfare of the whole community.    So what’s of crucial importance is not so much the influence of each different sector, but more the sum of the comprehensive domino effects of all these outside influences, large or small.  There’s a kind of adverse synergy created – the total impact of outside influences on a community is greater than the sum of each sectoral influence added together. 

 To explain:-

  As I’ve described already community reserves are used up to aid recovery.    The number of people in the community, and the capacity of individuals are the resources on which physical survival depend, but it’s also these same people who each have to contribute to maintain the community’s emotional reserves which are called on for recovery from threats or crises.   If the physical tasks of subsistence life are particularly demanding due to bad weather and a declining population, there’s not much energy left to replenish community emotional reserves and so they dwindle accordingly.  If at that point a number of unexpected blows or significant changes happen to the community, the whole interdependent physical and mental input and output support system is at risk of collapse.  I’ll describe a real present-day scenario of this more fully in Part 2.

  Using a theory developed by Manturana we could compare a small community struggling to cope with a great many rapid outside influences to an organism trying to survive in a marginal habitat which is undergoing a number of sudden changes.  Each organism has an outer zone which interacts with its external surroundings and which continually tries to adapt so that the organism can survive in a changing environment.  But it takes time.  The St Kildan community's ability and experience of interacting with the outside world was very limited as the model showed.  When the external environment changed dramatically in a relatively short period of time, the community's interaction zone wouldn't have had the experience or the time to recognise the need to adapt.  Nor would it have had the capacity or energy reserves to do so.  The community survival mechanisms were already weakened and poorly equipped to deal with the impacts of rapidly changing circumstances. 

  Could these have been the dynamics of the last years of the St Kilda community?  Was the complex internal system of interdependent support and energy flow so damaged by the holistic effect of all the changes that the old tried and tested survival mechanisms burnt out, or failed?

 3. And so to the third and final point in this first part.  Could these old tried and tested survival mechanisms have been adapted to allow the community to carry on?  The complex dynamics of community survival in St Kilda had evolved over countless generations.  Accumulated experience of the conditions and knowledge of the natural resources was handed down from generation to generation.  There was minimal contact with the outside world, their basic mode of survival was the only one they knew, and it could only work if the critical mass of physical and mental energy was sufficient for the community’s needs.

  In the years preceding the evacuation the ageing population in St Kilda didn’t have that critical mass of energy to maintain their old subsistence way of life.  And because the elderly are more likely to cling to old ways, there would have been little desire or mental resilience to adapt to the changes coming from outside.  This is where Foula was different – the old subsistence regime was dying out in Foula in the late 50’s and 60’s, and the population had been ageing and declining steadily.

  But three young non-islanders married into the community between 1959 and 1964.  Because each of them married an islander they integrated quickly into the culture and way of life.  And the new blood and young families brought fresh energy, and they were able to instigate the necessary changes slowly without damaging the valuable aspects of the community’s cohesion and culture.

  If there had been two or three strong realistic young people among the St Kildans’ distant neighbours in the Western Isles or on the Scottish mainland fired by the challenge of making a life on St Kilda, and able to understand the complexity and values of the old way of life, then things might have been different.  They might have increased the critical mass of energy enough and developed new ways to help the community adapt and change in response to the challenges facing them.  No amount of outside subsidy or benevolence could have substituted for the physical and mental energy required from within.  I can think of no other solution where the basic principles of the community way of life in St Kilda could have survived.   But sadly this didn’t happen, and the soul of the community died when the letter requesting evacuation was written.