Rare Thoughts By Margaret B. Russell
FORGOT National Trust for Scotland photo library
T
he potent allure of a faraway place … of people … of creatures … untouched by the passage of time for thousands of years is fodder for fiction. But the saga of both man and animal that dwelled in St. Kilda, Scotland is no mere fanciful tale. This was an epic journey of endurance, despite the inordinate probability of defeat. St. Kilda is an isolated, rocky archipelago towering out of the Atlantic, approximately 40 miles/65 kilometers west of the Outer Hebrides. Consisting of the westernmost islands of Scotland, St. Kilda lies at the eruption center of a volcano believed to have been active 60 million years ago. The incessant struggle of the St. Kildans to exist amid this backdrop was a communal effort that imposed a crucial dependency on the output of every member of the society. The 56
Wild Fibers Magazine
provision of food and clothing commanded mental and physical attention for young and old alike. The islanders were almost entirely self-sufficient and what few wares they did need from the outside were subject to the erratic delivery of ships piloting the heavy seas in the most precarious weather. Surviving on a diet of various seabirds, and wearing simple attire fashioned from the islands’ sheep, the St. Kildans eked out their survival in sea-swept seclusion. Animals were vital to the welfare of the St. Kildans. In addition to the seafowl, sheep were the next most important to the community’s survival, supplying such essentials as meat, milk and wool. There were numerous sheep of varying colors and ancestry inhabiting the four islands of St. Kilda: Hirta, Soay, Boreray and Dun. Hirta, the largest of the islands,
offered the human inhabitants a flat livable area amid its rearing crags. Hirta is the only island of the four with a human population and it is also where the greatest of the domestic sheep lived. Boreray, an island completely circumscribed by cliffs, held a reserve flock. Separated from Hirta by a narrow channel, Dun is a much smaller island that served as a breakwater from the overly assertive sea and was used to winter over lambs on its lush grassy “meadows.” It is believed that the white sheep brought over by the Romans to Scotland were crossed with the native breeds and produced the sheep initially owned by the St. Kildans, the now extinct Old Scottish Shortwool, also called the Scottish Tan Face or Dunface. This creamy white domestic breed continued to evolve as it was
