"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." [James Fisher, 1947]
In the Outer Hebrides off the north coast of Scotland, the St. Kilda archipelago is scattered, its craggy shores battered by the full force of the north Atlantic Ocean. St. Kilda was inhabited from the Iron Age to the 20th Century, and place names such as Oiseval and Bàgh a' Bhaile hint at its Norse and Gaelic history. In modern times its population likely never exceeded 180 persons, and, after years of disease, crop failure, and losses to the Great War, its last 36 inhabitants wre willingly evacuated in 1930.
Today St. Kilda is a World Heritage Site, known for its high sea-cliffs and spectacular bird life (including fulmars, gannets, and puffins).
Evidence of human life remains in the shape of stone cottages aligned down the Village's Main Street
ancient cleitean scattered over the landscape
and flocks of Soay sheep.
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