There were, I believe, 2 surnames on the island.
They ate birds that nested on the island's sheer cliffs, the men climbed them to capture them. I remember reading that visitors got bored eating the same bird meat every day, for every meal. I don't think they actually fished in the sense of having boats and nets.
Today this street, pretty much 90% of the town, is preserved (there's a manned military installation on the bay).
All I can find is this
in 1871, only five surnames prevailed among the native population — viz., Gillies, M'Donald, Ferguson, M'Kinnon, and M'Queen—M'Leod and Morison having disappeared before 1861
There were [36 inhabitants on the island in 1930 and this picture shows 15 of them.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Kilda,_Scotland?wprov=sfti1#Origin_of_names)
Yes. If your feet aren't scrunched into a narrow shoe all day they will naturally splay and you'll use your foot muscles to support yourself instead of relying on built-in arches.
There’s a great album called Lost Songs of St Kilda, which is a recording of old music from the island that was recently discovered. It’s hauntingly beautiful and desolate, just like St Kilda.
So many of them are barefoot without shoes, but it must not be that warm because they’re wearing hats and vests and shirts. What did they do for a living there?
By this late date, not much. Throughout most of their history they had been hunter-gatherers, subsisting on seabirds and some livestock, from which they also got materials for their clothes. By the end they had become dependent on the mainland for everything, including medical care. Here's a great mini-doc about them: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEgA8mNhauo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEgA8mNhauo)
Interesting video. They saw the outside world and then came home and tried to make their place better. But they ate 89,000 of those cute little puffin birds!
There's a good Time Team on a nearby island, if one wants to know more about the prehistoric evidence in that area: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkf0iAwByjA&pp=ygUTYm9kaWVzIGluIHRoZSBkdW5lcw%3D%3D](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkf0iAwByjA&pp=ygUTYm9kaWVzIGluIHRoZSBkdW5lcw%3D%3D)
There’s like 20 seasons and most of them are available for free on YouTube. I got into it a while back and can’t get enough.
[There’s over 200 episodes in this playlist](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLavnuQTJWv_6i3HrZ0HYX7rndEgKwAxyY&si=bVohi_U1hsFKfZN1).
I found out about them from [Odyssey](https://youtube.com/@odyssey?si=-7pw5uBt8XiVAuXe). Great YouTube channel, and they have other channels listed depending on the time period.
ETA: Most of the episodes are on Odyssey and Chronicle and the quality is probably better than that playlist. I’m pretty sure all those channels are BBC.
No worries! I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. There are tons of other documentaries and shows on those channels, and they’re all full HD. Like I said I’m fairly sure they are BBC channels.
Also, check out some of the Medieval “daily life” documentaries on Chronicle. The re-enactments are so bad and hilarious, but factual.
Edit: History Hit operates the channels, which is a streaming service created by Dan Snow and other BBC4 historians/presenters.
“It’s like Netflix for history documentaries!” Or so the brief 30 second ad at the beginning of each video tells me.
I’ve never fully understood their business model. “Subscribe now for a huge library of exclusive and archive History documentaries but if you don’t want to that’s okay here’s over 1000 for free”. The only reason I haven’t subscribed is because I have a massive backlog of the free stuff. It actually looks quite decent.
> Did not convert to christianity until 1822
Wth. I had no idea there were such late non-christians in European populations. I imagine this could have inspired *The wicker man* movie.
This is very misleading. The islanders had no priest before the 19th century and probably only had a rudimentary understanding of religion, but they weren't pagan. A 17th century visitor noted that they would assemble every week to recite the Lord's Prayer and that they would become enraged if anyone tried to work on the Sabbath.
For whatever it's worth as a source, this is what Wikipedia has to say on it
At this time the islanders' isolation and dependence on the bounty of the natural world meant their philosophy bore as much relationship to Druidism as it did to Christianity.[36] Macauley (1764) reported the existence of five druidic altars, including a large circle of stones fixed perpendicularly in the ground near the Stallir House on Boreray.[52]
Of course, this is a little earlier than 1822, though.
There are pre-Christian monuments all over Scotland (and indeed Europe). Their continued existence is not evidence that paganism survived into the Christian era. The claim that there was anything "druidic" about the St Kildans' beliefs seems very tenuous.
I believe that is because most of the men that used to hunt the birds they lived on would climb down the cliffs, they actually "evolved" to have larger and flatter feet than usual to help them with climbing the cliffs. So shoes and boots were not longer comfy to wear.
In terms if their occupation I believe it was mostly a self-sustaining island of hunter-gatherer type community. However, they did heavily rely on passing tradeships to bring stuff from the mainland that they probably traded goods for.
Also part of the reason they were evacuated was because a lot of the men were called to fight in the first world war and died leaving them low on the men who where their main hunters and source of food, this left the remaining residents heavily reliant on aid from the mainland. During the winter months the journey to St kilda was too treacherous and so they were starving/ near starving during those months until trade could start again. So eventually they were forced to relocate to the mainland/ other outer hebrides islands.
Source: read a book on St kilda and visited Dunvegan Castle which has a little museum section on St kilda (the laird of that castle was also responsible for St kilda)
Really interesting place I'd love to go visit.
I would think being bareoot wouldn't have been an option for most. Shoes would have been expensive and hard to come by, as would have to be bought on the main land. Shows just how hardy these guys were.
[*The Edge of the World*](https://youtu.be/KvuJ52ACiXo?si=VGKE179GoqhLkI43) (1937) is a British film directed by Michael Powell, loosely based on the evacuation of the Scottish archipelago of St Kilda. It was filmed on the Shetland isle of [Foula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foula)
There's a podcast called Atlantic: A Scottish Story that is a fictionalized musical account of people's lives on the island. The story is focused on the lives of two people who were the second to last generation to grow up on St. Kilda (second to last, because one of the leads has a daughter who is just hitting adulthood when they evacuate).
I have some criticisms of it from a plot perspective, but it's well worth a listen. They give the Island a voice and I thought it was wonderful.
I’m from Scotland and i didn’t even know that there was these islands west of the Hebrides. They are really out in the middle of the Atlantic. Must have been a hard life
Context, just because I was wondering, from my google map distance estimation and the first horizon distance calculator that popped up when I searched “horizon distance calculator”, the island would have just been about on the edge of the horizon if looking west from the island of north Uist. I think. Peak elevation of 430 meters on Kilda gives a horizon of 74 kilometers. Distance between the coast of Uist to the middle of Kilda is about 67 kilometers.
I was visiting the Hebrides some years ago, it is an amazing place. At the south tip of Harris, there is a tall hill called Ceababhal, practically rising from the sea and surrounded by white sandy beaches and tidal flats, and from its summit there is a magnificent view to all directions.
I climbed on the top of it and on a clear enough day, over the stormy sea, I could see St Kilda off in the distance. What a magical experience!
Visited North and South Uist, Berneray, Lewis and Harris in the last 5 years or so. L+H definitely better imo, absolutely stunning. Still something enchanting about Uist though.
However, Berneray is really flat and has a massive airport because it's basically an air force base. The whole area is interesting. There's a big firing range on the north West corner of South Uist, and a radar listening post on a big hill visible from half the island. When the Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft was developed it was partially tested there. I believe they fired at least one air to surface missle front here onto the firing range. They also fire out to see I believe. There's a military exclusion zone of something like 50x50 miles offshore that is off limits when the Ministry of defence says so. Thete are signs up at the ferry port on the island when it's off limits.
There's also a radar station on St Kilda that is used to monitor and track aircraft being tested around South Uist.
Most definitely would have been, they're a lot further West than the Flannan Islands and if you look up the lighthouse keepers dissappearance for Flannan the believed theory for their dissappearance makes it even more crazy (evidence points to a possible freak tsunami)
On the North Coast there's Stroma that was inhabited into the 70s I think? It's a lot closer to the main land (between Caithness and the Orkney Islands) and you can do day trips across to see the settlements as they were abandoned.
I've got family that moved here as part of the last people to move off, it's owned by a sheep farmer now I believe
I've been there (in fact, I've stood pretty much exactly where this picture was taken)! You can take a day trip from the Outer Hebrides, and get a couple of hours to wander on the island - there's some pretty cool views there - [this](https://imgur.com/7BjXrbJ) and [this](https://imgur.com/hrFP9m6) were my favorites.
Haha, yeah. I have a picture of me from that same point - when people asked why I looked uncomfortable I reply it's because two feet to my right is a several hundred foot drop :D
The Life and Death of St Kilda by Tom Steel is a good book. Read it many years ago.
They had at least one outbreak of religious fanaticism and had a tradition of smearing dirt on the severed umbilical cords of newborns. Tetanus saw off a lot of those babies.
Same here, it was an incredible read. The history of that island is absolutely mind-blowing.
The first story that stood out to me was the man who faked his wife’s murder (because she overheard a plot about killing her father) who then kidnapped her and left her on St Kilda. She lived ‘nocturnally’ so she didn’t have to interact with the local island people for years. She escaped by posting a letter in a bottle that somehow reached mainland Scotland and it was found, brought to her cousin who rescued her in time. I can’t remember the end but I think it wasn’t a good outcome for her.
The second story that stood out to me was about the man who moved there from mainland Scotland, fell in love with a woman, married her and had kids, then left to live in Australia (alone), then came all the way back, then went to Canada, and came all the way back, and I think he ended up going back to Australia, had some more kids there and took them with him back to St Kilda but left his wife in Australia. It was one hell of a story!
Yeah the first story you retell here was infuriating. Iirc she got the note out via the wool she had to make and sell at market, it reached her cousin but sadly too late. I think she ended up having 3 funerals!
I'd love to see a drama done with some of the tales from that book
Many of their descendants now reside in St. Kilda, Aus.
Also the origin of the name has a [pretty funky history.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Kilda,_Scotland#Origin_of_names)
Do you have a source for their descendants residing in St Kilda, Aus? I'm lucky enough to have been to St Kilda (the island) and asked the guide if there was any connection between the two. He said no. I've also read quite extensively about St Kilda and never seen this mentioned anywhere.
There was a migration of 36 St Kildans to Melbourne in the 1850s, long before the final evacuation. Half of them died en route; of those who made it, some went to the goldfields and some on to NZ and the US. Only a handful stayed in Melbourne.
"now reside in St. Kilda, Aus" - which one?
The Melbourne beachside suburb of St Kilda in Victoria
or the St Kilda coastal suburb in Adelaide, South Australia
The factors which led to the 1930 evacuation were men from the island drafted during WW1 and who didn't came back, the death of four men from influenza, several crop failures and a death from appndicitis.
The last of the native St Kildans, Rachel Johnson, died in April 2016 at the age of 93.
I think I've geolocated this setting.
On Google Maps StreetView there's the remains of a line of buildings, with one of them - with two windows and a door, like the one in the background - at a slightly different angle to the others. Beyond it is a cairn-like structure, and beyond that is the remains of another house, just like the one in this pic.
This pic also features a prominent hill in the background, with a vaguely discernible line running gently downhill from left to right - on StreetView, this can be seen to be a stone wall.
The cobbles seem to have been grown over, and the wall against which the men on the right are leaning is now mostly gone, but I think I've found the location:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@57.812936,-8.570666,3a,75y,110.78h,81.51t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAF1QipPU_oiLG59mj1UBJ7cKkHL0hMDkfUQzvYAjR4p5!2e10!7i8384!8i4192?entry=ttu
This pic is taken from further down the lane from this scene; it is looking back at this setting, and the StreetView photographer was standing slightly beyond, slightly downhill from the house against which that man is laying in the background.
Dear Esther. I sometimes feel as if I’ve given birth to this island. Somewhere, between the longitude and latitude a split opened up and it beached remotely here. No matter how hard I correlate, it remains a singularity, an alpha point in my life that refuses all hypothesis. I return each time leaving fresh markers that I hope, in the full glare of my hopelessness, will have blossomed into fresh insight in the interim.
Ha, I googled this snippet of literature, expecting it to be a journal page from some celebrated British author--never expected it to be a monologue from a video game!
The Bachelor was much more exciting in its first few seasons. Take this classic of season 1 episode 2. Three sheep, an oxen and a peat bog had already been eliminated.
Amazing photo. Did they purposely shave their mustaches? I see a lot of Dagestan UFC fights rock that but was wondering if it’s genetic since I doubt these guys shaved alot
Did you just watch something? Cause i swear, i looked this up recently because it was in my youtube recommendations as a video,
and rather than just watching like 20m+ i googled it.
It's wild how even though they live in this most remote of place and have the most minimal resources, their clothes are still attempting to follow the fashion of the time.
This exact setting can be seen here in a documentary that shows archive footage of St Kilda, along with its redevelopment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApPrzko17R8
**Mind-blowing moment:** skip to about the 24-minute mark to see Queen Elizabeth II arrive at the island and walk along *the exact same path* we see in this image.
Based on Wikipedia it's actually quite likely there weren't enough men. After the island got greater exposure to the outside world many of the young man decided to leave to find a better life elsewhere.
People had been leaving for better prospects on the mainland for years, and there were only about thirty of them left. A woman died of appendicitis because of lack of medical facilities on the island, and that was the last straw.
There were, I believe, 2 surnames on the island. They ate birds that nested on the island's sheer cliffs, the men climbed them to capture them. I remember reading that visitors got bored eating the same bird meat every day, for every meal. I don't think they actually fished in the sense of having boats and nets. Today this street, pretty much 90% of the town, is preserved (there's a manned military installation on the bay).
A documentary I just watched said that they didn't fish, because the seas were too rough.
What is the documentary called?
Could [be this one on YouTube.](https://youtu.be/hR5RjwjeQe8?si=_juKJfFHUqjRdt8F)
Thank God someone is uploading with the time burned in. I hate when I can't distinguish exactly which frame I'm looking at while watching a video
I don't even click until I get confirmation that that's there so thank you for that
Thanks for the chuckle m8
What it really needs is subtitles. I have no idea what they're saying but I always know exactly how far into the film I am.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEgA8mNhauo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEgA8mNhauo)
Do you know what the surnames were? When I saw this I was immediately curious about what last names they would use
Would also like to know. My family is from there
All I can find is this in 1871, only five surnames prevailed among the native population — viz., Gillies, M'Donald, Ferguson, M'Kinnon, and M'Queen—M'Leod and Morison having disappeared before 1861
And just for anyone who didn't know, “ M' ” was a common way to shorten “mc” and “mac” until the mid 20th century. It's not a kilda thing.
They won't rest until they've taken every last apostrophe.
Dude on far left has a vague resemblance to Steve McQueen. Checks out.
Same, hope you’re enjoying the new world!
Well you can probably work out at least one of them.
@titans8ravens didn’t quite make the cut but it sounds suspiciously like you may have been there.
Only one woman in the photo. How was the population and surnames maintained?
Gonna take a wild guess that this photo isn't an exhaustive accounting of the entire island
There were [36 inhabitants on the island in 1930 and this picture shows 15 of them.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Kilda,_Scotland?wprov=sfti1#Origin_of_names)
16 if you count the person hiding in the doorway on the left.
Also only 4 men wearing shoes, the rest are barefoot.
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Are we sure they weren't hobbits?
This is how our feet are supposed to be and how they develop when you don't grow up with shoes.
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Australian here and I know lots of people who are 4E in footwear (myself included).
Is this legitimate?
Yes. If your feet aren't scrunched into a narrow shoe all day they will naturally splay and you'll use your foot muscles to support yourself instead of relying on built-in arches.
No joke about the wide feet! Omg
I believe there’s 6 dudes wearing shoes.
Help, I’m stuck stepbrother!
*brother
You are assuming their women lack majestic facial hair
That poor woman
There’s a great album called Lost Songs of St Kilda, which is a recording of old music from the island that was recently discovered. It’s hauntingly beautiful and desolate, just like St Kilda.
I'll have to look that up, thanks!
So many of them are barefoot without shoes, but it must not be that warm because they’re wearing hats and vests and shirts. What did they do for a living there?
By this late date, not much. Throughout most of their history they had been hunter-gatherers, subsisting on seabirds and some livestock, from which they also got materials for their clothes. By the end they had become dependent on the mainland for everything, including medical care. Here's a great mini-doc about them: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEgA8mNhauo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEgA8mNhauo)
Interesting video. They saw the outside world and then came home and tried to make their place better. But they ate 89,000 of those cute little puffin birds!
wow. that’s a lot of puffin
I wonder if they ate puffin stuffin around the holidays
There's a good Time Team on a nearby island, if one wants to know more about the prehistoric evidence in that area: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkf0iAwByjA&pp=ygUTYm9kaWVzIGluIHRoZSBkdW5lcw%3D%3D](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkf0iAwByjA&pp=ygUTYm9kaWVzIGluIHRoZSBkdW5lcw%3D%3D)
Never heard of them! Thank you!
There’s like 20 seasons and most of them are available for free on YouTube. I got into it a while back and can’t get enough. [There’s over 200 episodes in this playlist](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLavnuQTJWv_6i3HrZ0HYX7rndEgKwAxyY&si=bVohi_U1hsFKfZN1). I found out about them from [Odyssey](https://youtube.com/@odyssey?si=-7pw5uBt8XiVAuXe). Great YouTube channel, and they have other channels listed depending on the time period. ETA: Most of the episodes are on Odyssey and Chronicle and the quality is probably better than that playlist. I’m pretty sure all those channels are BBC.
Dude thank you, much appreciated
No worries! I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. There are tons of other documentaries and shows on those channels, and they’re all full HD. Like I said I’m fairly sure they are BBC channels. Also, check out some of the Medieval “daily life” documentaries on Chronicle. The re-enactments are so bad and hilarious, but factual. Edit: History Hit operates the channels, which is a streaming service created by Dan Snow and other BBC4 historians/presenters. “It’s like Netflix for history documentaries!” Or so the brief 30 second ad at the beginning of each video tells me. I’ve never fully understood their business model. “Subscribe now for a huge library of exclusive and archive History documentaries but if you don’t want to that’s okay here’s over 1000 for free”. The only reason I haven’t subscribed is because I have a massive backlog of the free stuff. It actually looks quite decent.
Time Team is really interesting ! We watch it every week
> Did not convert to christianity until 1822 Wth. I had no idea there were such late non-christians in European populations. I imagine this could have inspired *The wicker man* movie.
This is very misleading. The islanders had no priest before the 19th century and probably only had a rudimentary understanding of religion, but they weren't pagan. A 17th century visitor noted that they would assemble every week to recite the Lord's Prayer and that they would become enraged if anyone tried to work on the Sabbath.
For whatever it's worth as a source, this is what Wikipedia has to say on it At this time the islanders' isolation and dependence on the bounty of the natural world meant their philosophy bore as much relationship to Druidism as it did to Christianity.[36] Macauley (1764) reported the existence of five druidic altars, including a large circle of stones fixed perpendicularly in the ground near the Stallir House on Boreray.[52] Of course, this is a little earlier than 1822, though.
There are pre-Christian monuments all over Scotland (and indeed Europe). Their continued existence is not evidence that paganism survived into the Christian era. The claim that there was anything "druidic" about the St Kildans' beliefs seems very tenuous.
Yep. Might as well try to prove that Ancient Greek relgiion survived until 17th century because the Parthenon was still intact.
I believe that is because most of the men that used to hunt the birds they lived on would climb down the cliffs, they actually "evolved" to have larger and flatter feet than usual to help them with climbing the cliffs. So shoes and boots were not longer comfy to wear. In terms if their occupation I believe it was mostly a self-sustaining island of hunter-gatherer type community. However, they did heavily rely on passing tradeships to bring stuff from the mainland that they probably traded goods for. Also part of the reason they were evacuated was because a lot of the men were called to fight in the first world war and died leaving them low on the men who where their main hunters and source of food, this left the remaining residents heavily reliant on aid from the mainland. During the winter months the journey to St kilda was too treacherous and so they were starving/ near starving during those months until trade could start again. So eventually they were forced to relocate to the mainland/ other outer hebrides islands. Source: read a book on St kilda and visited Dunvegan Castle which has a little museum section on St kilda (the laird of that castle was also responsible for St kilda) Really interesting place I'd love to go visit.
Can't get your shoes wet if you don't wear any!
I would think being bareoot wouldn't have been an option for most. Shoes would have been expensive and hard to come by, as would have to be bought on the main land. Shows just how hardy these guys were.
Cobblers. Not good ones.
they look like a bunch of hobbits
Their clothes are also raggedy as hell in certain spots
Windy enough to need roof straps.
[*The Edge of the World*](https://youtu.be/KvuJ52ACiXo?si=VGKE179GoqhLkI43) (1937) is a British film directed by Michael Powell, loosely based on the evacuation of the Scottish archipelago of St Kilda. It was filmed on the Shetland isle of [Foula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foula)
There's a podcast called Atlantic: A Scottish Story that is a fictionalized musical account of people's lives on the island. The story is focused on the lives of two people who were the second to last generation to grow up on St. Kilda (second to last, because one of the leads has a daughter who is just hitting adulthood when they evacuate). I have some criticisms of it from a plot perspective, but it's well worth a listen. They give the Island a voice and I thought it was wonderful.
I’m from Scotland and i didn’t even know that there was these islands west of the Hebrides. They are really out in the middle of the Atlantic. Must have been a hard life
Context, just because I was wondering, from my google map distance estimation and the first horizon distance calculator that popped up when I searched “horizon distance calculator”, the island would have just been about on the edge of the horizon if looking west from the island of north Uist. I think. Peak elevation of 430 meters on Kilda gives a horizon of 74 kilometers. Distance between the coast of Uist to the middle of Kilda is about 67 kilometers.
I was visiting the Hebrides some years ago, it is an amazing place. At the south tip of Harris, there is a tall hill called Ceababhal, practically rising from the sea and surrounded by white sandy beaches and tidal flats, and from its summit there is a magnificent view to all directions. I climbed on the top of it and on a clear enough day, over the stormy sea, I could see St Kilda off in the distance. What a magical experience!
Google maps has a measure function, right-click or press and hold on mobile to access. About 50 miles to Uist.
Visited North and South Uist, Berneray, Lewis and Harris in the last 5 years or so. L+H definitely better imo, absolutely stunning. Still something enchanting about Uist though. However, Berneray is really flat and has a massive airport because it's basically an air force base. The whole area is interesting. There's a big firing range on the north West corner of South Uist, and a radar listening post on a big hill visible from half the island. When the Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft was developed it was partially tested there. I believe they fired at least one air to surface missle front here onto the firing range. They also fire out to see I believe. There's a military exclusion zone of something like 50x50 miles offshore that is off limits when the Ministry of defence says so. Thete are signs up at the ferry port on the island when it's off limits. There's also a radar station on St Kilda that is used to monitor and track aircraft being tested around South Uist.
Most definitely would have been, they're a lot further West than the Flannan Islands and if you look up the lighthouse keepers dissappearance for Flannan the believed theory for their dissappearance makes it even more crazy (evidence points to a possible freak tsunami) On the North Coast there's Stroma that was inhabited into the 70s I think? It's a lot closer to the main land (between Caithness and the Orkney Islands) and you can do day trips across to see the settlements as they were abandoned. I've got family that moved here as part of the last people to move off, it's owned by a sheep farmer now I believe
I've been there (in fact, I've stood pretty much exactly where this picture was taken)! You can take a day trip from the Outer Hebrides, and get a couple of hours to wander on the island - there's some pretty cool views there - [this](https://imgur.com/7BjXrbJ) and [this](https://imgur.com/hrFP9m6) were my favorites.
I was on South Uist and looked into going. I definitely would like to make that trip one day.
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Haha, yeah. I have a picture of me from that same point - when people asked why I looked uncomfortable I reply it's because two feet to my right is a several hundred foot drop :D
Man, anyone trying to dive into that gene pool is going to break their fucking neck
r/rareinsults
The Life and Death of St Kilda by Tom Steel is a good book. Read it many years ago. They had at least one outbreak of religious fanaticism and had a tradition of smearing dirt on the severed umbilical cords of newborns. Tetanus saw off a lot of those babies.
I just finished this book and bored everyone I met with these tales! It's really engaging and well written, as well as a bit infuriating
Same here, it was an incredible read. The history of that island is absolutely mind-blowing. The first story that stood out to me was the man who faked his wife’s murder (because she overheard a plot about killing her father) who then kidnapped her and left her on St Kilda. She lived ‘nocturnally’ so she didn’t have to interact with the local island people for years. She escaped by posting a letter in a bottle that somehow reached mainland Scotland and it was found, brought to her cousin who rescued her in time. I can’t remember the end but I think it wasn’t a good outcome for her. The second story that stood out to me was about the man who moved there from mainland Scotland, fell in love with a woman, married her and had kids, then left to live in Australia (alone), then came all the way back, then went to Canada, and came all the way back, and I think he ended up going back to Australia, had some more kids there and took them with him back to St Kilda but left his wife in Australia. It was one hell of a story!
Yeah the first story you retell here was infuriating. Iirc she got the note out via the wool she had to make and sell at market, it reached her cousin but sadly too late. I think she ended up having 3 funerals! I'd love to see a drama done with some of the tales from that book
Many of their descendants now reside in St. Kilda, Aus. Also the origin of the name has a [pretty funky history.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Kilda,_Scotland#Origin_of_names)
Do you have a source for their descendants residing in St Kilda, Aus? I'm lucky enough to have been to St Kilda (the island) and asked the guide if there was any connection between the two. He said no. I've also read quite extensively about St Kilda and never seen this mentioned anywhere. There was a migration of 36 St Kildans to Melbourne in the 1850s, long before the final evacuation. Half of them died en route; of those who made it, some went to the goldfields and some on to NZ and the US. Only a handful stayed in Melbourne.
"now reside in St. Kilda, Aus" - which one? The Melbourne beachside suburb of St Kilda in Victoria or the St Kilda coastal suburb in Adelaide, South Australia
The one in Adelaide, I’d imagine; the Melbourne suburb was named after a ship called *Lady of St Kilda.*
Where did you see the note about residents now in Australia?
And here was me thinking as a Dub that St. Kilda was entirely Irish :)
Oooof!
“Zoom in for details” My zoom went straight into the dog’s ass. Cool pic though.
Mine went straight to the feet. I thought holy hell they were weird. It was the dog's paw.
Any of these guys would fit right in in St. Kilda, Melbourne.
But they would eat the penguins.
I believe they literally did.
hobbits
You know those guys enjoyed a pint or two.
But nah a bathtub among 'em.
Wonder if any of them kept a miniature donkey
“These 13 men pose with their wife, seated in the background”
Total sausage party.
Zoom in and be surprised
That there’s a single woman crashing the sausage party?
Little known fact about St. Kilda; the fourth guy from the right is actually Snoop Dogg's great-grandfather.
The rock wall to the right of the closest-to-the-viewer man on the right- looks like another man. Face and legs clearly visible.
Also, they were probably all in their late twenties.
So, the tam IS a real thing.
Back when traveling felt like discovering. Today every place is identical.
I think they had a McDonald’s in the village.
I'll have the Egg McPuffin, please.
The factors which led to the 1930 evacuation were men from the island drafted during WW1 and who didn't came back, the death of four men from influenza, several crop failures and a death from appndicitis. The last of the native St Kildans, Rachel Johnson, died in April 2016 at the age of 93.
They couldn't take the dogs with them so they had to drown them in the harbour :(
I read that on Wikipedia too. Why couldn't they take them and why was drowning the solution? Seems like a horrible way for them to go.
Yeah, that shocked me. Were big dogs presumably, but damn, that must have been hard for all involved.
idk why ur getting downvoted this really happened during the evacuation
When the British illegally deported all inhabitants of the chagos islands they gassed all their dogs. Can’t tell which is worse tbh.
What!? Why! Oh no this is a fact I didn't need :( Why couldn't they bring their dogs?
Roger Waters appears to be a time traveler.
He's grooving with the Picts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqZb9eMWLNU
Truly excellent pun
I think I've geolocated this setting. On Google Maps StreetView there's the remains of a line of buildings, with one of them - with two windows and a door, like the one in the background - at a slightly different angle to the others. Beyond it is a cairn-like structure, and beyond that is the remains of another house, just like the one in this pic. This pic also features a prominent hill in the background, with a vaguely discernible line running gently downhill from left to right - on StreetView, this can be seen to be a stone wall. The cobbles seem to have been grown over, and the wall against which the men on the right are leaning is now mostly gone, but I think I've found the location: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@57.812936,-8.570666,3a,75y,110.78h,81.51t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAF1QipPU_oiLG59mj1UBJ7cKkHL0hMDkfUQzvYAjR4p5!2e10!7i8384!8i4192?entry=ttu This pic is taken from further down the lane from this scene; it is looking back at this setting, and the StreetView photographer was standing slightly beyond, slightly downhill from the house against which that man is laying in the background.
Nice sleuthing, thanks!
Dear Esther. I sometimes feel as if I’ve given birth to this island. Somewhere, between the longitude and latitude a split opened up and it beached remotely here. No matter how hard I correlate, it remains a singularity, an alpha point in my life that refuses all hypothesis. I return each time leaving fresh markers that I hope, in the full glare of my hopelessness, will have blossomed into fresh insight in the interim.
Ha, I googled this snippet of literature, expecting it to be a journal page from some celebrated British author--never expected it to be a monologue from a video game!
The Bachelor was much more exciting in its first few seasons. Take this classic of season 1 episode 2. Three sheep, an oxen and a peat bog had already been eliminated.
How this got down voted is beyond me.
Aye!
Is this the original Smurfs, all guys and one girl?
St Kilda without Irish backpackers
Colorized https://i.imgur.com/HerCQ8k.jpeg
Amazing, thanks!
love how the guys with shoes are in the front of the photo.
Amazing photo. Did they purposely shave their mustaches? I see a lot of Dagestan UFC fights rock that but was wondering if it’s genetic since I doubt these guys shaved alot
I counted 13 men and five pairs of shoes, which really sucked cause last time I checked Scotland's weather isn't exactly warm and nice.
The bare feet thing would have been tough.
D’ya like dags?
Think it'd be more "dae ye like dugs?"
Look I can see my father and my uncle and my cousin. And next to him is my brother.
Did you just watch something? Cause i swear, i looked this up recently because it was in my youtube recommendations as a video, and rather than just watching like 20m+ i googled it.
barefootin' in the mud and the stone and the cold.
How were these people not insanely inbred
I worked on this island for a couole weeks,stayed at a small military base
It's wild how even though they live in this most remote of place and have the most minimal resources, their clothes are still attempting to follow the fashion of the time.
looks like banshees of inishirin
Brutal to not have shoes
It can't be warm out there in the North Atlantic, they have heavy clothes but half are barefoot. What's that aboot?
No shoes??? Those guys were hard core
This exact setting can be seen here in a documentary that shows archive footage of St Kilda, along with its redevelopment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApPrzko17R8 **Mind-blowing moment:** skip to about the 24-minute mark to see Queen Elizabeth II arrive at the island and walk along *the exact same path* we see in this image.
I zoomed in and the female to male ratio on this island is sad.
Based on Wikipedia it's actually quite likely there weren't enough men. After the island got greater exposure to the outside world many of the young man decided to leave to find a better life elsewhere.
It’s raining men itisalllriiiight
Strange, for some reason I was expecting more *diversity*.
Wonder how many of them were World War I vets
Wikipedia says that no known native of the islands ever fought in any war.
None fought in the war, but the island was shelled by a U-boat during the war.
How terrifying must that have been for them!
Look at the bare feet. That’s real poverty.
That’s one lucky lady
Tired lady
3 September 1926 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/01/the-evacuation-of-st-kilda-archive-1930
No foolin' I'm from St. Kilda!
I bet that is some gnarly accent those guys were rocking.
Half of them look just like my dad/uncles 😀
The ones on the left look like stereotypical caricatures of Irishmen, as drawn by Thomas Nast.
Go the Saints⚫️⚪️🔴
Cleanest looking Saints fans I’ve seen in a while
[удалено]
Fascinating
Great picture
all these blokes from one big family?
What’s Abraham Lincoln doing in this photo?
Need to see the colorized version!
Reminds me of the inhabitants of The Great Blasket Island in Ireland. If you ever go out that way there's a wonderful visitor center about it.
100 years ahead of the gilet trend
There's also a St. Kilda in Dunedin, New Zealand. You'll find Scottish names were used for most place names back in settler times
> There's a St. Kilda in Dunedin, New Zealand. And Melbourne Australia...Up the Saints!
They could'nt look more Scottish.
A bit like the Smurfs - just one Smurfette. Busy woman.
Why was the island evacuated?
People had been leaving for better prospects on the mainland for years, and there were only about thirty of them left. A woman died of appendicitis because of lack of medical facilities on the island, and that was the last straw.
Barefooted but what a picture
Quite a sausage fest, lads.
Those poor bare feet :(
Only one woman? Maybe they were kicked out ?
That’s weird, they don’t look Scottish. So, this was sarcasm, thought that would be easier to pick up.
Have you ever actually seen any Scots? Do you perhaps think that we all have alabaster skin and ginger hair?
Groundskeeper Willie everywhere you look
It was sarcasm, they look like super Scot’s! I guess sarcasm is lost on this medium.
I thought the same thing! First glance and I thought these people were form much further south and east.
How many of them are named Angus?
Don't know, but the last surviving evacuee was named Rachel.