Introduction

 

“Chì mi chuimhneachan sgrìobhte air an linn nach eil beò
Anns gach tobht' agus gàrradh gach càrn agus crò”

Bho Choille ‘n Fhàsaich
Le Dòmhnall Mac Philip, Beàrnaraigh

 

The Western Isles have been occupied for at least five thousand years, and possibly as much as eight thousand years. The remains of this history are visible in the landscape about us; the very ecology is the result of generation after generation of human activity, clearing the woodlands, farming the land, managing the drainage pattern, hunting, gathering, fishing and farming. Prehistoric ruins stand visible in the Machair and on the Moors; prehistoric field walls underlie later fields. Our ancestors' cemeteries and settlements erode out of the coastline. This visible history and archaeology is the result of the processes that have shaped the society in which we live today.

 

National Sources of Information

Details on specific historic sites or buildings, in particular Listed Buildings or Scheduled Ancient Monuments can be found on the sites of Historic Scotland and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS). The RCAHMS site in particular contains a search facility, CANMORE, which provides access to the database of the National Monuments Record of Scotland (NMRS).

History

Prehistory

Samples from peat tell us that around eight thousand years ago, fires were lit across the islands, burning down parts of the woodland that then covered the islands, and increasing the grassland. This may be the first evidence of human occupation, as nomadic groups of hunters and gatherers travelled across the Minch and cleared the land for deer to graze. We have yet to find one of their ephemeral campsites; they are probably long buried under peat, or eroded into the sea.

Around five thousand years ago, people began increasingly to settle in permanent farms, cultivating fields and clearing more land. Their small rectangular houses have been found at Taobh a Tuath in Harris, and Dail Mor in Lewis, but the great monuments of this period are the temples and communal burial cairns at places like Calanais, in Lewis, and Dun Bharp in Barra.

Some three and a half thousand years ago, society began to change. The burial cairns became smaller, containing only one or two burials, like that at Cnip, in Lewis. Villages developed, of oval or round houses as at An Coileagan Udail, in North Uist, and Cladh Hallan in South Uist. Bronze was used for ornaments, and for tools and weapons such as those from a hoard found in Ness, Lewis.

 

Iron Age

Developing and changing, the society moved into the Iron Age, about two and a half thousand years ago. Increasingly, buildings were larger and more dramatic, culminating in the brochs, great circrular, drystone towers housing the local chiefs, such as Dun Charlabhagh. Ordinary people lived in much smaller houses. Burial, on the other hand, was unobtrusive. Cremations or inhumations were put in small stone cists underground.

 

The Vikings

The Christian faith spread through the islands in the seventh and eighth centuries after the birth of Christ. When the Vikings arrived in the ninth century, they intermarried with local families, and many gradually abandoned their pagan beliefs. Pagan burials, with tools, food and personal items to accompany the dead to the afterlife, are rare – some have been found in Cnip, in Lewis, and one or two in Barra. Most houses changed form from curved buildings with round rooms, to rectangular buildings, following the Scandinavian pattern of the new rulers, but internal organisation, activities and room divisions changed little. The Western Isles were part of Norway, but so far from centres of power that they were probably effectively independent. The people were called the Gall-Ghaidheil, the ‘Foreigner Gaels', reflecting their mixed Scandinavian/Gaelic background, and probably their bilingual speech.

Meanwhile Scotland had been unified for the first time under Kenneth MacAlpin, in the ninth century. The Hebrides became strategically important, and Scotland and Norway disputed the islands throughout the Viking period. The Kingdom of Man and the Isles competed with the Earldom of Orkney for the Western Isles, first one and then the other dominant. In the eleventh century, the islands are said to have been sacked by Magnus ‘Bareleg' of Norway, but it was not until the thirteenth century that the issue was resolved. In 1263, Haakon of Norway attacked Scotland, and was defeated at the Battle of Largs. In 1266, the islands were ceded to Scotland under the Treaty of Perth.

 

Lordship of the Isles

In the fourteenth century, the Lordship of the Isles emerged as the most important power in north-western Scotland. The Lords of the Isles were based on Islay, but controlled all of the Hebrides. They were descended from Somerled (Somhairle) Mac Gillibride, a Gall-Gaidheil lord who had held the Hebrides and West Coast two hundred years earlier. Their power was so great that it was seen as a threat to the crown, and the Lordship was declared forfeit at the end of the fifteenth century.

This was a period of change for the islands, as the settlement pattern seems to have reflected the political and economic shifts of the mediaeval period. The scattered farms and small townships, which had existed on the machair since the Iron Age and before, moved gradually away from the coast towards the edge of the moors. Runrig, the system of periodic redistribution of land within a township, may have been introduced during this time.

 

Emigration and Clearances

Following the 1745 rebellion, and Prince Charles Edward Stewart's flight to France via the Uists, the economic and social system of the islands was gradually dismantled by a series of political measures designed to bring the Highlands and Islands into the body of the British Nation. The use of Gaelic was discouraged, rents were demanded in cash rather than kind, and the wearing of folk dress was made illegal. Emigration to the New World increasingly became an escape for those who could afford it during the latter half of the eighteenth century, including Flora MacDonald of Milton, who had aided the flight of the prince. With the beginning of the nineteenth century, Clearances by landlords forced vast numbers off their traditional lands, and increased again the flood of emigrants. This process was exacerbated by the terrible years of the Potato Famine, in the mid-1850s. By the end of the nineteenth century, large tracts of the best land in the islands were under sheep, with a vastly reduced population contained within very few townships on poorer land.

 

WW1 and WW2

During the First World War, thousands of men from the islands served in the forces, the majority were in the Army and approximately 2000 lost their lives. Lewis and Harris suffered a particularly devastating loss when 181 of the men who had survived the war and were from the islands, lost their lives just outside Stornoway, in the sinking of HMS Iolaire, on New Year's Day 1919. The number lost during the Second World War was in excess of 750 and the vast majority of these were in the in the Royal and Merchant Navy. The years following the War saw continued emigration to the Americas and the mainland. By this time, the population of the islands was greatly reduced from its level at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and although the decline slowed after the Second World War, it has continued until this day.

 

Recent History

During the first half of the twentieth century, political changes led to a series of laws extending the rights of crofters to secure tenancies. Cleared land was purchased by the government and recrofted, and landowners were encouraged to re-establish cleared townships. In Lewis and Harris, the strength of the Harris Tweed industry, despite fashion-led fluctuations, sustained the crofting economy, as did government assistance to the fishing industry. In 1974, the islands were unified under a local authority for the first time, with the creation of Comhairle nan Eilean (later to become Comhairle nan Eilean Siar).

In the latter years of the twentieth century, elements of the earlier life still survive. Most of the population is still in the rural areas. Many people still have croft tenancies, and manage livestock, though cultivation is much decreased. Peat is still cut, as it has been for four thousand years. Weaving continues, although the industry is in deep depression, as is fishing. Tourism has become an essential element of the island economy. Continuing careful use of the fragile ecology ensures that the physical remains of island history are visible for both islander and visitor to see and explore in the landscape around us.