Catastrophe at St Kilda: Vulnerability and Resilience in an Island Community

Abstract

A ‘sea of islands’ approach to the history of the Hebrides increases the possibility that aspects of St Kilda’s relatively well-recorded ethnography may be productively extrapolated to the wider and less well documented Hebridean region. However, cultural continuity in the archipelago may have been affected by two ‘catastrophes’, after which depleted populations were augmented by people from throughout the MacLeods’ domains. Island communities had low immunity to introduced diseases and were exposed to regionally endemic violence. In economic and political terms it made sense for chiefs (lairds) to re-populate islands demographically damaged by catastrophes, in order to continue the uplifting of food renders and other exports and to provide their travelling retinues with activities such as hunting, fishing and fowling; St Kilda would have presented abundant opportunities in this respect. In recent centuries, re-population may have introduced widespread Hebridean folklore and stories. The perpetuation of Norse words for seabirds and words connected with boats, and of toponyms particularly relating to the most important seascape features, may relate to the development of a lingua franca which would have aided cultural continuity during episodes of major population renewal.