St Kilda – Hirta – Atlantic, Scotland – Exiled people
St Kilda – Hirta – To reach the place called „the edge of the world”. You have to bounce off the west coast of Scotland and over 60 km across the cold Atlantic. There, among windswept and waves, several small islands protrude from the sea. They are so unfriendly and distant from the mainland, that it is not surprising that they are uninhabited, so it is surprising that Hirta, part of the St Kilda archipelago, was already inhabited in the Bronze Age.
The life of indigenous peoples almost all the time concentrated on making supplies for the winter. Harvesting: Peat, which was a source of heat for them. Sheep wool for yarns and sea birds as food. There was no possibility of fishing – the waters around were treacherous enough.
Weather is so hard and unpredictable, that up to the last century for eight months of the year. Hirta was completely cut off from the world. Even in the nineteenth century, its inhabitants, whose number ranged between 100 and 200, when they wanted to make contact with the world. They threw messages in bottles, into sea, at favorable winds. Hoping that someone in Scotland will catch one.
Community lived in great isolation
To the extent that her genetic pool has been weakened: brought from outside, quite innocent diseases. Which destroyed her almost completely. The last 36 survivors surrendered in the 1930s. After the decision of the British Parliament, they left a sinister place. It was the end of the settlement, which lasted over two thousand years…
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