LIFE ON THE EDGE
How the tiny Orcadian island of North Ronaldsay is fighting back against the spectre of depopulation
In a place where Scotland gives way to the sea a lone piper plays an air of loss and hope. This is North Ronaldsay, the most northerly island in the Orkney archipelago, and we had gathered that bright Sunday three years ago to mark the departure of the island school’s last pupil, 12-year-old Teigan Scott. You felt privileged to be a witness to this rite of passage which seemed to define the eternal struggle faced by a place like this. But the gentle wind that bent up towards us from the North Sea seemed to carry the whispers of those who had once thronged this little place of learning and it left you slightly bereft. How long would this wizened, sturdy community have to wait before their school, their pride and the source of hope for a vibrant future, rings once more to the voices of children?
Not long into your first visit to North Ronaldsay you find yourself making plans to return. This place doesn’t possess the creviced splendour of the west Highlands or the storeyed magnificence of Skye and Mull but it seeps into your soul and stays there, refusing to be dislodged by its showy sisters. The land and the sky and the sea come together here, respecting each other’s boundaries and being sustained by them in turn. Mountains and castles might seem like an unseemly intrusion in this austere and moody place.
Three years on, the school remains empty but ready to resume its vocation. Rather than shut it down and repurpose it – or worse, sell it off – the local authority chose merely to mothball it, thus ensuring that it can re-open quickly if the need arises once more. A generation ago when 72-year-old Billy Muir, the eternal keeper of North Ronaldsay lighthouse, was in his prime there were perhaps 150 souls on this island; now there are barely 40. The dial really needs to move a little in the right direction if this place is to continue sharing its ethereal beauty with future generations.
Billy attended that last passing out ceremony along with his old friend, 79-year-old Sinclair Scott, who played the pipes. Both of them are still mocking the concept of retirement on an island which seems to rebuke the notion of putting your feet up. This is a working island that makes an assortment of daily demands on each of its inhabitants, some more than others.
Billy gained national recognition a few years back when he received an MBE for a lifetime of dedication to North Ronaldsay. His lifetime though, measures a dozen of those more ordinary. He has only recently shed some of his 17 jobs. And when I last saw him and Sinclair they were sharing a suitably aged island malt after a day erecting a windfarm secured with a grant they’d teased from the local authority.
Today, he’s preparing to help with the pounding of the island’s famous breed of sheep. If you know anything about this island it’ll be something about the North Ronaldsay sheep, a semi-feral breed that lives on the shoreline, subsisting largely on a diet of seaweed, which gives it a unique and much sought-after flavour.
With fewer than 600 breeding females the breed – which comes in several colours – is officially listed as vulnerable and kept on the shoreline by a six-foot dry stone dyke that circumnavigates the island’s 13-mile coastline. This makes it one of the largest of its type in the world and guarantees its protection by Historic Scotland.
The sheep are crucial to North Ronaldsay’s economy and its natural infrastructure. They have regulated the ebb and flow of island life since the collapse of the ancient kelping industry two centuries ago forced the islanders to turn to crofting for their livelihood. This economic recalibration of their means of subsistence meant that the sheep had to be kept on the shoreline – away from the pastureland – and only brought into the square drystone pounds for lambing. Humans have settled here since the time of the Iron Age, around 500 BC. Compared with the North Ronaldsay sheep though, we are merely upstart incomers. In the 5,000 years they’ve been grazing here they’ve remained largely as they were with scant exposure to cross-breeding.
This island once teemed with 500 people and the task of pounding the sheep and maintaining the sprawling dyke system was straightforward enough with a sufficiency of hands and bequeathed
generation ago there were perhaps 150 souls on this island; now there are barely 40
North Ronaldsay is facing a very challenging period now which could make or break us
skills. The population has now dipped below fifty though; most of them elderly, and so these tasks, which still define life here, have become more onerous.
On my last visit I watched in awe as Billy Muir, this granite-faced senior, spent a Saturday evening under a fading summer sun gouging large slabs of rock from the shore at one end of the island and transporting them with a JCB to the other end. A gap in the dyke that had left one of the island homes perilously exposed to the sea had to be plugged. The following day, before an admiring audience that consisted of me and a family of seals bobbing in and out of the waves to get a closer look at the old man beside their sea, he set to his task.
‘North Ronaldsay is facing a very challenging period now which could make or break us,’ says Billy. ‘Coronavirus has changed the whole world and how people live, but especially here. The sale of sheep has come to a complete standstill. The supply for 2020 has stopped completely and the slaughterhouses are now shut. In terms of the cattle it’s a little more uncertain. We won’t know for sure how the cattle prices will fare for a few months.
‘Britain’s departure from the EU was already hitting the islands hard and now we have this to contend with. It makes the struggle to be entirely self-sustaining even more difficult. When I was a boy almost every house in the island had someone living in it. There were 150 of us then. When we round up the sheep tomorrow, we’ll only be able to operate with the folk that live on the island and Xxxxxx: xxxxxxx. that’s precious few.’
Loganair, which provides an efficient island-hopping service across these islands, moved quickly in early March to restrict flights only to islanders. This helped ensure that North Ronaldsay remains untouched by coronavirus and unthreatened by those urban simpletons who might otherwise have been tempted to hunker down in a place such as this while the health crisis raged. The island’s ageing population makes it particularly vulnerable to the contagion.
The next couple of years could be crucial important for this island. It will always need to farm but doesn’t yet know if it can sell much cattle or sheep over the course of the next six to 12 months. ‘In a way we’ve been sheltered from what’s been happening to the rest of the world, and if people can’t import from abroad it might be good for the home grown market,’ says Billy. ‘Yet I haven’t heard the Scottish or UK Governments make much mention of farmers, not even as key workers. We’re still waiting to hear what support, if any, we’ll be entitled to.’
Since my last visit, a few more families have moved to this speck of Orcadian land and Billy is cautiously optimistic his beloved island will continue to pay its own way. But what will it look like? North Ronaldsay, like most of Scotland’s other populated islands, relies on some tourism to augment the farming, but never to the extent of hawking its wares. As coronavirus and its aftermath change everything in its path the identity of a place like this becomes a consideration once more. How do you maintain the balance of remaining true to the island’s identity even as its economy faces its greatest challenge in two centuries?
The arrival of Louise and Neal Paterson with their teenage son Liam at the end of last year immediately raised the island’s population by almost 10 per cent. They are the perfect fit for a place like this. On Mull, where they had previously lived, they owned a hotel where Louise baked and Neal built and mended things. In the eye of a northern winter and while Britain was spinning out of Europe this was not an easy flit. As well as the humans there were two large dogs and a parrot. ‘Our new house hadn’t been lived in for a year,’ says Louise. Initially, we had to adjust to the quietness and now, of course, with the lockdown it’s quieter still.’
Around 60% of North Ronaldsay’s population is over 75 years old and so it had to institute lockdown before anyone else in Scotland, but the shock to the nation’s system is not perhaps felt as much on the island. ‘Most people here are accustomed to doing for themselves; to making do and mending,’ says Louise. ‘What I’ve loved in this, our first year, is watching all the migratory birds returning. Each morning you find yourself picking up a new song and realising you have a new addition.’
She and Neal had loved Mull but saw its character change in the course of the last 15 years. ‘In the last 15 years it’s become very busy and a magnet for tourists. At that point we were looking for a smallholding in Italy to retire to before Brexit intervened.