The Isle of Skye. Terry Marsh

AD585, and other saints shortly after. But this period of calm was ended after a spell of only 200 years with the arrival of Viking invaders and a new way of life.

      The Norse occupation of the Island lasted until the Battle of Largs in 1263, when the fleet of King Haakon was defeated by the Scottish king, Alexander III. Not longer afterwards, in 1266, the Western Isles were ceded to Scotland under the Treaty of Perth.

      Yet, with a great independence of spirit for which they are renowned, the Islanders still saw themselves as separate from Scotland, led by the Lord of the Isles. Under his guidance there were many rebellions against the crown, especially during the 14th and 15th centuries, a period also noted for numerous feuds between the island clans. Of these the most prominent were the MacLeods and the MacDonalds, and the Island is spattered with sites of their deeds and misdeeds.

      The position of Lord of the Isles was finally abolished by James IV in 1493, although this had little restraining impact on the clan chiefs in spite of a show of muscle by James V in 1540. In that year, he brought a large fleet to Skye, visiting the MacLeod and MacDonald strongholds at Dunvegan and Duntulm respectively before anchoring in Portree Bay for the chiefs to come and pay their respects. Peace, of a sort, did then ensue, but only until the king died, and that only two years later. Clan battles continued to be waged throughout the 16th century, and just into the 17th, when the last battle, that in Coire na Creiche, was fought in 1601.

      The Act of Union which followed the death of Elizabeth 1 in 1603, under which James VI of Scotland became James I of England, brought a new source of conflict. During the 17th and 18th centuries life among the islands was coloured by attempts to restore the Stuarts to the throne of England and Scotland which only came to a conclusion in the 1745 Rebellion led by Bonnie Prince Charlie (Prince Charles Edward Stuart). After his disastrous defeat at Culloden (1746), the Prince fled by a most roundabout route that took him to the Outer Isles and to Skye itself, before leaving for the Scottish mainland and France in July 1746.

      The 1745 Rebellion raised in Parliament the determination to completely erase the culture that had inspired the rebellion, and outlawed weapons, the Gaelic language and the wearing of the kilt. They succeeded in their aims and peace subsequently came to the islands.

      But it was not to last. Poor harvests in 1835 and 1836 and a complete failure of the potato crop in 1846 and 1847 impoverished both the local population and their landlords, and led to a widespread clearance of the land so that the small crofts might be combined to form more profitable areas for sheep grazing. Landlords saw crofters as a burden rather than a means of income, and had little compunction in turning to the more viable sheep farming.

      Ruined croft, Erisco (Walk 6.1)

      Most of these forced evictions took place between 1840 and 1885, when almost 7000 families were moved from their land and sent abroad, many dying en route. Throughout this book, tales of these clearances appear again and again, and a number of walks visit the sites of former villages. It is a very emotive subject, and I doubt that anyone is proud of what happened, not even those who catalogue it as economic necessity. Towards the end of the 19th century people started resisting the evictions and the tyranny that would often accompany them. Of key importance was a battle between crofters and police at Braes, not far from Portree, which led to a Commission of Inquiry and a succession of crofters’ laws, which enshrined a security of tenure and fair rents, the substance of which remains intact today.

      Agriculture still remains a major industry on Skye, but its future now lies in tourism, an economy initiated by the early attentions of Thomas Pennant, Johnson and Boswell, and Sir Walter Scott who visited Skye on his tour of the northern lighthouses in 1814. At the same time the first ‘mountaineers’ turned their attentions to the Island, concentrating almost exclusively, but with immense success, on the Cuillin. Once the whereabouts of the single greatest range of mountain peaks in Britain became common knowledge, tourism gained a momentum it has never lost.

Geology

      Almost certainly it will have been the geology of Skye that has brought you to the Island. Not necessarily the study of geology, but the consequences of the processes of tectonic creation that fashioned the profile and landscape of Skye.

      Man has probably inhabited Skye for at least 4000 years, but that is a brief moment of Skye’s history, a history shaped over unimaginable years with many tools, the workings of which were at times cataclysmically violent, at others well-nigh undetectable.

      As with the rest of Britain and Europe, the geological history of Skye dips back to the Pre-Cambrian era of about 2500–3000 million years ago, although millions of years would elapse before Skye became an island. Quite what the landscape was like in those distant times is only guesswork, but on the basis of geological and topographical studies Skye can be divided into three distinct sections.

      Heading for the Quiraing (Walk 6.4)

      First, the southernmost part of the island, Sleat, is composed of Lewisian Gneiss, Torridonian sedimentary rocks, Moine Schists and Cambro-Ordovician sedimentary rocks. The already complex interrelationships of these basic rock types is further complicated by extensive thrusting and the transportation of large areas of all these rocks. The present landforms are the product of massive glaciation which over most of the island flowed westwards, but along the east coast flowed northwards.

      North Skye, including Trotternish, Waternish and Duirinish, consists of a plateau-like topography punctuated by sea lochs, as at Snizort, Dunvegan and Bracadale. Here, Jurassic sedimentary rocks occur, capped by lavas and pyroclastic rocks from the Lower Tertiary period. Because these rocks dip at a shallow angle to the west, they give rise to steep scarp slopes on the east side, and it is quite easy to pick out the different and distinctive lava layers. One spectacular feature of these rocks is the incidence of landslipped material which developed during Quaternary times; the Storr and the Quiraing are by far the best examples.

      The most dramatic scenery, however, is formed from Lower Tertiary intrusive rocks, of which gabbro and granite are the most significant. It is from these rocks that the Cuillin are formed, and the distinction between these rocks and the intrusive acid rocks of the Red Hills is most noticeable as you walk through Glen Sligachan.

      During the Tertiary period many parts of Skye were subjected to massive volcanic activity, probably the most violent in Britain. To the north-west of Kilchrist you can still see the vent of an ancient volcano; it has a diameter of about 5km (3 miles). When all that ceased, the island enjoyed about 50 million years of relative calm, until the ice came. The Pleistocene period, the Age of Ice, started about two million years ago, and is largely responsible for producing the landscape we see today. Massive ice sheets covered most of Britain, and huge glaciers flowed across the landscape, moving, plucking, breaking, scratching at the rocks below the ice. When finally they left, they had created a fascinating land form, one that was to be further shaped as sea levels fluctuated, forming raised beaches around Skye, and the agents of erosion got to work.

      For a simplified study of these events you should read The Geology of Skye, by Paul and Grace Yoxon; for something vastly more in-depth you need An Excursion Guide to the Geology of the Isle of Skye by B R Bell and J W Harris.

Flora and fauna

      In many respects the flora and fauna of Skye does not differ significantly from the rest of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, but on a few counts the Island does stand out rather noticeably. Here you will find up to 40 percent of the world’s grey seals, a high density of breeding golden eagles, an increasing number of white-tailed sea eagles, and a more diverse flora and birdlife than any other comparable area in size in Europe.

      And, famously, Skye boasts its own ‘wee beastie’. The midge is renowned worldwide, and can reduce the strongest of folk to tears. Sadly, this scourge of visitors from June to late summer has an accomplice, the cleg, a large horse-fly with a nasty bite. Proprietary defences are available in outdoor shops, and most work, up to a point, for a while. Scientists are working on developing midge-free