Prologue

Far from the Scottish mainland there are a small group of islands that erupt from the Atlantic Ocean. Standing perpendicular to the sea they almost appear to be sentinels watching over the Western Isles of the Outer Hebrides, this archipelago is known as St Kilda. The largest of these islands is named “Hirta”, the root of this name is lost to time, with some suggesting it comes from the Old Norse “Hirt” meaning shepherd, alluding to the appearance of the island which was visited and documented by an Icelandic cleric in AD1202. As for “St Kilda”, there is no such Saint of this name; it is believed that “Kilda” merely comes from the name “Hirta” which has changed in the mouths of foreigners over time, leading to a distinguishment between Hirta an St Kilda that may never have existed in the original tongue. Hirta is the only island in St Kilda that has ever been populated by humans and, after the events of 1930, it is likely that it will be the only one to ever be populated by humans.
St Kilda is a magnificent place and as such it gave rise to a group of magnificent people known, quite appropriately, as the St Kildans. St Kildans were stubborn and pious folk, without a doubt a product of their environment. Short of stature but nimble of feet, a life lived atop perilous cliff-faces hunting for sea birds as a staple food source meant the St Kildans were an agile group of people with no fear of heights.
St Kilda existed happily isolated from modern society for hundreds of years with only the odd visitor here and there, which often caused them bother; if the trouble was not being raided, it was clerics attempting to convert them from their original semi-druidic religion to Christianity, which eventually succeeded - leading to the St Kildans being a God-fearing folk in the latter years of the Island’s existence. These centuries of sporadic disturbance caused some generations of St Kildans to be cautious of visitors, but in general they were welcoming of people who made the trouble to come to their island. In some cases the visit was involuntary; there are several recorded cases of people being stranded on Hirta and being helped back to the mainland by the St Kildans.
This isolation caused their society to grow in vastly different ways to those on the Scottish mainland, unsurprisingly. However, because of increased communication and visitation of mainlanders in the 1800s St Kilda had to have its own different society within the larger society of the mainland, with taxes being paid to the landowner.
Due to various socioeconomic factors, including World War One and the British Government deciding it was no longer worth maintaining St Kilda’s infrastructure, the islanders were evacuated to the mainland at 8am on the 29th of August 1930. For some families this was welcomed, as they had no wish to remain on the island after hearing about life on the mainland, for others it was nothing short of a robbery of their homeland.
While the events that took place on St Kilda were very much real, this story follows Finlay - who is not. Finlay is fifteen years old, meaning he has been out of the St Kildan school for a year and is now a man by the rites of his culture. While he speaks English in this book he would have spoken Gaelic on St Kilda, save for the English classes he took between the ages of six and fourteen. I have deliberately not included any names of real St Kildans, or indeed the name of the specific family to which Finlay belongs as there were very few families left on Hirta in the early 20th Century and I won’t belittle any of them by fictionalising their very real history.
All that is left to do is thank you for reading this story and taking the time to enjoy Finlay’s journey before your very own infinite…