From Mordor to Stornoway

Enroute to Stornoway, we sailed past Fingal's Cave,  the Isle of Skye and other, smaller islands. It felt like we were taking the sea route to Mordor. 

Fingal’s Cave

Stornoway is famous for its black pudding and for being an integral part of the late night shipping forecast. It also has a long history of conflict, largely over land. It was occupied by the Vikings who called it Stjórnavágr, its main settlement being built around a natural harbour. 

Stornoway and harbour

In later years it was controlled by Clan  MacNicol, who were later dispossessed by Clan MacLeod who in turn struggled against the greed of other more legal minded Scots egged on by James VI who in 1598 ‘gave’ the island to a trading company, ‘The Fife Adventurers.’ Great name.

His great desire was the ‘de-Gaelicisation’ of the islands, demanding the ‘slauchter, mutilation, fyre-raising or utheris inconveniencies’ if necessary. As far as I can see, the Scots had little to learn from the English when it came to  colonialism. 

Stornoway successfully resisted, and in 1610, James, now King of England and Scotland ‘gave’ the island to the Mackenzie's of Kintail in the hope they’d prove more ruthless. Neil MacLeod was captured and taken to Edinburgh where, without irony, he was accused of fire raising, murder, piracy and theft, and beheaded. A noble would have been beheaded alive. A small mercy or perhaps final humiliation—Neil MacLeod was instead beheaded postmortem, his head put on a spike. The Mackenzies were quite ruthless in dispossessing tenants and ‘clearing’ the land, and the tradition continued when in 1844 Stornoway was bought for £500,000 by another Scotsman, James Matheson. 

The English are sometimes blamed for the Highland Clearances – especially amongst Scottish Nationalists who now like to distance themselves from the great Imperial Adventure—as if they had no part in it but were in fact the victims. James Matheson hadn't been given the message. He made his fortune from the ‘Opium Trade’ and the naked bullying of a then weak China. Having bought Stornoway he proceeded to build Lewes Castle, clearing 500 families off the land by encouraging them to emigrate to Canada. The policy was encouraged further by the Highland potato famine which saw over a third of population of the western Highlands and Isles  ‘move on.’ 

Lewes Castle. Victorian grandeur 

!

In 1918, Lord Leverhulme bought the Isles of Lewis and Harris. He had ambitious plans that would have 

revolutionised the lives of those living there. Fisheries, efficient farming, roads, the works. The problem was local crofters wanted no part of it. And they were prepared to fight.  Eventually Lord Leverhulme saw sense and abandoned the great project, though not without one final and generous flourish, returning the land and the castle itself to the people of Stornoway.