Neil Finlayson brought
his family to the island where he was born, after 20
years away.
Driving down the two lane road that links north and south Lewis,
I panicked. It looked and felt like driving through a moonscape—flat,
featureless moorland and peat bog, with not a human being nor a
house in sight. The road signs, written in Gaelic, with English
translations in much smaller characters, just added to my sense
of dislocation. It made me want to drive very, very fast—if
only in the hope of seeing a tree. I could have saved myself the
effort. On this island, I was to find out, there are none.
The monotony of the landscape was broken by an occasional cluster
of small grey houses, dominated by churches so large they looked
completely out of place. Their appearance spoke volumes: this island,
like most in the Outer Hebrides, is a stronghold of Presbyterianism.
The Sabbath is so strictly observed that no one, I was told, would
risk hanging out their washing on a Sunday. It’s only a few
years since planes from the Scottish mainland, forty miles away,
were granted permission to land here on the Sabbath. Ferry companies
are still fighting for the same privilege.
Neil Finlayson is
a technical director for a software company in Lewis.
His home office is in a shed behind his house.
I live in London, but being on the Isle of Lewis felt very much
like being in a foreign land, and in a way it was. A foreign land
battered for much of the year by lashing gales and driving rain.
Only in summer, when the days are long and (sometimes) the sun shines,
can a visitor truly appreciate its stark beauty: vast skies, endless
white beaches and silence, pierced only by the sound of wheeling
seagulls. But as one person put it, it takes a certain intestinal
fortitude to live here. Even in company, the sense of solitude and
isolation can be overwhelming.
This string of islands some 150 miles long, forty miles off the
Scottish coast in the North Atlantic, is of course part of Great
Britain. But the islands’ remoteness—and until recently,
their inaccessibility—has ensured that they retain a character
all their own. The Gaelic and Norse history of the communities here
is ancient and unique; many still grow up with Gaelic as their first
language. The music that they make also celebrates this uniqueness—tunes
hundreds of years old, played on the bagpipes, the accordion, the
tin whistle, the fiddle and a small harp known as the clarsach.
Not to mention the utterly haunting sound of unaccompanied Gaelic
singing.
Neil is pleased that
his son, Charlie, has embraced the Gaelic culture and
music.
But decades of depopulation and unemployment have taken their toll
on these islands, undermining the viability of both the economy
and the culture. The challenge they face now is to open up to the
world outside and embrace the future. Not all the islanders are
ready for that. But it may be the only way of conserving what they
value most about their way of life.
Listen
to Part I
