Isle of Eigg History

Eigg's history is colourful but often turbulent. Its green pastures, fertile slopes and sheltered bays have always made it a desirable place to settle.

Its early inhabitants have left their mark on the landscape with the remains of their bronze age farms and their Iron age duns. In the Dark Ages, it was part of the western edge of the Pictish Kingdom. So that Donnan, the Irish missionary who brought christianity to the island and founded an important monastery at Kildonnan, incurred the wrath of the local queen. He was martyred there in 617 with his whole monastic community.

By the 8th century, Viking raiders were replaced by aristocratic Norse settlers who used Eigg as their base for trading with Ireland and beyond. The Norse occupation left an important legacy of place-names, not the least the name of the island itself, which comes for an old Norse word meaning notch. By medieval times, the island was in the hands of Ranald MacDonald, the founder of Clan Ranald, a descendant of Somerled, the Norse/Irish king of the Isles.

Situated in the heart of Clanranald country, the island found itself involved in every MacDonald rebellion against the Crown and in a good many feuds. A lengthy feud between the Macdonalds and the Macleods in the 16th century led to the death of the island's entire population - almost 400 - in the Massacre Cave.

The islanders paid a heavy price for supporting their chiefs in the two Jacobite rebellions. The chief of Clanranald escaped to France after finding refuge in another cave at the north end of the island at the end of the 1745 rising. The islanders who followed him were ot so lucky, they wer taken prisoners by the Navy and sent to London for trial: 19 died in prison, 18 were transported to Jamaica as slaves and only 2 came back.

The island recovered some of its prosperity towrds the end of the 19th century, when its sustained a population of 500, producing potatoes, oats, black cattle and kelp. The kelp industry based on the harvesting of sea-weed financed the building of the main farmhouses on the island, tenanted by old Clanranald families, until the chiefs' policy of raising rents caused many of them to emigrate to Canada.

The Clearances started as better prices were offered for land empty of people, where sheep could be pastured. The ruined villages of Grulin under the Sgurr bear testimony to that harsh period of Highland history. Fourteen families used to live there before they were forced to emigrate in 1853.

Farms were divided in much smaller crofts, as in Cleadale, where each parcel of land is enclosed by walls which run from the cliffs to the sea. Old pattern of settlement still shows under these crofting boundaries. Many islanders left, unable to obtain land or work, and today, only the north end of the island remains as a crofting area.

There .the beach of Laig is a scene of peaceful tranquility, white sands overlooking the Coolins of Rum. Yet during WW2, .it was used for commando training to rehearse the Normandy landing whilst the islanders themselves were serving in the Navy, many in the Atlantic convoys.

At that time the island was used as a recreational and sporting estate: the Lodge and its exotic gardens were built in the 1920's by Lord Runciman, wealthy shipowner and president of the Board of Trade. After WW2, conditions changed, and even though the island was run as an efficient hill farm, it was no longer profitable.

The sale of the island in the 1960's ushered a long period of instability with successive owners who did little or not enough to maintain a strong island community. By the 1980's many newcomers had joined the indigenous islanders in the task of rebuilding the community.

After repeated clashes with the then owner, Keith Schellenberg, who sold Eigg to Maruma, a German artist of doutful credentials, the islanders embarked on a buy-out campaign which won the support of wildlife lovers and Scottish patriots wishing for a more just system of land distribution.

The 60 million year old lava pillar at the pier commemorates the island's historic buy-out in 1997 by the islanders and their partners in the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust.

For details of the book Eigg, the Story of an Island, by Camille Dressler, click here

For details of a summer course on the History and Natural Environment of Eigg, visit the Glebe Barn website