Absorbing Landscapes
A site visit to the Outer Hebrides
3-6 April 2025
10 April 2025
3-4.5 minute read
We travelled to the Outer Hebrides to discover their secret history of wellness and Nordic culture, explore their ancient and rugged terrain, and even take a brisk dip in the Atlantic. Our journey traversed wind-swept moors, mythical beaches and ritual landscapes, in search of sites for a project we are in the early stages of developing with an exciting new client…
“A Lewis man would be homesick in heaven.”
— Anon.
As with all places in which we work, our first fascination is with their history and heritage. So much of what we see of a place is the product of generations of human life. The culture of any society that exists in a place - and so its impact on that place - is invariably in some part a product of the location itself.
This interplay between people and planet is always a source of great inspiration and intrigue to us, so we were thrilled to embark on a journey to find out the story of these islands and how they have arrived as they are today.
The Outer Hebrides began life as a single, long island, standing above sea level for a billion years. However, during the most recent Ice Age, the area was scraped over by the mainland ice sheets, which left behind the bare, rocky outcrops, angular remnants, and rugged archipelago landscape and fjords that we recognise today.
The distinctive Lewisian gneiss, of which the islands are comprised, are the oldest rocks in Britain, and among the oldest anywhere in the world, having been formed around 3,000 million years ago. However, the landscape is far from monotonous, thanks to minor variations in the mineral constituents of sub-types and sub-groups of the gneiss, which result in varying levels of resistance to erosion and a large diversity in hard rock landforms, and landscapes.
Then, the emergence of the Gulf Stream around 11,500 years ago caused major environmental change in three key ways: the formation of the peat bogs within the basins left by the glaciers; the formation of the “machair” - long sandy beaches and dunes resulting from the gradual accumulation of sands along the western coastal edge of the islands; and the gradual rise in sea level following glacial retreat. The Gulf Stream results in a milder climate than would otherwise occur at the islands’ northerly latitude, and attracts warm-water marine species.
From this unique geological and geographical context, the islands’ history and culture were formed.
The Outer Hebrides can feel more like Scandinavia than Scotland, and not just in the visual and physical sense. For several hundred years, the islands also known as the Western Isles were in fact part of the Kingdom of Norway. The dialect is a curious breed of Gaelic with Norse fragments, intonations and place-names.
They were once known to the Norse as the Suðreyar, or “Southern Islands”, in an inversion of their current place in the British psyche as a distinctly Northern location. They were an important strategic and economic location for traders travelling south from Norse lands, and once settled, became a gateway for the spread of Norse culture and influence down the western seaboard of Britain and into Ireland.
There is a strong feeling among many of the locals that they don’t quite belong to Scotland or the wider UK. To the east, the mainland seems distant and intangible, so close as to feel known but often a shadowy, mysterious and alien land. The infinite expanse of the Atlantic Ocean to the west is daunting and terrifying in its size. One can hardly be surprised that anyone’s best guess for thousands of years was that “out there”, somewhere, lay only monsters, mystery, and the edge of the world.
It is a land of hard living, in an unforgiving environment. The iconic black houses speak plainly and clearly through their form, construction and orientation of why and how they came to be. Across the landscape, the scattered remnants of buildings continue to be re-purposed in new construction. Neolithic structures march across the horizon and carry the sun across the sky to its repose at day’s end. The patterns of crofting and peat-cutting are inlaid across the landscape, somehow recalling the structured, regular chevrons of the woven tweeds that are perhaps the islands' most recognisable and celebrated export.
Shielings used as seasonal shelters by pastoral farmers inland of the coastal inhabited areas are peppered throughout landscape. Historically these were drystone, turf-roofed "beehive dwellings", but in the last century or so more modern, but still rudimentary, structures referred to as "airighs" have arisen and remain in occasional use to this day, supporting a nomadic, pastoral way of life for some.
Sea life is abundant and rich, with various species of whales, dolphins, sea eagles, see otters, and puffins all regular visitors or residents of the archipelago. Fauna have adapted to the human environment of the Outer Hebrides and are thriving across its micro-climates and biomes.
It’s a truly unique and special place. What's most intriguing is the way in which centuries of intensive human activity, mostly through crofting and peat-cutting, and even the occasional heavy industry or extensive country estate seem to be somehow born of this landscape and inseparable from it. There is a feeling of synergy in the relationship between humans and nature here that is not often felt within the context of a heavily developed part of the world; an authenticity and directness in the experience of just being here, as if all the filters that are normally applied to our lives as a matter of course have been stripped away and we’re left with what’s really real, and what matters.
What more otherworldly and awe-inspiring place exists within the British Isles?
And why are we here? We can’t say just yet, but suffice it to say, you’re going to want to stay tuned…
