--
History --
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.
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
rep eated 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. |
