Сула Сгейр: Шотландия аралдарының алыс бұлағы

Island in Outer Hebrides, Scotland, UK

Sula Sgeir is a small, uninhabited Scottish islet in the North Atlantic, west of Rona. One of the most remote islands of the British Isles, it lies approximately north of Lewis and is best known for its population of gannets. It has a narrow elongated shape running north northeast to south southwest, and is approximately 900 m long by typically 100 m wide (apart from a central headland projecting a further 100 m on the easterly side). Macculloch's 1819 Description refers to "Sulisker", an Anglicised spelling that is still occasionally used. There is Suleskjer, a skerry in Utsira, Norway which has a name with a similar origin; there is also a Sule Skerry in Orkney.

The island is made of hard gneiss rock, the summit of a submarine mountain. Erosion causes the bedrock to shear into long flat pieces. The sea has created a series of interconnected sea caves and tunnels throughout the southern part of the island. During big Atlantic storms, waves break right over the top of Sula Sgeir.

Saint Brianhuil or Brenhilda, the sister of St Ronan of Iona and North Rona, is said to have lived on Sula Sgeir as a recluse. She was reportedly found dead in a bothy with a cormorant's nest in her ribcage. Sula Sgeir has a special place in the seafaring history of the men of the Ness district on Lewis. Dean Munro visited the Hebrides in 1549 and his is one of the earliest accounts written about the Western Isles. His description of Sula Sgeir mentions that the men of Ness sailed in their small craft to "fetche hame thair boatful of dry wild fowls with wild fowl fedderi". 1953 saw the last journey under sail for the guga hunt, thereafter a fishing trawler was used, although it was still a five hour trip. Sula Sgeir, with North Rona, historically formed part of the Barvas estate on Lewis, but a community buy out of the estate from the Duckworth family in 2016 did not include the two islands, which would apparently have increased the purchase price by £80,000.

There are some 5,000 breeding pairs of gannets on Sula Sgeir, which they share with other bird species such as black legged kittiwakes, common guillemots, puffins, northern fulmars and in the summers of 2005 to 2007 a Black browed Albatross was resident in the gannet colony. Scottish writer Peter May uses the setting of Sula Sgeir describing the annual expedition in his crime story The Blackhouse in 2011 (first published in a French translation in 2009). Robert Macfarlane describes the hunt at Sula Sgeir in his book The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot. He does not participate in the hunt, but circumnavigates the rock in a small craft at the same time as the arrival of the hunters. In 2018, BBC Alba aired Sulasgeir: An t Sealg/The Hunt, a Gaelic language documentary about the traditional annual guga hunt held on Sulasgeir by members of the community of Ness on Lewis.