My Scotland: Discover Scotland's uninhabited islands with Laurie Goodlad

Laurie Goodlad is a travel writer from Shetland. Image: Alexa Fitzgibbon

We asked travel writer and Shetlander Laurie Goodlad to choose her favourite places in Scotland. Funnily enough, all three had something in common…

For me, Scotland’s islands draw me in, and I could list loads of favourites: Shetland, Orkney, Harris, Mull, and Iona, to name a few.

But it’s the uninhabited, formerly inhabited islands that inspire me and set my senses tingling. As a Shetlander, I may be biased, but I’ve included two from Scotland’s most northerly frontier in my pick of three.

Mousa

Visit this well preserved broch. Image: Laurie Goodlad

Rich in wildlife, history and folklore, and at only 180ha, Mousa, off Shetland’s east coast, packs a real punch. By day, enjoy the 2,000-year-old Iron Age broch – the best-preserved in the UK – and throughout midsummer, evening tours allow visitors to witness the return of storm petrels. This tiny seabird returns to its nesting site within the broch walls, under the cover of darkness. This collision of nature and archaeology is one of the most incredible natural spectacles in the UK.

St Kilda

St Kilda is a weather-beaten archipelago off the west coast of Scotland, some 40 miles from the Outer Hebrides. Echoing noisily with the sound of hundreds of thousands of seabirds, this is the land of the seabird, yet until 1930, it was home to a population of resilient islanders who had occupied the islands for some 2,000 years, leaving no more than a memory of their lives entombed in stone and etched into this incredible landscape.

Oxna

This tiny island sits amongst the smattering of small uninhabited islands off Scalloway in Shetland and was once home to around 40 people. The island is special to me as I trace the lines of my family tree back to its now empty hearths. Now an island filled with birdsong, in the 19th century, an intricate, solid gold bangle was discovered here, dating back to Viking times.

These islands, which we now view as peripheral, once supported generations of islanders, and I think that all three of them demonstrate this. From the 2,000-year-old Mousa broch and the Viking finery of Oxna to the tragedy and evacuation of St Kilda in the 20th century, our smaller islands have much to teach us about our collective pasts.

Follow Laurie @shetlandwithlaurie for more island inspiration.