Skye

Cabinet 11

In the past Clans Donald and MacLeod (who claim Viking roots) have dominated Skye, an island of about 639 square miles.

Castles dot the landscape: Dunvegan – seat of the MacLeods since the 13th century; the much younger Armadale – now hosting the Clan Donald Centre; Knock (in ruins); Dunscaith – home of Queen Scáthach, the legendary Amazonian Queen of the Island of Skye; and Caisteal Maol – another ruin, but once the seat of Clan MacKinnon.

Virginia Woolf visited Skye in 1938. Part of her description read: ‘Remote as Samoa; deserted; pre-historic; no room for more.’

‘View of the Coast of Sleat, Isle of Skye’. From John Parker Lawson’s Scotland Delineated. London: Day and Son, 1858.