Book Review: Farewell Fugley Island
Foula is an island that has always intrigued me; sitting on the horizon, dipping in and out of view with changing weather patterns, in sight but out of reach.
Foula lies 24 miles west of Shetland and is the UK’s most remote inhabited island. It boasts the second-highest sea cliffs in the UK and is home to some of the country’s best colonies of breeding seabirds.
Today, the island has a population of around 35 who, for the most part, live and work on the island, gazing over to Mainland Shetland and celebrating Christmas and New Year 10 days after the rest of us.
Farewell Fugley Island was written by Alec Crawford and published by the Shetland Times in 2022. Alec, a wreck diver, arrived in Foula in the 1970s and spent six years living and working in the island, salvaging precious wreck material from the remains of the great liner Oceanic that was lost during the First World War.
The book is more a social history account of life on the island in the 1970s than an examination of diving the wreck. Examining a time of significant change on the island, Alec arrived as the last of the island’s cows were sold, and the community shop was set to close. Several young people had left, leaving a question mark over the future viability of this remote island that marks Shetland’s western horizon.
Alec’s narrative is an honest and heartwarming account of learning to adjust to life on an island. An island where he relied on cutting peat to warm his home in winter and summer and lived without mains water and electricity.
Eventually, and despite the odds, Alec meets and falls in love on the island and marries in the tiny island kirk.
Eventually, leaving Foula, his book and recollections reveal a deep-rooted love of the place, the people and a vanishing way of life that bring to mind my favourite quote from Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie:
“The last days of my childhood were also the last days of the village. I belonged to that generation which saw, by chance, the end of a thousand years’ life…Myself, my family, my generation, were born in a world of silence; a world of hard work and necessary patience, of backs bent to the ground, hands massaging the crops, of waiting on weather and growth.”
Alec spoke of what he called “Foula’s Achilles heel”. He said,
“Foula’s Achilles heel was its inaccessibility, but this was also its blessing as it gave the island its character and the islanders their peace.”
This statement still rings true today. It remains challenging to plan a trip to Foula, and travel arrangements can be thrown into disarray at the drop of a hat. Foula often sits, in summer, with her ‘hat’ on, shrouded in a veil of low cloud and mist, rendering the small Islander plane useless, and with a 24-mile crossing across open Atlantic waters, the ferry can be just as unreliable. Foula isn’t blessed with a good harbour, and even the ferry must be winched from the water and cocooned in her cradle to avoid damage from heavy seas driven in on a rising wind.
Foula on Shetland’s western horizon.
In a Shetland that I see changing day by day, with our culture and language slowly eroded away and chipped at from all angles, it’s hard not to feel a pang of envy that Foula has, for the most part, been able to retain its identity and stave off many of the negative changes modernity brings. Foula, in many respects, has remained true to itself amidst the rise of a homogenous culture fuelled by modern media, communications and – dare I say it – the rise of social media. But how long they will be able to push back against the great tides of change and how long the community can remain viable is a question mark that hangs over the island – and many others throughout Scotland – like a cloud.
My early memories of Foula involve a camping trip organised by my dad. After steaming his fishing boat over from Waas, we set camp by the side of the burn close to Ham pier. After an initial ear bashing for setting up camp, we were welcomed with armchairs dragged down from a nearby house to arrange around the campfire. It was a magical night. Many years later, I returned, armed with an OS map, hiking boots, and a desire to climb all the peaks. Foula is an island that has managed to hold on to a way of life almost forgotten to the rest of Shetland.
Alec has spent his working career working on various islands throughout Scotland, and says,
“I had enjoyed all the islands I worked on, but somehow Foula was different, it was like falling in love; there was a magic, an unknown combination of the physical attraction of the island and the character of the people.”
He toyed with the idea of permanently settling in Foula, carving out a life and surrendering himself to the deep love he felt for the place, so strong was his connection for it. Yet, he realised that without work when the dive was over, there was nothing he could do to sustain himself – he had no croft to work, and other than a dream to do up an old croft, no other means of making a living.
“I had been naive in my thoughts about permanently living on an island. Realising, like most of the visitors, that there was a difference between falling in love with an island and wishing to stay on it permanently. The two were completely different concepts, like loving going on holiday when the enjoyment of the event is as much to do with the circumstances as the place.”
I noted with pleasure that he repeatedly speaks about being ‘in’ Foula, something that generally only Shetlanders themselves will say. We always talk about being ‘in Shetland’ or ‘in Foula’. We’re never ‘on’ Shetland or ‘on’ Foula. Islanders are passionate about protecting their heritage, and these small gestures, insignificant as they may seem, go a long way towards preserving our culture into the future, and I thank Alec for understanding, accepting and striving to preserve that.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, its narrative weaves a story of the people, their characters, and all the idiosyncrasies of island life. We are introduced to characters like Elizabeth, Maggie, the nurse, and her partner Dal, who all add colour to the book, bringing it to life with human voices and stories.
Those of us, who have never lived in an island like Foula, will never fully understand the pressures that living on such a remote island can pose. It’s all too easy to sit on the fence and judge how islanders should live, but until we have earned our stripes, the best we can do is sit back, listen and learn. Alec’s book offers a fantastic insight into an island that truly sits, like the 1937 film, on The Edge of the World.
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