‘Life on Stroma was far from remote’ – island owner shares tales in new film
The owner of the now deserted Caithness island of Stroma has shared tales of life on the island in a new film.
William Simpson describes how the people of the island lived, close to the power of the sea and explained that more than 300 people lived there in its heyday.
Stroma – Island of Storms and Tides looks at the way that the sea has shaped the island’s landscape over a long period of time. It features landmarks like the Gloup and how the sea created it from a long subterranean sea cave, and it looks at evidence from the great storm of 1862 when the seawater came over the cliffs and moved massive slabs of rock.
One of the highlights is the interview with the owner of Stroma, William Simpson.
He told the film-makers: “Stroma was not remote in the days of horse and cart. It only became remote when transport became better, the motor car came along and the buses.”
He went on to explain how the islanders, the last of whom left in the 1950s and 60s, were self-sufficient and well travelled on the seas, but said he believed that the lack of secondary education on the island was the final straw for the last people leaving.
The film has been made by Orkney International Science Festival through funding from Thistle Wind Partners, and follows on from last year’s film of the making of the Pentland Firth.
Edinburgh geomorphologist Dr Adrian Hall created the storyboard, joined by Mara Gibb, UHI’s STEM coordinator for Caithness and Sutherland. Filmmaker Selena S Kuzman is a professional artist from Slovenia who has lived in Moray for 20 years and visited and photographed in Orkney and Caithness on many occasions.
Dr Hall collaborated on several films of geology and landscape with the Orkney geologist the late Dr John Flett Brown, and they also worked together on landscapes websites on Caithness and Orkney.
The planning for the filming benefited from help from Walter Mowat in John O’Groats, who also provided information on the Pentland Firth and its tides and shipwrecks, and a recorded interview with him is due to come online later this spring.
