Foula shown within Shetland Islands
On the same latitude as Saint Petersburg lies hidden the bleak and yet spectacular island of Foula, Britain’s remotest and most westerly, permanently inhabited island, being one of the Shetland Islands, Scotland, and owned since the turn of the 20th Century by the Holbourn family.
It has a population of around forty people, and the nearest other settlement is fourteen miles across the Atlantic Ocean, making Foula the most remote of all the inhabited British Isles. The film The Edge of the World used Foula as its location.
The island is known for its 400 metre-high cliffs and its birds, including Arctic terns, red-throated divers and great skuas. Simon Martin who stayed on the Isle of Foula for five years during his prolonged claim upon the wrecked ‘Oceanic’ describes the island as such:
"Foula, or Ultima Thule, as it was known as far back as the Roman times, rises impurely out of the water, and from the Shetland Isles mainland its five peaks, the Noup, Hamnafield, the Sneug, Kame and Soberlie stand out starkly and characteristically. The cliffs on the west side vie with those of St. Kilda as the highest sheer cliffs in Britain, 1,200 foot of solid rock towering from the sea".
"Foula, or Fughley as it was once also known, means literally ‘Bird Island’, with an estimated half million birds of various breeds sharing the rock with the inhabitants. The island’s surface largely consisting of a peat bog on rock".
Foula uses the Julian calendar, particularly in the marking of Christmas Day and New Year. The island was also the last place where Norn was used as a first language, and the local dialect is strongly influence by Norse. The island was also the last place in Scotland where Udal law was used.
The last Laird of Foula, Professor Ian S. Holbourn, mentioned in his book on the Isle of Foula the disaster of the 25th August 1914, when RMS Oceanic collided with the Shaalds of Foula causing this great liner to become a wreck within two weeks.
The Holbourn’s of Foula are descended from John of Westby (Westbie), Lincolnshire who was the father John of Westby, Churchwarden of that village.
Lying as it does some twenty miles west of Shetland main, the island of Foula poses a major threat to shipping, as nearby is an hidden reef, the ‘Hoevdi Grund’ or the terrible Shaalds of Foula, a reef that comes to within a few feet of the surface, but which in calm weather gives no warning sign to the unwary mariner. The Shaalds lies just over two miles east of Foula between the island and the Shetlands.
The Professors grandson Robert Holbourn, otherwise qualified in Naval Architecture (shipwright) acted as the island’s ‘Peet Marshal’ for many years. This valuable resource for heat and fuel has to be conserved. Peet cutting in the Shetlands requiring a certain skill, taking several years to master, resources are not available to be wasted. Those most able islanders to become known as the ‘Cutters’ and in the spirit of a long standing Foula tradition all able bodied men are now and then ‘bid to the banks’ of women who ‘did n't have a cutter in the house.’
Ferries from the island sail from the main settlement of Ham to Walls and Scalloway on the Shetland Mainland, and flights head from Foula's airstrip to Tingwall.
The island's main industries are sheep farming and tourism.
