UNDERSTANDING TARANSAY
Taransay is a beautiful island, lying on the western side of the Western Isles of Northern Scotland. This, in itself, means that however beautiful it looks, it is an extreme environment; this should always be remembered.
Its beauty lies mainly in its position, (well seen in this view with Harris in the distance) and in the patches of sand and machair, one of which is just visible at top right. These constitute the only fertile land on Taransay, and are ‘sweetened’ by shell sand. This results from the pulverisation of shells by wind-driven waves over millennia; the resulting calcium-rich sand is blown on to the underlying rock, or deposited offshore by tides and currents. Taransay is actually two islands, joined by a storm beach of this sand.
Most of the island is as seen in the (online) picture; it is composed of Lewisian Gneiss, an ancient and extremely hard rock, which has been scraped bare by every Ice-Age there has been. Most gneiss is hard and ‘dour’, hardly eroding, and producing little that could be called soil; the rock is impermeable, so any level ground tends to waterlog, and to produce peat. Here, from the photograph, it is clear that it is mostly thin, peaty soil that clings to the underlying rock.
Any fertility in the gneiss, as in Assynt or the Isle of Rona, tends to result from the presence of igneous dykes which can criss-cross the landscape, almost in a lattice-pattern, which is what gives peninsular Assynt its apparent structure. The brighter loch in the Taransay picture might lie along such a dyke; in the much more sheltered ground of coastal Assynt and Rona, this tends to be where trees still grow, benefitting from the increased fertility resulting from the igneous dykes. But to talk of ‘shelter’ in such an exposed location, is to indulge in unfounded optimism; the sand spit of Corran Ra, the connecting double beach of Traigh Siar, the green land of Paibeil all testify to the everlasting, salt-laden winds which have shaped the island, and will have destroyed anything that might ever have been called woodland, or even coastal scrub. Some bushes may have survived in sheltered micro-climates, but that is of no relevance; once shelter has been lost, it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to replace it naturally, and any ‘trees’ that there ever were here disappeared a very long time ago.
It must have been the machair that lured folk to inhabit Taransay, and it seems they must have done so from at least the Bronze Age, when any population would have benefitted from the last years of a Climatic Optimum. The later Bronze Age saw the beginning of a long Climatic Downturn, with lower temperatures, more wind and rain, which initiated the expanses of blanket-bog that cover so much of the Highlands and Islands, and may have seen the island abandoned for a while. It was certainly again populated by the time of the Iron Age, then subsequently occupied by the Vikings. They gave it many of its placenames, and introduced the type of small mill which may be still be seen there, and will have ground what was called ‘corn’ in the mediaeval and later period. This is not intended as a history of Taransay, but mention must be made of the extensive ‘lazy-beds’, cultivation ridges which were often created when the population began to increase some time after 1800 or so, and more productive ground was required.
More recent changes saw the island abandoned after millennia of inhabitation, and in the last few years, some cattle substituted for the sheep which had been grazing there. A very recent incursion presents a significant problem; deer have come over from Harris in some numbers, and there seems little remedy apart from constant culling, which would radically alter any vision for the future of Taransay. It is a peaceful and inspiring place now - on a good day. Perhaps the simplest thing is to leave it to the animals; the deer will leave again if they overgraze it.