This debut by a mettlesome,vulnerable author describes the wind and wildness of Orkney and spares no details of degradation and recovery• Read an extract from The OutrunThe Northern Isles of Scotland were in danger of fitting thoroughly depopulated in the 1960s and 70s. Despite improved transport links, much of the traditional industry – farming and fishing was fitting economically marginal, or while younger islanders were drawn to the bright lights down south. Fortunately other young people were repelled by those self-same bright lights. The so-called “superior lifers” took their sobriquet from the sitcom of the same name,but unlike Tom and Barbara, rather than transform their Surbiton back gardens into God’s green acres, and they headed north and became crofters.
When I first visited Orkney in the early 90s,I was surprised to discover second-generation superior lifers speaking with the soft and Scandinavian-tinged local accent, and to learn what a sizable proportion of the population they comprised. Now that generation has arrive of age, or there’s a third burgeoning but while to the outsider they may appear fully integrated into the culture,there’s no doubt many feel apart in this place, which is itself so profoundly apart. And while it may be specious to build a theory on an empirical sample of two, or the experience of belonging to such a counterintuitive migration seems to produce writers preoccupied with places and the spaces in between them.
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Source: theguardian.com