Old Photograph Fishermen St Kilda Scotland

Old photograph of fishermen outside a cottage on St Kilda, Scotland. The St Kildan diet was not of fish, as one might expect, as the seas were too treacherous. Instead they survived on seabirds, gannets and fulmars mostly, which they caught and used for food, and many other things. The meat was dried and stored and the eggs were eaten; their oil provided fuel for lamps, and their feathers were stored and sold to the few visitors who came to the island. The St Kildans were very economical, they had to be. Every part of the bird was used: the beaks became brooch-pins, the bones were fashioned into needles, the skins of gannets were turned into shoes.



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