North Rona

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Rona (or Rònaidh in Gaelic) is a remote Scottish island in the North Atlantic. Rona is often referred to as North Rona in order to distinguish it from South Rona.

The island lies 71 km (44 miles) north north east of Butt of Lewis and 16 km (10 miles) east of Sula Sgeir at grid reference HW812324. More isolated than St Kilda, it is the remotest island in the British Isles to have ever been permanently inhabited. Due to the island's remote location and small area, it is omitted from many maps of the United Kingdom.

Rona is said to have been the residence of Saint Ronan in the eighth century. The island continued to be inhabited for many hundreds of years. However the entire population of thirty died shortly after 1685 after an infestation by rats, probably the Black Rat Rattus rattus, which reached the island after a shipwreck. The rats raided the food stocks of barley meal and it is possible the inhabitants starved to death, although plague may have been a contributory factor. The rats themselves eventually starved to death, the huge swells the island experiences preventing their hunting along the rocky shores.^[1] It was resettled, but again depopulated by around 1695 in some sort of boating tragedy, after which it remained home to a succession of shepherds and their families, until 1844 when it was deserted. Sir James Matheson, who bought Lewis in 1844, offered the island to the Government for use as a penal settlement. The offer was refused.

Although farmers from Lewis have continued to graze sheep on Rona ever since, the island has remained uninhabited, apart from one brief and gruesome episode in 1884-5. In June 1884, two men from Lewis, having reportedly had a dispute with the minister of their local church, went to stay on Rona to look after the sheep. In August, boatmen who had called at the island reported that the men were well and in good spirits, and had refused offers to take them back to Lewis. In April 1885, the next people to visit Rona made a grim discovery: the bodies of the two men from Lewis, who, a post-mortem subsequently showed, had each fallen ill and died during the winter.

The island still boasts the Celtic ruins of St Ronan's Chapel. It is owned by Scottish Natural Heritage, and managed as a nature reserve, for its important grey seal and seabird colonies. These include the European Storm-petrel and the larger Leach's Storm-petrel, for which North Rona is an important breeding station.

In Island at the edge of the world ^[1], the poet Kathleen Jamie describes a recent visit to the island.