really old style living?

RAS

mardatha wrote: »

It would take a major catastrophe to make people want to live there again and probably one day it will happen. I have always wanted to visit Norway, they seem to have things organised so much better there

mardatha

I think people want to live there even now, but the real problems are land, work and housing. If you cannot get into crofting or social housing it is really hard to find anywhere to rent. A friend with a good job that allowed him to be very flexible about location spent 6 months trying every uninhabited property from Skye to Durness before finding somewhere. Most landowners preferred to leave properties unlet.

Outside the crofted land, ownership is very very concentrated. Yeah, they might sell off a ruin and an acre on the edge of the estate to make a good price, but there is no way the shooting estates are going to allow people to access the perfectly good land they occupy.

mardatha wrote: »

Re famines, yes many bad years but now we have better and more varieties of veg & newer methods of growing them.

The problems I was referring to in the quote below were that not only did people not have access to a wide range of produce but that anyone who introduced new crops or new methods was likely to get into difficulties because landowners and the factor dictate all aspects of life.

Since you had to pay rent in specified goods, you had to produce rental goods in quantities that limited your scope for innovation. This was as true in places like northern Norway (Norway was a Swedish colony until 1905) as pre-Clearance Scotland or sharecropping in the southern USA.

In the Lofoten, people refer to the Yttersia - the outside, which its the west coast. The Yttersia is exposured to the Atlantic weather, mountains dropping down to the sea and very little land. The regulation by landlords was so onerous that some people preferred to move to the Yttersia and scratch a living from the poor weather-beaten free land than to take up much better rented holdings on the "Inside". When the legal position altered, people dismantled their houses on the Yttersia and moved them back to the east coast. Today very few settlements exist on the Yttersia, where there is an area of good land. Similiar restrictions applied in most of the north and the landowners' agents also control all goods sold in the area.

RAS wrote: »

]What I mean is that the land owning arrangments and rental arrangments were so severe that it was almost unthinkable for people to do anything that advanced themselves and their community independently. The exact size and style of your housing was dictated, as was the source of much of the mateiral you used. Much of the time, people had to barter produce for goods from the factor.

I am glad to say that Norway is rather better run these days, although still subject to the varagies of regulation and market forces; the Nigerian civil war in the 70's wiped out much of the stock fish market for instance. On one island I visited, all meat had to be imported, although their main produce was sheep and cattle. They are allowed to kill and eat any livestock that have accidents or drown when being shipped between outlying grazing. When I suggested that the number of accidental deaths probably supplied much of the requirements of the permanent populations, the islander smiled broadly and said that these were very dangerous waters!

ginnyknit

Seasalt, there are many older Goths but by habit they usually congregate in their own clubs. We are basically just 'different' lots of us have different beliefs than most and you are 'goth to the heart' I guess most people think its a dress code more than anything but its more a way of identifying each other as well as a passion for beautiful flowing clothes - yes black but we do purple, red and silver too. The ones who understood my life choices are hard working, hard partying good people and generous of time with their friends. One of my friends mailed me yesterday and is very pleased with herself as she has started making her Christmas presents. Last year I got her growing her own veggies and her partner thanked me for giving her an interest that makes her so happy! Its a drug free non violent way of life.

NualaBuala

I never knew that about Goths, thanks Ginny. I thought it was just a teenage image sort of thing. I just went and read a description on a Goth website and I think I understand better now.

seasalt_2

Thank you for explaining ginny and I hope you didn't mind me asking.

Even on croft land (even if you have bought your croft) the estates still retain shooting rights and mineral rights, RAS. It is not too hard to find a winter let here - DD1 has done it several times - but summer/year round lets are a different matter.

ceridwen

seasalt wrote: »

Thank you for explaining ginny and I hope you didn't mind me asking.

Even on croft land (even if you have bought your croft) the estates still retain shooting rights and mineral rights, RAS. It is not too hard to find a winter let here - DD1 has done it several times - but summer/year round lets are a different matter.

So I guess that means then that - as things stand at present - its difficult to buy a croft then and I presume that means large tracts of Scotland are difficult to settle in because of that currently? I had the instant thought "I'd not be very popular then with landowners if I bought a croft there - as they would be told that it was MY land - so they werent going to have any rights over it at all and they could forget about trying to go shooting on it." How much of Scotland has that "rule" still applying currently?

mardatha

Nothing in Gaeldom is that simple Ceridwen!
I wasnt ever a goth SS, I just found a niche market and went into it. I love the colours though..

seasalt_2

It IS possible to challenge it, ceridwen and i know at least one person who has successfully done so - but only one! If you are a tenant crofter you have the right to buy your croft - it used to be at 15 times the annual rent but usually more than that now AND you have to pay the estate's very expensive Edinburgh solicitors' fees as well as your own. Well, you dont HAVE to but if you don't then your application goes to the bottom of the pile.... They also retain rights of servitude over your land but if you want reciprocal rights, you will have to pay for them (this is usually for things like septic tanks which may be outside a house feu). We tried challenging this one (it used to be reciprocal) and failed. I could go on - feudalism is alive and well - and relies on no-one being able to afford to be a test case in the land court.

I have no idea how easy it is to buy a croft if you are not already a tenant. Crofting tenancies are usually assigned within the family or at least within the township, sometimes to the highest bidder. They don't very often come up on the open market and you still have to be approved as a tenant by the Crofters Commission. (Croft houses - as opposed to croft land - are different. They can be bought and sold as the feu - house plot - has usually been decrofted.) Having said that, the whole crofting system is under scrutiny at the moment. It is hard to make a living from even a sizeable croft (and lots aren't) or, for that matter, several crofts. We work five and until recently were subtenants of another and it is still a very marginal existence. OH laughs hollowly at DD earning £20 for a day's waitressing - he works longer hours for less return. Most people have other jobs as well and parts of the highlands and islands are littered with derelict, unworked crofts with absentee tenants - kept because it is where your family is from (even if you can't afford to live there now) - or because you hope that one day you might be able to build a house there with the aid of a crofting grant. If you buy your croft and then let it to someone else eg until you can retire there, you may lose it as you become the landlord and the new tenant has the right to buy it from you. If you sublet it, particularly long term, the crofters commission may also take it away from you. I don't know what the answer is. I don't think there is a one size fits all solution. Policies that attempt to deal with derelict crofting areas are not necessarily appropriate for working areas (ask me how I know!) and vice versa.

There is a story about someone asking an elderly crofter what he would do if he won the lottery. After much thought he replied, "Oh I would just carry on crofting until it was all spent."

ceridwen

Crikey Seasalt - it sounds like a different country (IYSWIM) or a different century to where the rest of us live....:eek:. I can certainly see it needs to change - A LOT - from what you say. I've now got all sorts of visions of planting trees right round in my land and boobytraps underneath them if anyone tried to walk through that barrier...:cool:

It sounds really WIERD that someone else could even think of trying to even come onto land that another person owns/rents without permission - even if all they wanted to do was stand there and "admire the view"......struggles to get my head round how anyone would have the nerve to even try it...still less have the law on their side telling them they were allowed to do it and you couldnt prosecute them for trespass...crikey...

Hmmm....ceridwen walks off thinking "I've just thought of another use for the money if I ever come up on the lottery - buy a croft and then take on one of these feudal landowners in a legal fight to the finish (theirs...:D). That system has clearly got to be sorted out. I cant quite see just HOW people could go expanding much back onto the land and farming those crofts with an outdated system like that still in place...

So I guess - right now - if you need to sort out any of your property thats on their land that you have to do it under cover of the "right to roam" Act I believe applies to all of Scotland? I theeenk....correct me if I'm wrong...

seasalt_2

Another definition of a croft is "a small piece of land (full of rusty machinery) hedged about with legislation!" A lot of that legislation is in favour of the crofter and was meant to give some security where before there was none - and the "right to buy" legislation has made estate owners very defensive and often bitter (as has the right to roam!). More and more people here have bought their crofts even if we have all gone further into debt to do it! But as an incomer, I was shocked at the feudalism that I had no idea still existed.

Winter gales and rain here today so planning to get on with some sewing.

mardatha

Things in the Gaelic world move slowly SS, but at least they are starting to move in the right direction. I know we all moan like hell about the amount of English & incomers, but it was probably them who started things moving. Because they won't put up with the outdated nonsense.
Horrible wet & windy here and my toes are bloody freezing..