The Scottish Highlands - Dunbeath

“I can switch on my computer and talk to my granddaughter in New Zealand, but that isn’t communication.” -Nan Bethune

The focus of our travels today was the Heritage Centre in Dunbeath, boyhood home of Scottish author Neil Gunn. We had been reading his book Highland River, and saw many sites that were central to the plot and theme of the novel. More interesting to me was a retired couple, George and Nan Bethune, we met there who had grown up in the Highlands, moved to Edinburgh to spend their adult lives, and finally returned to the region to retire. We walked along the Highland River then up a small hill from which we could see most of the valley surrounding Dunbeath.

What I found most interesting about their presentation was how politically contradictory many of their most deeply held beliefs are. In the States, we have a very strong belief in our individual property rights, probably rooted in our institutional history of only allowing suffrage for white property-owning males. Nan believed that it was inherently ridiculous that the Scottish Historical Trust is able to restrict her ability to conduct archeological digs on her own property. However, the idea that the Scots cleared from the Highlands in the Clearances were wronged by their English landlords is central to Scots identity, even though this displacement was (mostly) within the landlords’ right to do what they wanted with their own property.

Although we as Americans are prone to see this as contradictory, I believe the response to this is consistent with my earlier statements about Scottish nationalism being more about connection to the land and its history, and less about institutional logic. Whereas I have been almost feeling guilty that I don’t have the same attachment to my homeland (although I certainly have more of an emotional connection to Michigan than most Michiganders in my own generation), American nationalism seems to me as more a function of our shared belief in a set of ideals. As indicated by the quote at the start of this post, even 21st century Highlanders are strongly nostalgic for a simpler time, and believe that modern society is ignorant of the value of face-to-face communication. This argument may have its merits, but I would say that the argument itself is less important than what it teaches us about what it means to be Scots. George and Nan feel disconnected from what they see as the moral corruption of Western society at large, but this is primarily expressed in their feeling of abandonment or being forgotten, a theme throughout Scottish literature and one that I have heard from many of the individuals I’ve interviewed.

Tomorrow we are heading west from Inverness to the Isle of Skye, where we will be discussing a journal article on the rights of linguistic minorities before taking classes at the Gaelic university on Skye for a day.