St Kilda
The Project is inspired by the lives of the people of St Kilda, a hardy and close-knit community of cliff-climbing Gaelic speakers who inhabited the UK's most north-westerly landfall for 3,000 years. Their Gaelic language originated in central Europe more than 4,000 years ago and their isolated islands were known to navigators in ancient times as 'the islands at the edge of the world'.
The St Kildan’s story, and their remarkable island home, continues to fascinate the popular imagination worldwide - the loss of the St Kildan’s unique way of life continues to have a poignant resonance for many modern Europeans. The idea for the project came from a Frenchman, Lew Bogdan, and was taken forward by a trans-national consortium of five European partners, led by the Pròiseact nan Ealan (the Gaelic Arts Agency), based on the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides.