Farming and the Nature of Landscape: Stasis and Movement in a Regional Landscape Tradition

Abstract

This paper explores farming landscapes in Orkney, Scotland, focusing particularly on local responses to the rise of the environmental movement and agri-environmental schemes. It argues that where institutional designations of ‘nature’ tended to invoke a generalised temporal stasis, local and regional understandings of ‘landscape’ emphasise specific histories, transience, and movement. Seeking these regional senses of landscape through an ethnographic approach, the paper presents some personal histories of responses to nature conservation that have a context in local cultural understandings of landscape. The continuing importance of the udal land tenure heritage in Orkney in relation to this is described. Finally, the ways that farmers and recreational walkers move around farm land are presented as further evidence for the importance of localised concepts of landscape in contrast to institutional designations of nature, while recognising that environmentalists themselves have come to take on aspects of such concepts. Agri-environment schemes seeking to be relevant in particular landscapes should propose the kind of active, participative management that the farmers engage in with the rest of their land.

Key Words:

• Nature
• landscape
• movement
• farming
• Orkney
• Scotland
• Udal land

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all those in Orkney who gave their time to help with this research, especially Mr Davidson and his family. I also thank the anonymous referees for their comments on previous versions of this paper. Its first incarnation was presented at the ‘Performing Nature at the World's Ends’ seminar hosted by the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo in 2007. Funding for the research was provided by the University of Aberdeen and the UK Economic and Social Research Council (RES-000-23-0312).

Notes

1. A version of these events was recorded in The Orcadian, 11 July 1985, and in subsequent issues. MrScott did name the organisation but I choose to keep it anonymous here.