Bornish () is a village and

community council A community council is a public representative body in Great Britain. In England they may be statutory parish councils by another name, under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, or they may be non-statutory bodies. ...

area on

South Uist South Uist (, ; ) is the second-largest island of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. At the 2011 census, it had a usually resident population of 1,754: a decrease of 64 since 2001. The island, in common with the rest of the Hebrides, is one of the ...

in the

Outer Hebrides The Outer Hebrides ( ) or Western Isles ( , or ), sometimes known as the Long Isle or Long Island (), is an Archipelago, island chain off the west coast of mainland Scotland. It is the longest archipelago in the British Isles. The islan ...

, Scotland. Bornish is also within the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

of South Uist. The A865 passes through Bornish, on the route between Lochmaddy and Lochboisdale.

History

The construction of nearby Dun Vulan broch has been dated to the period 150–50 BC. Located on the coast, it was originally in height, but is now reduced to walls of . A

Pictish Pictish is an extinct Brittonic Celtic language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from late antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited number of geog ...

house was later built within the walls. Dun Vulan 20090609 04

Excavations of a Norse settlement nearby have provided important information about lifestyles during this period. It suggests that pigs were a more important aspect of Viking farming than prior to that time, that

red deer The red deer (''Cervus elaphus'') is one of the largest deer species. A male red deer is called a stag or Hart (deer), hart, and a female is called a doe or hind. The red deer inhabits most of Europe, the Caucasus Mountains region, Anatolia, Ir ...

numbers may have been "controlled" rather than the species simply being subject to hunting, that

herring Herring are various species of forage fish, belonging to the Order (biology), order Clupeiformes. Herring often move in large Shoaling and schooling, schools around fishing banks and near the coast, found particularly in shallow, temperate wate ...

fishing became an important commercial consideration and that trade with centres to the south such as

Dublin Bay Dublin Bay () is a C-shaped inlet of the Irish Sea on the east coast of Ireland. The bay is about 10 kilometres wide along its north–south base, and 7 km in length to its apex at the centre of the city of Dublin; stretching from Howth He ...

and

Bristol Bristol () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, the most populous city in the region. Built around the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon, it is bordered by t ...

may have been important. Coins found at Bornais and nearby Cille Pheadair were produced in Norway,

Westphalia Westphalia (; ; ) is a region of northwestern Germany and one of the three historic parts of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has an area of and 7.9 million inhabitants. The territory of the region is almost identical with the h ...

, and England, although there were none from Scotland. Walrus ivory from the

Norse settlements in Greenland Norse is a demonym for Norsemen, a Medieval North Germanic ethnolinguistic group ancestral to modern Scandinavians, defined as speakers of Old Norse from about the 9th to the 13th centuries. Norse may also refer to: Culture and religion * Nors ...

has also been found there. It is known that Hebrides were taxed using the Ounceland system and evidence from Bornais suggests that settlers there may have been more prosperous than families of a similar status in the

Northern Isles The Northern Isles (; ; ) are a chain (or archipelago) of Island, islands of Scotland, located off the north coast of the Scottish mainland. The climate is cool and temperate and highly influenced by the surrounding seas. There are two main is ...

, possibly due to a more relaxed political regime.Sharples and Smith (2007) p. 104, 109, 124

References

* Sharples, Niall and Smith, Rachel "Norse settlement in the Western Isles" in Woolf, Alex (ed.) (2007) ''Scandinavian Scotland – Twenty Years After''. St Andrews. St Andrews University Press.

External links

Canmore – South Uist, Bornish House site recordCanmore – South Uist, Bornish, St Mary's Roman Catholic Church site record
Villages on South Uist {{WesternIsles-geo-stub