Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 32 on 13/04/2007.

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The wild north (Caithness)

Neil Gunn explores the wonders of Scotland's most northerly region, Caithness

For me the chance to explore Caithness was a chance to ‘come home,’ to walk the cliff-top paths, tramp across the peat bogs and try to imagine how it might have looked when the Vikings first dragged their longboats ashore probably sometime during the 10th century.

Sovereignty over the area was disputed between the Norwegian Earldom of Orkney and Scotland for many years before the Treaty of Perth in 1266, when Norway finally recognised that it did belong to Scotland.

Caithness is the most northerly county in the British Isles and remains one of the least densely populated areas in Europe covering an area of around 700 square miles. It embraces one of the country’s most ancient landscapes, rich with the remains of prehistoric occupation and still bearing the signs of glaciation and Pictish brochs.

The Grey Cairns of Camster, the Stone Lud, and the Hill o’Many Stanes are testament to Caithness’s early settlers. It has remained essentially unchanged for more than 4000 years.

Much of this beautiful county is Gunn country one of Scotland’s smallest clans, descendents of Sweyn Asleifsson the ‘ultimate viking.’ It was perhaps inevitable that I would start my journey at Dunbeath, 21 miles south of Wick (once famous as the herring capital of the world) on the county’s east coast. The small village is the birthplace of one of Scotland’s foremost novelists Neil Miller Gunn, and the chance to see the countryside through his eyes was one not to be missed.

My journey was also an opport.....

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By Neil Gunn

Section : Regional Focus

Page number : 26