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Launched in 2014, the aim of the Funeralscapes project is to explore the interplay between landscape, music and emotion by conducting re-enactment fieldwork at pre-modern burial sites in Scotland. In 2014 re-creations of aspects of a Viking funeral at an archaeologically attested Viking burial site was conducted with adult and primary school aged community volunteers on the Isle of Eigg. The aim was to investigate how Viking Age funeral music and movement (such as processions) could have worked in their immediate environment, and what emotional responses the modern-day participants had to the landscape and music. Following a brief outline of the site and performance choices, this paper draws upon fieldwork and interviews conducted with the participants following the re-enactments. It particularly comments upon the dramatic performance of heritage as a method through which the past is taught and remembered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two men better known for their links with the cosmopolitan world of Oscar Wilde became involved in a Hebridean church-building project. It may be contrasted with the church in Edinburgh's Morningside district which Raffalovich financed for Gray. Shared priesthood in Scotland links Fr John Gray with Fr Allan MacDonald, whose work in collecting items of Gaelic culture helped to attract support for St Michael's, Eriskay. This paper corrects the misconception that the island's fishing community was impoverished. It also subjects local tradition that a miraculous draught of fish was mainly responsible for funds raised to critical examination. Conversely it shows that the financial contribution made by André Raffalovich, though significant and deserving to be better understood in the Outer Hebrides, was not so important as claimed in Edinburgh. Urban credulity over Second Sight is also featured. Details of church finance, including the late arrival of seat rents in this remote Catholic mission, no doubt have wider application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 6 July 1331, two procurators arrived in Bergen claiming that Cormac son of Cormac had been elected bishop of Sodor by the clergy of Skye and the canons of Snizort. Their arrival is recorded in a letter sent by Eiliv, archbishop of Nidaros, to two canons of the church of Bergen ordering that there be an examination of the election in the cathedral of Bergen on 12 July 1331. Cormac's election was contentious for three main reasons: firstly, there was already a new bishop of Sodor; secondly the right to elect a bishop of Sodor seems to have lain with the clergy of Man; and thirdly the king of Scots had the right to present the candidate to the archbishop of Nidaros. This paper examines the identities and careers of both Cormac and his successful rival, Thomas de Rossy, and the potential reasons for Cormac's claim and its ultimate failure. Therefore, this study reveals some of the underlying geopolitical realities of the diocese of Sodor in the mid-fourteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a hybrid of various forms of prose, conventional historical narrative, memoir, and family history. It links World War I land agitation in the Scottish Highlands with later imaginings and rememberings of the region's land use politics, and with their enduring significance. At its heart is one small croft on the Isle of Skye and one Skye family. These are anchored in one of the many land raids of the Great War era and through it they connect with other crofting families, with the longer history of the region's land politics, and with the Highland Diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, this article looks at the interaction between religious culture and film between the 1940s and 1980s. Its first main feature is an examination of the causes of the closure of the Playhouse cinema in Stornoway in 1977–79 and the role of the Calvinist churches and the local authorities in this and other film censorship. It identifies a growing vigour on the part of some churchmen, notably of the Free Presbyterian Church, and the role of one of them in publicly imposing 'a curse' upon the manager of the Playhouse for daring to schedule the film 'Jesus Christ Superstar' with its 'blasphemous' depiction of Jesus Christ. It notes the increasing attempts of local politicians in the 1950s, 60s and 70s to impose stricter religious formulae through statutory powers, especially after the creation of the separate Western Isles Council in the mid 1970s. The article explores church and lay attitudes to cinema through oral testimony, the tensions between urban and rural with Lewis, and the wider social, cultural, linguistic and demographic contexts in which both opposition to, and tolerance of, cinema need to be understood in an island less estranged from modern media than might be supposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]