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The remote Scottish island where having 7 jobs is considered normal 鈥� and how moving there saved one young woman鈥檚 life

13 July 2018

Sarah Moore was 23, working dead-end jobs and suffering from depression.

So when the opportunity arose to leave her home on the outskirts of Edinburgh and move to North Ronaldsay – a remote Scottish island with fewer than 50 inhabitants – she decided to throw caution to the wind and embark on a new life.

The move paid off, and Sarah feels the island and its unique challenges have changed her life for the better.

An islander has many jobs

To keep North Ronaldsay moving, Sarah performs a wide variety of duties.

Sarah’s mentor Billy has a multitude of jobs on the island; he showed her the ropes when she first arrived. He was keen for her to inherit his work ethic: “You need to be able to turn your hand to anything — a wee bit of this and a wee bit of that.”

It sounds quite dramatic saying I鈥檝e got so many jobs, but the job really is being an islander.
Sarah Moore

His training paid dividends, as Sarah now has a “wide and varied list of jobs” which include (but are not limited to):-

  • Carer for an elderly islander
  • Firefighter at the airport
  • Clerk to the community council
  • Lighthouse tour guide
  • Post deliverer
  • Shepherd
  • Various bits and pieces with which islanders need help

Having this many jobs is something Sarah considers entirely normal. The people on North Ronaldsay are “all working our own little bit to keep the island going.”

The annual ritual of sheep 鈥榩unding鈥�

The islanders share North Ronaldsay with a rare breed of seaweed-eating sheep that need herded every so often.

That there are now fewer than 50 people on the island means everyone must work together to herd the sheep. Even off-island friends and family come over to lend a hand.

It’s a real community endeavour.

The younger islanders – who are less versed in the ways of sheep herding – take advice from island elders.

Put bluntly, “the job is to stand here and look formidable.”

The ageing population of Orkney鈥檚 northernmost island

John is a retired fisherman. He never married and has no family of his own.

“I don’t know what the future will be,” he conceded. “See, there’s no young’uns coming up on the island.”

When you鈥檙e single, your pockets jingle... so I decided not to get married. Now I think I鈥檓 a bit on the late side!
John

Younger families are moving away from North Ronaldsay, so it’s becoming harder for the island community to care for its ageing population.

Sarah explained that the situation will “put pressure on everyone else to take on [the older islanders’] roles and care for them. There’s not enough people to do the jobs and there’s not enough people coming in.”

But this quandary hasn’t dampened Sarah’s love for her adopted home.

“I intend to spend the rest of my life here — that’s as long as there’s an island here to keep me.”

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