Shieling life is a system of transhumance, an ancient herding practice that lies at the heart of Highland culture and reaches all the way back to the Iron Age and possibly further.

Shieling culture is recalled in the memories of older generations across Scotland’s Highlands and Islands ~ in stories, songs and within the oral tradition. The significance of this seasonal pattern to traditional Scottish culture was enormous, with personal accounts of life in the Shieling touching on a sense of wellbeing and renewal, and of a freedom otherwise unknown among the constraints of normal everyday life. Gaelic songs celebrate this freedom, located within a strong sense of place.

It was a time for making butter and cheese, spinning wool and stocking up on materials from the hills such as dyes, peat and heather ~ and for revisiting the stories and songs that defined the weave of people and place. 

Put simply, the Shieling itself is a grazing area in the hills, away from arable and cultivated ground and occupied seasonally in the months of summer. It is a simple, small summer dwelling, typically made of a stone and turf.

But the shieling way of life also encapsulates a culture of land-based living and transhumance: nomadic movement that follows cattle across the land and seasons. The Highland Festivals of old ~ Beltane and Samhain ~ were the marker dates for when the livestock would be moved up and down from the hills.

Shieling life was well established for at least two thousand years in parts of Scotland, and is still a fairly recent memory for some in the Western Isles.

Traditionally, a family’s main dwelling was in the ‘wintertown’ in the low, arable ground, and in the summertime they and their animals moved from here to summer pastures in the higher grounds. These ‘shielings’ were occupied for any time between six and fourteen weeks. In May or early June, most inhabitants of the township made an organised and communal move to the shielings. Families carried all their necessities and tools, and the shieling huts were repaired for occupation.

The men then returned to the wintertown to carry on the farming work of the summer months, repairing and thatching houses, and cutting and drying the peats for winter fuel. Women and children occupied the shieling for the weeks of summer, herding the animals to ensure they had the best of the summer grazing to put them into good shape.