tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/nan-shepherd-34680/articlesNan Shepherd – The Conversation2019-08-29T15:43:52Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1197942019-08-29T15:43:52Z2019-08-29T15:43:52ZThe Living Mountain: in an age of ecological crisis, Nan Shepherd’s nature writing is more relevant than ever<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290113/original/file-20190829-106530-clpx5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
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<p>Its waters are white, of a clearness so absolute that there is no image for them. Naked birches in April, lighted after heavy rain by the sun, suggest their brilliance. Yet this is too sensational. The whiteness of these waters is simple. They are elemental transparency. Like roundness, or silence, their quality is natural, but is found so seldom in its absolute state that when we do find it we are astonished.</p>
<p><strong>from The Living Mountain</strong></p>
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<p>A brilliant philosophical meditation inspired by Scotland’s <a href="https://www.visitscotland.com/see-do/landscapes-nature/national-parks-gardens/cairngorms/">Cairngorm</a> mountain range, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/20/living-mountain-nan-shepherd-review">The Living Mountain</a> was written in the 1940s, but remained unpublished until 1977. Thanks to its recent success the author, <a href="https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/nan-shepherd/">Nan Shepherd</a>, is now regarded as a superb writer on the natural world.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290118/original/file-20190829-106490-1d820tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290118/original/file-20190829-106490-1d820tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290118/original/file-20190829-106490-1d820tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290118/original/file-20190829-106490-1d820tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290118/original/file-20190829-106490-1d820tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290118/original/file-20190829-106490-1d820tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290118/original/file-20190829-106490-1d820tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Nan Shepherd, pictured on the Scottish £5 note.</span>
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<p>The book dazzlingly captures the Cairngorms in their various seasonal moods. Shepherd’s eye for detail is incisive, her understanding of the mountains, plants and animals profound. The Living Mountain reveals the visionary nature of Shepherd as a lone and intrepid hillwalker who sometimes went barefoot so she could feel the grass, mud and heather on her skin. </p>
<p>Influenced by Zen Buddhism, the book illustrates the importance of the natural world to human well-being. It is also concerned with the negative human impact on the local habitat. Crucially, its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/27/nan-shepherd-vision-cairngorms-robert-macfarlane">influence on contemporary nature writing</a>, especially the work of <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/32424/robert-macfarlane.html">Robert Macfarlane</a>, has brought Shepherd to the attention of a new, ecologically aware generation of readers. The recently announced <a href="https://nanshepherdprize.com/">Nan Shepherd Prize for Nature Writing</a> points to the growing relevance of The Living Mountain in an age of environmental crisis. </p>
<h2>Scottish cultural revival</h2>
<p>This focus on The Living Mountain tends to obscure the creative achievement of Shepherd’s three novels, <a href="https://canongate.co.uk/books/1216-the-quarry-wood/">The Quarry Wood</a> (1928), <a href="https://canongate.co.uk/books/1217-the-weatherhouse/">The Weatherhouse</a> (1930) and <a href="https://canongate.co.uk/books/239-the-grampian-quartet-the-quarry-wood-the-weatherhouse-a-pass-in-the-grampians-the-living-mountain/">A Pass in the Grampians</a> (1933), with their attention to rural communities under pressure from modernity.</p>
<p>These novels emphasise the rural and local nature of much Scottish writing of the <a href="https://writersinspire.org/content/modernism">early 20th century modernist period</a> and illustrate Shepherd’s important place in the modernist cultural movement known as the Scottish renaissance. This was especially concerned with the nature of a changing rural modernity, and Nan Shepherd was one of its foremost fictional chroniclers. </p>
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<p>Modernism is traditionally viewed as a movement focused on city life. But academics increasingly <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Rural_Modernity_in_Britain.html?id=9it_tAEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">recognise</a> that the modernist “shock of the new” also affected rural life.</p>
<p>The Scottish modernism of the renaissance movement was largely centred in Montrose, on Scotland’s north-east coast, during the 1920s. Many writers and artists were based in or visited Montrose during this period, such as poet <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/hugh-macdiarmid">Hugh MacDiarmid</a>, writers <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/1RrnlkLgR639p9nzZwsPNRZ/willa-muir">Willa</a> and <a href="https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/edwin-muir/">Edwin</a> Muir, novelist <a href="http://www.neilgunn.org.uk/">Neil Gunn</a>, poet and sculptor <a href="https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/james-pittendrigh-macgillivray/">James Pittendrigh Macgillivray</a>, poet <a href="https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/violet-jacob-0/">Violet Jacob</a> and artist <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle-2-15039/baird-to-the-bone-1-530198">Edward Baird</a>.</p>
<p>Scotland’s north-east corner was also home to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/43vprlT8qgGVRYK9VPRmmfw/lewis-grassic-gibbon">Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s</a> trilogy, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/a-scots-quair-by-lewis-grassic-gibbon-book-of-a-lifetime-a-potent-earthy-and-vivid-portrait-10474806.html">A Scots Quair</a>, which begins in the fictional rural village of Kinraddie. Shepherd’s Martha Ironside may well be an unacknowledged model for Gibbon’s Chris Guthrie, the more famous heroine of Sunset Song (the first part of the trilogy, published in 1932).</p>
<p>Internationalist in its aims and appeal, and often modernist in its influences and aesthetics, Scottish culture in this period was still deeply rooted in the rural. In her three novels, Shepherd, from Aberdeen, was a key contributor to this Scottish cultural revival. </p>
<h2>Exploring conflicting worlds</h2>
<p>The Quarry Wood follows Martha Ironside growing up in the farming community of Wester Cairns. Martha, like Shepherd, goes to Aberdeen University, an environment very different to home.</p>
<p>Navigating between these two spaces – one of labour, earthiness and familial ties, the other of intellectual aspiration, refinement and burgeoning sexual desire – places The Quarry Wood in a tradition of semi-autobiographical modernist novels. Martha initially dreams of escaping the muck of the farm, but chooses ultimately to stay in her community, which offers a more satisfyingly embodied experience of life than university. </p>
<p>In The Weatherhouse, Shepherd’s most complex novel, young soldier Garry Forbes returns to Fetter-Rothie on leave from the First World War. He brings to this rural community a fierce drive for truth, leading one character to lose her faith in God. But the lesson of The Weatherhouse is that what constitutes true holiness is the understanding that each living thing has its own nature, which we can only recognise if we get outside of our private selves. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290120/original/file-20190829-106517-187cu8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290120/original/file-20190829-106517-187cu8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290120/original/file-20190829-106517-187cu8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290120/original/file-20190829-106517-187cu8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290120/original/file-20190829-106517-187cu8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290120/original/file-20190829-106517-187cu8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290120/original/file-20190829-106517-187cu8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Loch Morlich in the Cairngorms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/loch-morlich-cairngorm-national-park-highlands-116941309">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>A Pass in the Grampians concerns the effects of modernity on rural communities. Bella Cassie is a famous singer who returns to her birthplace to build a new house. She represents modernity, emancipation and the vulgar shock of the new, and her plans upset the rural traditions of the community. The novel lampoons modernism while satirising things like the locals’ incomprehension of modern art which was coming out of great cities such as Berlin, Vienna, London and Paris.</p>
<p>For Shepherd, though, modernism’s origins are complex and concealed. An orphan, Bella discovers to her horror that her father is an old sheep farmer bent “crooked, from a lifetime of labour and exposure”. Bella, symbolising pleasure, art and beauty, is related to a man who embodies labour, servitude and parochiality. Modernism may have found its home in great cities, but often had its roots in less cosmopolitan locations. </p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aberdeen University Press</span></span>
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<p>Shepherd was one of the great early 20th century writers of nature, landscape and the weather. Such descriptions vividly imbue all her works, not least The Living Mountain. But her novels also invite us to frame conversations around modernity and modern literature to include the importance of the natural world and its living rural communities.</p>
<p>For contemporary writers and readers, it is Shepherd’s understanding of the connectedness of human beings to the natural world that has made The Living Mountain a much-loved work. At a time of global ecological crisis, when the greed and short-sightedness of humans threatens an increasingly fragile environment, her intuitive understanding of the landscape and the rhythms of nature is both a clarion call and a balm for the soul.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119794/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Scott Lyall gratefully received funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh to conduct research on the work of Nan Shepherd.</span></em></p>Writing vividly about her beloved Aberdeenshire landscape has reconnected many readers and writers to nature, underscoring the need to protect our fragile environment.Scott Lyall, Lecturer in Modern Literature, Edinburgh Napier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/905592018-01-24T16:33:46Z2018-01-24T16:33:46ZNan Shepherd: move aside Robert Burns, it’s time to celebrate Scotland’s identity with a woman<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203135/original/file-20180124-72612-1sdgk2j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nan Shepherd on the RBS £5 note.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>The half-light of these weary January days will soon be lit up by the linguistic thrills of <a href="https://www.scotland.org/events/burns-night/the-ultimate-guide-to-burns-night">Burns Night</a>. This international celebration of <a href="http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poets/robert-burns">Robert Burns’</a> timeless poetry will see millions across the world raise a glass to Scotland’s bard on January 25.</p>
<p>Burns is used by Scots as a frame upon which to hang a tremendous amount of weighty national identity. Upon him they place responsibility as the source of their egalitarian spirit, and of their radicalism. Their socialist leanings too, they expect him to inhabit. Their fondness for a good drink is perhaps the easiest burden for his writing to bear.</p>
<p>As Scotland develops and alters, more and more weight is being borne by this one Ayrshire man. Even his ghost must be growing humpbacked under the strain. Academics and fanatics scratch annually through his letters and works, trying to pin him down as a good unionist, socialist, yes man, Tory. Others look to take him out by labelling him a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/14/poet-robert-burns-sex-pest-says-former-national-poet/?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter">sexual predator</a> or <a href="https://www.scotland.org/features/robert-burns-and-slavery">aspirant slave-owner</a>. This Burnsian battleground shows that Scottish identity can no longer be encompassed in one night nor expressed by one man.</p>
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<span class="caption">The work of national poet Robert Burns presents a fairly masculine perspective of Scotland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/robert-burns-17591796-national-poet-scotland-239399143?src=ycaFyIFYaBFGa9BaKpOSGg-1-1">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Scotland needs a new symbol that can more easily take on the country’s emergent identities. Environmentalism is a huge new concern, as is a real effort to achieve equal status for women. Perhaps the most <a href="https://www.commonground.org.uk/a-wolf-among-wolves/">current debate</a> is the attempt to redefine Scots’ relationship with the <a href="http://www.scotlandinfo.eu/scottish-highlands/">Highlands</a>. These aggressively depopulated regions have inhabited an uncomfortable place in the Scottish psyche, with a romantic, tourist-friendly notion of leaping salmon and noble stags competing with the tragedy of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/civil_war_revolution/scotland_clearances_01.shtml">the Clearances</a>, when greedy landlords swept crofters from their land in the 18th and 19th centuries in favour of more profitable sheep.</p>
<h2>A woman for the job</h2>
<p>By an incredible stroke of luck, we have just such a poetic hero hung up in a cupboard, ready to be pressed into action: the accomplished Aberdonian novelist and poet, <a href="http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poets/nan-shepherd">Nan Shepherd</a>, who played a vital role in the 20th-century <a href="https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2013/11/was-there-a-scottish-renaissance/">Scottish Renaissance</a>.</p>
<p>Born in Peterculter and raised in Cults, her existence was forever focused on Aberdeen, as seen through her degree at the city’s university and her <a href="https://news.aberdeencity.gov.uk/aberdeen-to-commemorate-one-of-scotlands-finest-novelists/">long career teaching</a> at the college, and her love for the <a href="https://www.visitscotland.com/see-do/landscapes-nature/national-parks-gardens/cairngorms/">Cairngorm Mountains</a> just inland to the west. From her firm footing in the north-east, she was able to step confidently out into the world both through travel and through addressing universal human questions from a confidently north-east perspective.</p>
<p>Shepherd has already been dusted off and given a relaunch recently. In 2016, the Royal Bank of Scotland used a striking image of the poet wearing a self-made headband, looking proud and confident on its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/25/nan-shepherd-first-woman-scottish-bank-note">new five-pound note</a>. In 2017, a well-received biography, <a href="http://www.galileopublishing.co.uk/into-the">Into The Mountain</a>, was published, digging down into the life of the woman behind the books.</p>
<p>This foundation has prepared the way for a wide popular embrace. But Scots don’t take someone to their hearts because some well-meaning soul has put out a biography. Nor do they warm to someone purely because they decorate the fivers that glide effortlessly through their fingers.</p>
<p>That’s why alongside Burns, I propose Nan Shepherd Night.</p>
<p>This night would be roughly analogous to Burns’ annual birthday bash in that there would be much discussion of themes and politics and social consequence, well lubricated and studded with readings and song.</p>
<h2>A force of nature</h2>
<p>Raising Shepherd up to this new prominence would give every new generation the chance to interact with one of the most compelling Scots voices of the 20th century. Her work in both Scots and English produced principally in the 1930s spoke to and of a nation in transition. She also wrote of nature in a way that would be intensely valuable for us all to read. In her poem The Hill Burns, she writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Wet with the cold fury of blinding cloud,<br>
Through which the snow-fields loom up, like ghosts from a world of eternal annihilation,<br>
And far below, where the dark waters of Etchachan are wont to glint,<br>
An unfathomable void.<br>
Out of these mountains,<br>
Out of the defiant torment of Plutonic rock,<br>
Out of fire, terror, blackness and upheaval,<br>
Leap the clear burns,<br>
Living water,<br>
Like some pure essence of being,<br>
Invisible in itself,<br>
Seen only by its movement.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her 12-part essay on time spent walking in the Cairngorms, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/20/living-mountain-nan-shepherd-review">The Living Mountain</a>, has been in the spotlight once again since its timely re-release in 2011 by Canongate Books, with a foreword by academic and nature writer <a href="https://www.emma.cam.ac.uk/contact/fellows/?fellow=172">Robert MacFarlane</a>. This slow, revelatory examination of a human immersed in nature is a very powerful piece of writing.</p>
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<span class="caption">Nan Shepherd’s beloved Cairngorms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/loch-morlich-glenmore-forest-cairngorms-northern-721822159?src=VKNTGDAghkw13rJC-7HkTA-1-13">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>The slim volume could be easily dispatched in a single sitting, but like one of the walks that ramble from page to page, glen to glen, it can be revisited time and again, with new revelations being provoked, new vistas glimpsed on each fresh journey. As mentioned, Shepherd breaks us, and Scottish literature generally, out of the old dichotomy where the Scottish landscape could only be viewed in one of two ways.</p>
<p>Either Scotland was a misty, ancient place of few people and many romantic notions, or it was a bleakly bare northern extremity from which humans had first scoured clean of the trees then scoured clean of their own ramshackle dwellings and cultures.</p>
<p>Shepherd offers us a third way, a way of approaching the landscape that allows a natural and unmediated relationship to be created between human and landscape, between the two living things.</p>
<h2>Taking her rightful place</h2>
<p>Raising Shepherd up to the height of national figure would at long last put a woman among the pantheon of Scottish greats. Burns, <a href="http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/Sir-Walter-Scott/">Scott</a>, <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-louis-stevenson">Stevenson</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/43vprlT8qgGVRYK9VPRmmfw/lewis-grassic-gibbon">Grassic Gibbon</a>, <a href="https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2014/09/a-highland-life-remembering-neil-gunn/">Gunn</a>: they all have their place, but they are all men and can only inspire so many of us, and only in so many directions.</p>
<p>A strong, confident female voice being celebrated, read and enjoyed at events around the country with predominantly female speakers would be a welcome antidote to the heavily masculine Burns Night with its conspicuous array of male worthies. Balancing this out would be to the enrichment of both men and women.</p>
<p>Finally, raising Shepherd’s status would undoubtedly also bring the north-east back into focus as one of the cultural heartlands of Scotland. The deep-rooted culture of Scotland’s geographical cold shoulder has often been neglected by those in the <a href="http://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/sndns739">central belt</a>. But while Edinburgh softened itself through Anglicisation, Aberdeen retained its sense of self.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203206/original/file-20180124-72600-1m7b0es.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203206/original/file-20180124-72600-1m7b0es.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203206/original/file-20180124-72600-1m7b0es.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203206/original/file-20180124-72600-1m7b0es.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203206/original/file-20180124-72600-1m7b0es.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203206/original/file-20180124-72600-1m7b0es.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203206/original/file-20180124-72600-1m7b0es.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Living Mountain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aberdeen University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the north-east, there is a special mentality of hard-headedness and a dark passion for enduring hardship with stoicism – locals proudly call it being “thrawn”. There is the linguistic richness of the local Scots dialect that extends across all classes. There are the rich traditions of fiddle music, ballads and bothy ballads, folktales and legends, high literature and street literature, that inform an ongoing strength of identity and creativity here. Nan Shepherd’s work beautifully illustrates this, and for Scotland’s identity builders in the central belt, a better understanding of Shepherd’s work could act as a bridge to the rich kist of tradition and culture in the north-east.</p>
<p>Shepherd skilfully brings the reader to points of transition and contrast – between hills and sky, modernity and tradition, Scots and English, male and female – walking us through the revelatory landscape, examining it, learning from it. By looking at issues such as class, gender, nature and what it means to be fully alive, Shepherd’s illuminating works equip us to deal with change. In the current climate, that’s not a bad skill to have.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Nan Shepherd was a vital player in the Scots Renaissance of the 20th century, and helped secure Scots’ place as a literary language. As a great makar (poet) in her own right, who used Scots regularly in her work, she also acted as a vital motivator and organiser of others in the movement. Now we are in the midst of another Scots renaissance, and during <a href="https://www.scotslanguage.com/pages/view/id/6">Scots Language Week</a>, it is only fitting that an article championing Shepherd should be written in Scots as well as English.</em></p>
<h2>Shift yersel owre, Rabbie, an mak space fir a national lassie</h2>
<p>Burns Nicht is here aince mair. Aa owre this guid green warld, Scots an their sympathisers will pit oan their best tartan breeks, kilts, sashes an bunnets, an heid for a local dinner.</p>
<p>Ae dey a year we aa breenge oot fae oor hidden neuks, oor mooths aflame wi Burns’ Scots an oor bellies aflame wi strang hielan uisge-beatha. We haver on aboot the values o freedom an equality, resistance tae tyranny, an aa that Scotland stauns fir in this tapsalteerie warld. </p>
<p>Then the next-again dey sees us hingin up aa wir tartan duds, pittin wir Scots tongues back intae the press alang wi oor dirks an kilt soaks. Scotland an aa her Burns-inherited notions safely back in the box unner the bed fir anither year. </p>
<p>Burns is cairtin owre muckle a load fir ae single Ayrshire mannie. An a hail nation sae complex an modren as Scotland needs mair nor ae champion. </p>
<p>Scotland could dae wi a new poetic hero wha could gie voice tae oor new environmentalist impulse, tae the ambition thats mair common nor ever in Scotland tae heize up women tae truly equal status wi men, an tae appreciate the abundant beauties an discovery open tae us in oor hauf-toom glens. </p>
<h2>A quine for the task</h2>
<p>We already hae sic a hero. She’s caaed Nan Shepherd. Nan (Anna) Shepherd wis a gey important pairt o the Scottish Reneaissance o the twentieth century. She wis a braw scriever in her ain richt, plus organiser an communicator an kyther o ideas an concepts. She wis an Aiberdeenshire quine, born intae a faimly fae Peterculter an raised at Cults, she wis aye at hame in the north-east, fae her deys studyin intae Aiberdeen University tae her lang career teachin English at the Aiberdeen College. </p>
<p>She’s aaready been singled-oot fir a bit o a re-launch. Her face appears on the fivers fae the Royal Bank o Scotland, an a new biography o her is oot tae. Unlike Burns, Shepherd redded oot maist o the dodgy stuff fae her diaries, editied her ain letters an even pit a wheen o documents tae the fire afore she deid. Unlike big Rabbie, then, we dinnae hae aa the interestin, incriminatin opinions o the figure tae chaw through an reinterpret. We’re left wi her wark. But thon’s plenty. </p>
<p>Sae this braw brankie new symbol o Scottish identity needs a new National Nicht. Oor ain ane, no tae replace Burns but tae compliment him. A Nicht that shaws the warld whit we are aa aboot these deys an wad gie us leave tae stert oor ain traditions. </p>
<p>That’s how I propone Nan Shepherd Nicht. </p>
<h2>Airt fae the earth</h2>
<p>Explorin Shepherd wad be worthwhile as wad gie ilk new generation a chaunce tae read ane o the best, maist compellin an unique voices o the 20th century. She scrievit poems in baith Scots and English, novels that encompassed life in her north-east hame an celebrated the people, nature an leids that sae define the place, whilst aye haein ae ee on the bigger picture o humanity. </p>
<p>Exploring Shepherd wad gie us a chance tae meditate on oor relationship wi nature. Her maist celebratit wark the dey is <em>The Living Mountain</em>. The non-fiction twal-pairt essay chairts Shepherd’s slaw, revelatory experiences o merchin through the Cairngorms.</p>
<p>This slim buik isnae a chyave tae get through in ae sittin, yet like ane o the rambles Nan taks hersel on, ilk time ye pick it up an hae a read, ye tak new thochts awa, hae new ideas. Shepherd’s unco relationship wi nature braks oot o the auld dichotomy o Scottish literatur. Afore her, the Scots launscape was either a romantic harr-happit laun o bonnie stags an loupin saumon or a harsh, wind-bit wastelaun whaur oor ancestors aince scarted oot a livin afore bein torn fae their hames bi greedy lairds an cruel factors. Shepherd gies us a third wey, whaur ilk human can hae honest communication wi nature an form their ain relations, ootwith aa the fauseness o prejudiced interpretation.</p>
<h2>The Shepherd alangside the Plouman Poet</h2>
<p>Explorin Shepherd wad at lang last pit a female in the pantheon o Scottish greats. Burns, Scott, Stevenson, Grassic Gibbon, Gunn: they aa dae a job fir oor national identity. But they aa dae it fir ae gender. Burns Nichts are gey aften heavy on the male spikkers. Haein a Shepherd Nicht whaur maist spikkers were female wad balance this oot.</p>
<p>Finally, explorin Shepherd wad bring the north-east back intae the fauld o “national” Scotland. This airt has lang been the kist that stores some of Scotland’s richest treisures in terms o cultur, leid, an nature. The hail nation o Scotland could turn, through the wark o Shepherd, tae the north-east an fae its deep kist draw forth wirds hauf-forgot in the sooth, an mentalities that were tint lang-syne. </p>
<p>Sheperd aye brings us tae a transition; atween the taps o hills an the high blue lift, atween modernity an tradition, Scots an English, male an female, an she walks wi us roon it, examinin it, learnin fae it. She equips us tae deal wi change, an in the current dey, thats nae a bad skill tae hae.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90559/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alistair Heather works for the Elphinstone Institute, a part of the University of Aberdeen. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicolas Le Bigre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Scotland’s literary culture is dominated by a male perspective. So as Burns Night approaches, it’s time to give prominence to a female voice – written in both English and Scots.Nicolas Le Bigre, Teaching Fellow, Archivist, Elphinstone Institute, University of AberdeenAlistair Heather, Cultural engagement officer, Elphinstone Institure, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/709312017-01-06T14:57:47Z2017-01-06T14:57:47ZCrime novel His Bloody Project put Scottish writing back in the spotlight – here is what’s next<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151982/original/image-20170106-29222-zecvza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bound for glory?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/pic-329572652/stock-photo-portrait-of-a-young-caucasian-girl-in-glasses-with-books-on-pink-background.html?src=GGJd14km6yQeCWLehRSlsw-4-19">Masson</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thanks to the success of Graeme Macrae Burnet’s <a href="http://themanbookerprize.com/books/his-bloody-project-by-graeme-macrae-burnet">His Bloody Project</a>, Scottish literature has returned to prominence lately. The historical novel about a teenage boy who commits a triple murder was a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/22/his-bloody-project-sales-booker-shortlist-graeme-macrae-burnet">surprise nominee</a> for the Man Booker Prize and an unexpected bestseller. Published by small Glasgow imprint <a href="http://booksfromscotland.com/2015/10/contraband/">Contraband</a>, it is one of the most successful novels to come out of Scotland in years. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Burnet reads His Bloody Project.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For a country that many like to associate with gritty fare such as <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/135836.Trainspotting">Trainspotting</a> and <a href="http://www.ianrankin.net/rebus-books-in-order/">Rebus</a>, where does its writing go from here? Besides various other <a href="https://www.bloodyscotland.com/uncategorized/focus-tartan-noir/">crime writers</a>, the big Scottish noises are mainly established figures such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/aug/26/john-burnside-life-in-writing">John Burnside</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/06/ali-smith-interview-how-to-be-both">Ali Smith</a>. Little attention has been paid to emerging writers in their twenties and thirties. </p>
<p>You might be tempted to believe novelist Kirsty Gunn’s <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scots-authors-face-political-pressure-from-creative-scotland-1-4095679">widely publicised</a> recent <a href="http://www.word-power.co.uk/books/notes-towards-a-national-literature-I9780854111220/">attack</a> on the direction of travel. She accused Scottish literature of having become overly politicised – particularly the way writers are funded by Creative Scotland. She fears the dominance of a nationalist political narrative that awards works that somehow benefit Scottish society or culture rather than artistic merit alone. </p>
<p>While I disagree that there’s a nationalist agenda to blame, I do worry Scottish publishing has become somewhat inward-looking in recent years. With this in mind, here’s what can we expect from the year ahead.</p>
<h2>New work, old guard</h2>
<p>The coming highlights again point to much that is well established – we can expect some high quality. That would include three releases from the always prolific Burnside. There is a collection of poetry, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1110441/still-life-with-feeding-snake/">Still Life with Feeding Snake</a>, and his long-awaited new novel, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1090381/ashland-vine/">Ashland & Vine</a> (both Jonathan Cape). The novel is about a film student who drinks too much and develops an unlikely friendship with an old woman with a lifetime of stories. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1024&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1024&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1024&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What is Utopia?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Little Toller</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Also from Burnside is a novella, <a href="https://www.littletoller.co.uk/shop/books/little-toller/havergey/">Havergey</a> (Little Toller), which is set on a remote island and explores the idea of Utopia. Combining the same themes as his best work, environmental destruction and community survival, it may again demonstrate his continued relevance to Scottish and British literature – and resistance to easy classification. </p>
<p>Several new works come from internationally established writers who are under-recognised in their country of origin. A good example is Glasgow crime writer
<a href="http://www.denisemina.com">Denise Mina</a>, who ought to be seen as one of Scotland’s best living novelists. Her historical crime novel The Long Drop (Harvill Secker) received ecstatic <a href="http://www.thebookseller.com/news/mina-moves-harvill-secker-orion-325563">early reader responses</a>. It tells the story of Peter Manuel, a serial killer who lived in 1950s Glasgow, and spent a night with the husband and father of two of his victims before being arrested. </p>
<p>Edinburgh-born writer <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/nov/09/interview-shena-mackay">Shena Mackay</a> also falls into this category. Having spent much of her life in London and now based in Southampton, the writer of acclaimed works like <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-orchard-on-fire/shena-mackay/9780349007212">The Orchard Fire</a> (1995) and <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1061797.Heligoland">Heligoland</a> (2003) has never received appropriate recognition as a Scottish writer. Virago will this year <a href="http://www.thebookseller.com/news/vrago-acquires-mackay-memoir-and-backlist">publish</a> her memoir and continue to reissue her backlist of 15 novels and collections of short stories. The reissues have begun to cement her reputation as one of the greats, and hopefully the memoir will further showcase her extraordinary talents.</p>
<h2>Villages and islanders</h2>
<p>If Mackay and Mina underline the strength of female Scottish writing, Nan Shepherd’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-36111759">prominence</a> on a new Scottish £5 note is a reminder that the classics were not all written by men either. Shepherd’s hillwalking memoir <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-living-mountain/nan-shepherd/robert-macfarlane/9780857861832">The Living Mountain</a> (1944) has become popular in recent years <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-30277488">thanks to</a> championing by various other writers, yet her <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grampian-Quartet-Weatherhouse-Grampians-Mountain/dp/0862415896">three Modernist novels</a> about rural north-east Scotland remain under-read outside of Scottish universities. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Due for reissue.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This looks set to change thanks to Canongate’s release of <a href="http://www.canongate.tv/the-weatherhouse-paperback-canons-edition.html">The Weatherhouse</a> (1930) this month. With a new introduction by the Orcadian writer <a href="http://www.canongate.tv/authors/amyliptrot">Amy Liptrot</a>, whose memoir The Outrun was one of last year’s highlights, The Weatherhouse tells the story of a former soldier’s struggle to adjust to village life after returning from the trenches. </p>
<p>Speaking of vital reissues, Peter Mackay and Iain Macpherson’s <a href="http://www.luath.co.uk/the-light-blue-book.html">The Light Blue Book: 500 Years of Gaelic Love and Transgressive Poetry</a> (Luath) stretches this theme of inclusion to Gaelic verse. It came out just before the turn of the year and challenges popular conceptions with material “that ranges from the suggestive to the erotic to the downright rude”. </p>
<p>On the same theme of minority literatures, the veteran p<a href="http://www.luath.co.uk/a-hundir-inboos-till-a-diein-lied.html">oet Robert Alan Jamieson’s</a> A Hundir Inboos till a Diein Lied: A Poetic Voyage Through the (Linguistic) Margins of Europe (Luath) is set to combine original poems in Shetlandic with translations of work from other marginalised languages, including Hungarian, Icelandic, and Catalan. </p>
<h2>The way ahead</h2>
<p>But if these various releases are important and interesting in different ways, none address the deficit I mentioned at the beginning. The good news is there are also a couple of promising signs of where Scottish writing goes next. </p>
<p>One is Glasgow’s small publishing house <a href="http://www.freightbooks.co.uk">Freight Books</a>. Jim Carruth’s <a href="http://freightbooks.co.uk/killochries-by-jim-carruth.html">Killochries</a> was one of the most important books of 2015, for example, stretching the boundaries of what Scottish poetry can do in the form of a verse-novel. This year Freight is publishing Carruth’s second full-length collection, <a href="http://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/fiction-poetry/black-cart,jim-carruth-9781911332350">Black Cart</a>, which focuses again on his rural upbringing near Glasgow and looks set for a larger audience. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rachel McCrum.</span>
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<p>Also on Freight will be <a href="http://dangerouswomenproject.org/2016/04/16/the-first-blast/">The First Blast to Awaken Women Degenerate</a>, the first collection by Rachel McCrum, one of the co-founders of the scene-defining <a href="https://rallyandbroad.com">Rally and Broad</a>, a Scottish spoken word/musical cabaret show. </p>
<p>Yet the most discussed upcoming publication of the year is by new publishing venture <a href="http://www.404ink.com/about/">404 Ink</a>, which incidentally received funding from Creative Scotland. This month it <a href="http://www.404ink.com/nasty-women-coming-2017/">launched</a> a crowdfunding pitch for its first collection of essays, Nasty Women, and met its target in less than three days. </p>
<p>Nasty Women will showcase a wide array of female voices, many of them new writers, focusing on intolerance and inequality to cover everything from Trump’s America to pregnancy. Like Freight, the arrival of 404 Ink is a sign that when we talk about cutting-edge Scottish publishing, the small publishers are increasingly defining the scene.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70931/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy C. Baker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite the political renaissance, Scotland’s literature is in need of new blood.Timothy C. Baker, Senior Lecturer, Scottish and Contemporary Literature, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.