Scotland’s last great wilderness, the highland county of Sutherland is dominated by the largest blanket peat bog in Europe known as the Flow Country. Its 200,000 hectares of deep peat and bog pools have been growing since the last Ice Age and are thought to store over 400 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and 100 years of fossil fuel emissions. This fragile land is of undoubted environmental significance, but its sparse terrain is most fully explained by its violent history.

Sutherland is synonymous with the worst horrors of the Highland Clearances in the late 18th Century, when ancestral families were violently evicted by their landowners to clear space for grazing sheep. As townships were demolished and homes burnt to the ground, some were relocated to the coastal fringes or forced to emigrate to the ‘New World’ overseas, whilst others were left to the mercy of the elements in the barren expanse. What once was a thriving community was soon reduced to a forgotten hinterland.

Sutherland remains the least populated area of the British mainland to this day, with herds of deer and flocks of sheep vastly outnumbering local people in the ghostly tundra. Yet despite its tragic past, this fragile and challenging wilderness remains in need of ecological preservation. The Cleared Country explores how contrasting aspects of Sutherland’s identity converge and resonate through the experience of her wild landscape today.

Research and development supported by Creative Scotland