Foula Island in the Shetland Island Group

The small Shetland Island of Foula became know for two things. In 1936, professional actors and local folk appeared in the now classic film - 'The Edge of the World' and the Oceanic, sister ship to the Titanic was wrecked off Foula in 1914.

The Norse name - Fugley - means 'bird island', and Foula remained under Norse feudal law till the late 17th century, when on the death of Katherine Asmunder, the last Queen of Foula, it came under the control of the Scottish lairds. Old Norn was spoken until the late 18th century. When Jacob Jacobsen, the Faroese linguist, visited in 1894, he gathered the islanders at Hametoun, for he found the folk lively, intelligent and of excellent memory.

The small island of Foula (5 x 4 km) lies 25 km west of Shetland, and has spectacular cliffs up to nearly 400 m high and sheer on the north coast. It holds some of the largest seabird colonies in the UK and as many breeding species of seabird as any other UK site. Particularly spectacular are the populations of about 2500 pairs of great skua, 120 pairs of Arctic skua, and several thousand pairs of Arctic terns as well as tens of thousands of accessible puffins, guillemots, shags. You can see it located far out to sea off of the west coast of Scotland. It is the small island west of the big island.

The best instructive site about the island is found on the Shetland Times site.

Although lacking in human residents the island has plenty of Shetland ponies two of which you will find on the Shetland Pony site. #1 and #2 There are plenty of Shetland Sheep and thousands of birds.

Many have seen pictures of the famous gada stack but probably did not know it came from Foula.

The only access is by the Foula ferry "The New Advance" which sails from Walls on Tuesdays, Saturdays and alternate Thursdays, with alternate Thursday sailings from Scalloway. If you get in the area you use the ferry schedule to check sailing times.

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