Against Scottish Wildness

I have a written an essay over at Bella Caledonia against the idea of wild land in Scotland. It is an unlikely argument to to make but I am troubled at how little critical attention has been given to the idea of designating much of Scotland as ‘core wild land‘.

To categorise some places in this way seems to me highly political. It is a way of privileging one culturally specific way of seeing the Highlands, with its roots in the picturesque and the sublime, over other ways of knowing, working and experiencing the landscape.

Here is the video that inspired the essay. Pure landscape eye-candy – very nicely made – but not as benign as it seems.