The purpose of this study is to investigate the connection between people and the hill of Bennachie in the Garioch region of North-East Scotland. The scholarly aim is to complete an inter-disciplinary study in Folkloristics and Anthropology and to enhance ethnological method with landscape theory. The methodology for the fieldwork involved a mix of qualitative research carried out through participant observation and oral history interviews. Whilst the focus of the interviews was on a core group of community volunteers, fieldwork ranged from solitary walking to group participation. Midway through the fieldwork an archival survey was commissioned and this information was used to complement the fieldwork and introduce a collaborative perspective. With a dual methodological focus the thesis approached community relationships with landscape through diverse routes: personal narrative; poetry; the dynamics of community woodland groups, and the interpretation and management of a twentieth century farm ruin. These appear to be very different scales of analysis, yet each topic was heavily influenced by the legacy of land change and clearance in Scotland during the Agricultural Improvements. Each element is related to landscape physically, particularly through walking, and are individual and group performances that generate and reproduce moral values. The principal conclusion is that relationships between people and land in North-East Scotland have been misrepresented through a historic and scholarly legacy of dispossession. Coupled with this misrepresentation is the continuing belief in the North-East that farm lifestyles and dialect is dead or dying. This thesis underlines an alignment between Improvement and antifeudalistic discourse with walking and looking in Scotland. It demonstrates the continuing primacy of landscape and language through looking at, walking on and writing about Bennachie. Landscape attachment is exemplified in these performances and demonstrates a strong co-constitutive relationship between the ‘Lan and the Fowk'.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:606441 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Fagen, Jennifer |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=211119 |
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