Vaila
Vaila is a small island situated off the west coast of Shetland, Scotland, lying in the Vaila Sound between the Walls peninsula and the island of Foula to the southwest. It occupies a position in the Atlantic waters that characterise this remote corner of the British Isles, and is one of the more distinctive of Shetland's many inhabited and uninhabited islands. The island is perhaps best known for Vaila Hall, a substantial Victorian mansion house that dominates its landscape and lends the island an unexpected grandeur for such a remote and windswept location. The combination of dramatic Nordic scenery, historic architecture, and profound solitude makes Vaila genuinely memorable for anyone who manages to reach it.
The island has a long human history stretching back into Norse times, as is reflected in its name, which derives from the Old Norse. A watchtower or broch-like structure known as Muness-type fortification once guarded its shores, evidence of how strategically placed the island was in the waters of the Shetland archipelago. In the nineteenth century Vaila came to particular prominence when Arthur Anderson, the Shetland-born co-founder of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company — the P&O line — purchased the island and undertook extensive charitable works in Shetland more broadly. He was responsible for building Vaila Hall in its current form, though the estate has seen subsequent owners and modifications over the years. The island later passed through various hands and was purchased in the late twentieth century by Richard Rowland, an American who undertook considerable restoration work on the hall and its associated structures.
Vaila Hall itself is a striking building, constructed in a Scottish baronial style with turrets and crow-stepped gables that appear almost incongruously grand against the open moorland and sea horizon. The hall, outbuildings, a restored Norse mill, and a small chapel collectively form an estate complex that speaks to Victorian ambitions transplanted to the far north. The chapel is particularly notable, a small and beautifully simple structure befitting its setting. Walking the island, one is struck by how the architecture seems both to belong to and to stand apart from the natural world around it — the stone buildings weathered to tones not unlike the lichen-covered rocks of the island itself.
Physically, Vaila is a fairly compact island, roughly a mile and a half in length, and its terrain consists largely of moorland, grassland grazed by sheep, rocky shoreline, and the occasional stretch of rough beach. The climate is what one expects from Shetland — persistently windswept, frequently overcast, with rapidly changing weather that can shift from bright Atlantic sunshine to mist and rain within the same hour. The sounds of the island are dominated by wind, water, and seabirds; great skuas, known locally as bonxies, are a presence across much of Shetland including these waters, along with gannets, fulmars, and various waders. The smell of salt, peat, and wet heather is constant and invigorating in the way that only truly remote northern places can be.
The surrounding seascape is spectacular. To the west, on clear days, the outline of Foula — one of the most remote inhabited islands in the British Isles — is visible on the horizon, a distinctive flat-topped and cliff-edged form rising from the Atlantic. The Walls peninsula to the east provides the nearest landfall and the nearest community, with the village of Walls (also known as Waas in the Shetland dialect) being the practical base for any visit. Walls is a small but functional settlement with a pier, some local facilities, and access to the broader road network of Mainland Shetland.
Visiting Vaila requires advance arrangement, as the island is privately owned. Access is typically by small boat from the Walls area, and any visit should be arranged with the island's owners or through local contacts. There is no public ferry service. The best time to visit Shetland generally, and Vaila in particular, is from late spring through early autumn, when the days are extraordinarily long — midsummer brings near-continuous daylight in these latitudes — the weather is at its most manageable, and the birdlife is at its richest. Winter visits are for the very hardy; the light is short, the seas can be rough, and the sense of isolation becomes something altogether more intense.
One of the more unusual and charming details associated with the island is the restored horizontal Norse mill, a type of water mill that was once common across Shetland and the Northern Isles but has now almost entirely vanished. These mills, which use a horizontal wheel rather than the vertical wheel familiar from most of Europe, are a direct inheritance from Norse settlement and represent a tangible link to the Viking Age on these islands. Vaila's example is among the better preserved in Shetland, making it a point of interest not just for the picturesque but for anyone interested in vernacular technology and the deep Scandinavian roots of Shetland culture. The island as a whole rewards the effort required to reach it precisely because so few visitors make that effort — it remains genuinely off the beaten path even within Shetland, which is itself already far off the beaten path of most British tourism.