How Land Was Occupied Before Crofting

The basic unit of Hebridean settlement and farming prior to crofting was the runrig toun. I have used the term toun here because it was a widely used term in the documentary record and it helps to distinguish the pre-crofting toun from the differently organised crofting townships that emerged from the eighteenth century onwards. As noted in Chap. 2 , the long-held view of the runrig toun is that it was a deeply rooted form whose history extends back into prehistory, and that it was an institution that was culturally constructed by communities, a choice rooted in their innate sense of communalism and equality. The way in which it spread the holdings of each tenant across the full range of good and bad land, wet and dry, within the toun was seen to capture this sense of communalism and equality. In other words, runrig did not evolve slowly over time but is seen as being there at the outset, something baked into the very character and mentality of early Hebridean communities. Once established, the runrig toun would have expanded socially and physically as the number of tenants grew or contracted, but always within the framework of possibilities or limitations set by their resource base. Such a view does not exclude the impact of external factors, such as the spread of epidemics or the challenges created by long-term climate change or sudden climate events. These could add shocks to the system and alter the course of a toun’s growth, but they did not shape its essential character. The discussion in this chapter seeks to undermine this view.