Island genes

Not everybody understands why I choose to spend my holidays on an isolated island.

Could it be persistent island genes I may still posess? Or does an illustrious ancestor of mine haunt me towards an island?

My family name is Schokker. A Schokker is a fishing boat, a kind of wrinkled pea or a resident of the former island in the North East polder called Schokland.
Before the Afsluitdijk between North Holland and Friesland was finished in 1932, the IJsselmeer was an innersea, called the Zuiderzee. Schokland was an island in the Zuiderzee.

Schokland was never as remote or isolated as St. Kilda, but the Zuiderzee was still tidal and could be very rough and treacherous. Schokland consists of peat, and the sea skipped off the land. The island was getting smaller and was threatened to dissappear completely.

The Schokkers were a seperate group of people. They had their own language, customes and clothing. They were mainly fishermen. In the 19th century fishing was no longer profitable and the people became extremely poor. The authorities tried to stimulate the people to leave the island. They broke down their houses or they gave the people a substantial amount of money to leave the island for good. In 1859 the island was finally cleared by order of the king.

In 1941 the dike around the polder was closed, and in 1942 the North East polder was fully reclaimed. Now Schokland is incorporated in the polder, but is still elevated and recognisable as an island. The island is just like St. Kilda an Unesco World heritage site because of its cultural value.

On Schokland the name "Schokker" didn't exist. We traced back our family line until 1710. This ancestor of mine wasn't born on Schokland. But before the Napoleonic era, people had no family name. A person was named after his father ("Jansons", in Dutch "Janszoon"), or to another feature. It might be that he was given the name because of his origin. But we are not certain; it might also be that he looked like a wrinkled pea.

Seawall and vicarage on Schokland

Isolated people

The people on St. Kilda lived very isolated, I wonder how much they differed from the people of the mainland. 

The first inhabitants of St. Kilda might date back from the Bronze Age from 3000 to 800 BC. Until the 14th century the Outer Hebrides belonged to Norway. Since the end of the 14th century, St. Kilda has been the possession of the MacLeod family of Harris.

The first detailed description of the people on the island is by Martin Martin who visited St. Kilda in 1697. He writes that the inhabitants on St. Kilda descend from people from Skye, Uist, Lewis and Harris. Their appearance is like the people from the isles and the mainland. They are very strong and have good eyesight and memory. It strikes him to find that the men barely have beard growth. The men also had strong ankles, which was probably the result of climbing the rocks barefoot from a very young age.

Martin mentions their lack of resistance for diseases. After the visit of the steward, who visited the isles every year to collect the taxes, many inhabitants run a bad cough.
This lack of resistance to illnesses will lead to a disaster some thirthy years later, when in 1729 the population of St.Kilda reduces from about 200 souls down to thirty as a result of a smallpox epidemic. Three adults survived along with eight boys on Boreray, where they were fowling when the epidemic broke out, and nobody was able to recollect them from the place for about nine monts. Only one adult and eighteen children survived the epidemic on Hirtha itself.

St.Kilda is repopulated during the 1730s with other people from Uist, Skye and Harris. The families were MacDonald, Fergusson, MacCrimon, MacKinnon, MacLeod, MacQueen, Gillies and Morrison. These families and their kin lived on St. Kilda until 1930, when the isles were abandoned.

In 1852 a group of 36 St. Kildans tried to emigrate to Australia, of whom only 16 survived the journey. Probably because of this small number of survivors, there was only one attempt from St. Kilda to emigrate.

There was no genetic difference between the people of St. Kilda and the people from the other Outer Hebrides. Only in habits and knowledge of the world they had their differences.

The penguin of the Northern hemisphere

Everybody who has ever seen a guillemot, razorbill or puffin, sees a comparison with penguins. Their feet far behind, they stand straight with their fatty belly on their short legs in their black and white plumage. Guillemot, razorbills and puffins all belong to the family of Alcidae. Until the mid19th century, another member of the Alcidae lived in the waters of the North Atlantic: the pinguinus impennis, garefowl or great auk. The great auk was the largest of the alcid family. It was about 75 to 85 cm tall and weighed about 5 kilograms. It couldn't fly, but was an excellent swimmer and diver.

The name pinguinus is supposed to originate from the Welsh "pen gwyn", which means "white head" and  refers to a white spot on the head in summer plumage. Penguins are named after the great auk, but the species are not related. The closest related bird of the great auk is the razorbill.
The great auk couldn't fly and was clumsy on land, however spent most of his time on sea foraging for food. It needed to go ashore only to breed.
For a nesting site, the birds needed rocky islands with sloping shorelines close to their feeding areas. These places are not very numerous, and there have probably been no more than 20 breeding grounds in the world. Only six former breeding colonies are known, among which one on St. Kilda.

Martin Martin describes the great auk or "gairfowl" in his "A voyage to St. Kilda" written in 1697. Martin travelled to St. Kilda in June 1697. According to Martin the great auk returned to  St. Kilda on the 1st of May annually and went away mid June. So it didn't have much time to rear his young. I haven't found any record of the St. Kildans hunting the great auk; Martin doesn't mention it. They certainly did not take the eggs of the bird, because - like the fulmar- the great auk layed only once every season

The bird was quite common until the second half of the 18th century. It was found in the North Atlantic from Canada and the United States, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, British Isles, France as far south as northern Spain. The story of its eradication is a cruel one. Vulnerable as they were on their nesting grounds, the poor creatures were hunted down for meat, feathers, down and oil. They were plucked alive, thrown in boiling water or used as fuel, for their oily skin was burning easily.
They were hunted so much, that already in 1553 the birds were officially protected.
Later, when they became even more rare, the birds were killed by strangling for collectors who wanted a specimen.

In 1844 a great auk was caught on Stac an Armin, and tied up alive. By that time the bird was already a rarity on St. Kilda, because the story goes that the inhabitants believed the auk 
was a witch who caused a storm and therefore beat it to death. I don't think the people from St. Kilda would have believed the auk was a witch had they been familiar with the bird. Anyway, this great auk is the last documented sighting in the British Isles. In the same year a breeding couple of great auks was killed in Iceland, and in 1852 the last individual sighting was recorded on Newfoundland.