For most of the
1930s the Scots Communist poet Christopher Grieve ("Hugh MacDiarmid")
lived in Whalsay. He was poor, little-known outside literary circles and
regarded in the island as an oddity, although his wife Valda and son
Michael were well-liked.
In the croft house
of Sodom (from the Norn sud-heim - the southern house) this often
tormented genius wrote much of his finest poetry (including On a Raised
Beach) and, via the Whalsay post office, conducted furious correspondence
with the leading writers and thinkers of his generation. Grieve was called
up for war work in 1942 and never returned to Whalsay. His former home is
now a camping böd, run by Shetland Amenity Trust.
