sheep dike

Worn: A People's History of Clothing
by Sofi Thanhauser
Published 25 Jan 2022

In the 1830s, when islands in Scotland were cleared of their traditional sheep, and larger sheep breeds like Cheviots and Leicesters were brought in, some of the native species disappeared entirely. But on North Ronaldsay, the northernmost island in the Orkney archipelago, which lies off the north coast of Scotland, a drystone wall was constructed around the circumference, above the high-water line. The wall, which became known as a “sheep dike,” was completed in 1832, and it confined the local sheep to the beach. There, local sheep adapted to a diet of seaweed. And there they remain for all but a few months each year, when the ewes and lambs are brought inland to graze. These little sheep—the top of the back of one of the sheep reached just to a woman’s knee—resemble the fossil remains of sheep from the Iron Age, and indeed dental traces of seaweed have been found on these four-thousand-year-old sheep.