Stac an Armin

Stac an Armin ( Scottish Gaelic: Stac an Àrmainn, German as " Stac the warrior ") is a towering rock island ( Stac ) in the St. Kilda archipelago off the west coast of Scotland.

The Stac rises 191 meters above the sea surface ( the height information in the literature vary slightly ), so it is the highest Stac in the UK. It is located about 400 m north of Boreray and has a floor area of 9.9 hectares. Stac an Arnim was never permanently settled, but there are about 70 smaller depots and a small hut, St. Kilda was built by the residents. They used the Stac earlier to capture birds or collect their eggs. The rocky island is estimated more than 10,000 pairs of gannets breeding ground. As part of the St. Kilda archipelago of Stac is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Because of an outbreak of smallpox on the nearby island of Hirta in 1727 a total of 11 people were detained for several months in quarantine on Stac an Armin.

The last Great Auk in the British Isles

On Stac an Arnim the last living in the British Isles Auk was killed by two locals in July 1840. The reason for the killing is survived beyond doubt. Maybe it was superstition, but perhaps also a commissioned work, because even then the natural history museums of Europe paid considerable sums to get to a bellows of the extremely rare bird. The world's last copies of this big bird that was once used as "Penguin of the North" in the whole North Atlantic, were killed a few years later on June 3, 1844 Eldey in Iceland.

Stuffed Great Auk from a collection, Leipzig