Linda Cortright
Jun 10, 20239 min
Updated: Oct 25, 2023
By some standards, my religious upbringing might be considered wanting. My parents unanimously decided that neither my brother nor myself should be christened and yet, I have still managed to lead an incredibly blessed life. (Trust me, if christening was a pre-requisite for Global Entry, I would dash to the nearest baptismal font.)
Given the absence of basic religiosity, it’s not surprising I would have better luck naming the seven dwarfs than the twelve disciples . . . which brings me to Iona, a small island in the Scottish Hebrides. Iona is where St. Columba and his twelve disciples (sometimes referred to as companions) landed in 563 AD and began converting countless Scottish heathens to Christianity, somewhat akin to St. Patrick’s conversion of disbelievers in Ireland. If Columba was mentioned during my formal education I have long since forgotten. He should have fired his PR agent because we don’t celebrate St. Columba’s Day. (My personal reason for celebrating St. Patrick’s Day has nothing to do with Christianity; I venerate him for banishing all the snakes from Ireland—I’m just sorry he stopped there.)
To this day, the isle of Iona—all three miles long and barely a mile wide—is revered as the birthplace of Scottish Christendom. Columba built the first Celtic church and the masses soon followed. It is now the eternal resting place for a smorgasbord of kings: Scotland (forty-eight) including Macbeth, Ireland (four) and Norway (eight).
Iona still maintains a vibrant spiritual community and visitors frequently comment on a notable air of tranquility. The imposing abbey that oversees the coastline was rebuilt in the early 1900s, exactly where Columba built his temple of worship. It is still greatly revered, and thousands continue to make a pilgrimage there.
But not me. I have come for the sheep or more precisely, Iona Wool.
There are one thousand sheep happily grazing on Iona. The grass is as green as the wind is wild. There is ample to fodder to nicely plump seven different breeds (Zwartble, Texel, Charollais, Suffolk, Blue Faced Leicester, Hebridean, Suffolk and Scotch Mules—a cross between a Bluefaced Leicester and a Scottish Blackface) for delectable restaurant fare.
Twenty years ago, if you had asked Iona Wool co-founders Michael and Kate Gordon the difference between a Zwartable and a Zwieback, you would have gotten a friendly but baffled shrug. Neither one was raised on a farm. In fact, they were happily scrimping along in Bilboa, Spain, enjoying a carefree lifestyle that tends to tarnish with age (and definitely with children) when Michael learned the Craft Shop on Iona was for sale. Michael spent his childhood summers on Iona and had developed an affinity that comes from long afternoons by the sea, a scrum of kids and little parental supervision. At a summit meeting which only Michael remembers, they agreed to abandon the vibrancy of Bilbao for the tranquility of Iona and take the next step in their relationship by becoming business partners—some get a dog.
Located just a few hundred yards up the hill from the ferry landing, the Craft Shop had been a successful enterprise since 1965. Everyone arriving on Iona must walk past—even if they’re not of a crafty mindset. The building’s cottage charm along with the dozen or so bikes for rent (just one-speed, thank you) gives it plenty of curbside appeal.
However, the Gordons were looking for something more than just charm; they wanted to invest themselves and their business in the island, and that meant keeping the shop open year-round which also meant year-round employees.
Approximately one hundred and seventy hearty souls call Iona home. Offering full-time employment in such a small community is huge, coupled with the fact that during the winter months, the number of tourists can dwindle to a trickle. If weather makes the ferry crossing impassable, the trickle can dry-up completely.
Thankfully, obstacles don’t readily deter the Gordons, an invaluable mindset not just for an islander but an entrepreneur as well. The Craft Shop had always featured a variety of “local” items from pottery to pullovers. But local typically meant United Kingdom local—not Iona local.
“We had plenty of yarn,” Michael recalls. “But most of it came from Ireland. We wanted to offer our customers wool from Iona.”
And so, Iona Wool was born.
Spinning wool into yarn isn’t rocket science, people have been doing it for thousands of years. Spinning wool from different breeds of sheep, whose fleece possesses different characteristics still isn’t rocket science, but it is a science—call it fiber science.
As Michael is quick to explain, every year during shearing season their efforts go toward assiduously sorting fleeces to create consistency for their handknitting yarn. They utilize all the wool from the island except what comes from the Scottish Blackface, which is too scratchy for anything more than a scratchy carpet wool. Before Iona Wool, the farmers and crofters sold their wool to the British Wool Board sometimes receiving enough money to cover the cost of shearing—and sometimes not. Iona Wool is able to pay their local growers up to three times the earnings of what they had previously received.
And why not? Farmers have been raising sheep on Iona not just before Columba, but before Christ. And therein lies the wee hiccup.
Since the first batch of Iona Wool was spun ten years ago, it has enjoyed such great success that it now necessitates its own retail space. The Gordons decided to build a dedicated studio directly across the street from the Craft Shop. Understandably, construction on an island often means paying twice the cost of a similar project on the mainland, but in the case of Iona—because it is known to have been inhabited since the Bronze Age—construction must be done with two archaeologists onsite lest anything of value be unearthed.
At the beginning of 2022, when tourism was oh-so slowly returning to the island and Covid wasn’t quite in the rearview mirror, a mini excavator arrived on the ferry from Mull and made the short journey up the hill to the construction site.
The average passerby no doubt intent on ice cream or meditation (possibly both), likely gave little notice to the man operating the diesel machine with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, nor the two archaeologists on their hands and knees armed with a magnifying glass. Not long after the machine began humming and the cigarette smoke was spiraling, the work stopped.
Using their special little archaeological tools, the two men began gently dusting the surface and finding bits of pottery . . . from five thousand years ago! Construction on the new shop came to a complete standstill as every bit of ancient grit was inspected.
Michael and I have this conversation while sitting outside the Craft Shop. It is May 18, 2022. The ferry has just dumped the most recent load of tourists at the pier who are now marching up the hill past us. The mini-excavator sits silently atop an ancient mound of dirt—no more remarkable in appearance than any other dirt plot on the island aside from the narrow trench made for the foundation.
“We are still hoping to open by the middle of summer,” Michael says. And I look at him with an ache in my heart, knowing that every precious week that passes mean lost revenue and on the heels of Covid, everything is magnified—not just the pottery.
As an American—and a heathen at that—I am stunned to learn that because the artifacts were found on Michael’s land, he is responsible not only for their proper excavation but the ensuing academic papers that must be reviewed and published as well. I don’t dare ask what the going rate is for an archaeologist onsite, let alone two. But I’m guessing they won’t work for yarn, and who knows how long they’ll be there?
Michael and I continue chatting about the business of wool along with the realities of raising two children in a remote location. His son still attends primary school on Iona, but his daughter is now old enough that she travels by ferry to a school in Oban weekly, leaving the house at 5:00 am Monday morning and returning Friday night. On Saturdays, Kate takes both children go to the mainland for swimming lessons, but a two-hour lesson can turn into a three-day affair.
“We finally had to buy a camper van in case the ferry got cancelled,” Michael says.
After more than an hour, we agree to continue our conversation when I return with a tour group in July.
“Go and enjoy the island while the sun is shining,” he urges. “Not every day looks like this one.”
Michael is right, the sun is shining but Holy Mother of God… the wind is blowing. With a strong tailwind, it takes no time for me to walk the 1.5 miles to the end of the island passing by acres of fat, wooly sheep. But when it comes time to turn back, I buckle in half and fold my head down like a boxer dodging a blow (. . . blow?).
As promised, I return to Iona two months later. Before I even reach the Craft Shop, I can tell the excavator hasn’t moved and my heart sinks. There is no way the building will be completed for summer. Michael happens to be off the island, and I am delighted for the opportunity to meet with Kate.
“We really entered the yarn market when we exhibited at Edinburgh Yarn Festival (2017). We were swamped. We had no idea just how passionate knitters are.” Kate tells the story as if still suffering a bit of aftershock five years hence.
The knitters loved their yarn and the colors, but I have no doubt they loved the Iona story as well. In addition to carefully sorting the fleeces, the wool can only be scoured every other year. The reason: the mill in Yorkshire, one of the oldest in the country, has a one ton minimum for processing. Because these are not wool sheep, the fleeces are substantially smaller. A year’s worth of shearing just isn’t enough.
After scouring, the wool travels to Huddersfield in West Yorkshire for spinning. Previously, it was home to more than fifty mills—only four are still in operation. And then, it’s on to Ettrick Yarn Dyers in Selkirk in the Scottish Borders that produce custom dyes for Iona.
It is some type of wooly serendipity that next door to Iona (on the Isle of Mull), sits Ardalanish- Isle of Mull Weavers. In less time than it takes for their daughter to catch the “school bus,” the Gordons can pop over to Mull and see their tweed being woven. According to Kate, it’s the natural progression for the wool that isn’t quite soft enough for handknitting.
“I can’t wait to see all of our products displayed in the new building,” Kate says, with nearly the same excitement as a new parent.
“I can only imagine,” I reply. And we both look at big longingly at the empty plot across the way.
May 20, 2023 — One year later.
I send a message to Michael the week before I am due to arrive on Iona with a tour group, asking if he might be able to meet with us and share his story.
“l’ll be happy to welcome you and your group into our new space.”
I am filled with relief. This time, when I make the walk up from the pier, I can clearly see the sun shining off the black corrugated roof of the new building. It is just the most spectacular day imaginable. Michael greets me with a friendly hug in the doorway while I keep stammering, “It’s just perfect. I love it!”
For the next twenty minutes, Michael briefly describes the journey of Iona Wool to my group, happily triumphing their new space but omitting the “little” archaeological detour to build it –the detour of a thousand pieces!
Mixed in with the pile of ancient clay fragments, they found a polished, stone axe head. But unlike the one found on Argyll from the same period; this one was intact. We’re talking headline news! The huge cache of antiquity apparently wasn’t so surprising, five thousand years ago the building site would have been on the shoreline where the original inhabitants would have lived. Now, the shoreline is five hundred yards away.
I am bit miffed to learn that after so much lost time (and expense), the Gordons don’t have a single broken pot to show for it . . . not one. (Being a heathen, I would probably have pocketed a couple when no one was looking.) It’s likely the stone head, at least, will be displayed at the Edinburgh Museum, but I doubt I’ll make a special trip to go see it.
And so, it is; Iona Wool now proudly resides in its very own building (adjacent to a newly opened pizza shop that Michael leases out the space to). Unlike the Craft Shop across the street with its white stucco walls and weatherworn metal roof, the new shop has a subtle, wooden exterior that feels almost Scandinavian. According to Michael, the architects were sensitive to its proximity to the ancient nunnery that stands (well, sort of still standing) on the adjoining land.
Inside, the shop offers that feeling of tranquility that I suspect most are referring to when they speak about the island—and the abbey. But for me, it comes from this space that is filled with colorful skeins or yarn, bolts of tweed, felted slippers, and an assortment of wooly items that reflect the work of two enterprising people who moved to this island nearly twenty years ago wanting to make a difference—and they did it with wool.
For more information, please visit Iona Wool.