Get to Know the Face Behind Landscape Lore

Hi, I’m Aila — and I can’t wait to share my love for lore and the Highlands with you. Stories have always been my way of finding home.

After many years of listening to the traveller in my blood and wandering far beyond the Highlands, I eventually settled in the north, drawn back by the quiet pull of land, memory, and belonging. Today, I live with my family in a small, remote cottage in the Highlands, where days are shaped by weather, tides, muddy boots, dog walks, and the ever-changing light. Wide skies stretch overhead, waters rush and gather, and the land carries stories that have been told for centuries.

This is a landscape shaped by movement and meeting: where rivers come together before reaching the sea, where old routes still guide our feet, and where history lies close beneath the surface of everyday life. It is marked not only by beauty, but by echoes of conflict, resilience, and resistance: of battles fought, communities displaced, and voices that refused to go quietly. Stories that don’t belong to books or monuments, but live in place-names, paths, and pauses, and they still shape how this land feels when you walk through it.

Poetry, storytelling, and a fascination with history and travel have always been central to my life. These passions carried me across more than fifty countries and eventually into academic study, where I pursued degrees in English and Spanish Literature, as well as History. During my postgraduate research degree at the University of the Highlands and Islands, I worked closely with literary pieces rooted in Highland oral tradition – particularly the Ossianic Collections of the 1760s, which played a major role in shaping how the Highlands came to be imagined and visited. Alongside this, I explored travel writing and folklore: stories carried by people, not paper.

Following my degree, I taught Highland Culture and Literature in the 18th and 19th centuries at Marburg University in Germany, sharing Highland stories with students far from the landscapes that inspired them.

My professional path also led me into the museum and heritage sector, where I gained hands-on experience working with collections, exhibitions, and public storytelling. This time sharpened my understanding of the responsibilities that come with interpreting the past and the urgent need for inclusivity, care, and the decolonisation of heritage narratives. These values continue to guide my work today.

I am currently Curator and Manager of Groam House Museum, caring for collections rooted in the deep time of the Highlands and the remarkable legacy of Pictish and Celtic art and symbol stones. Alongside this role, I work in museum consultancy and serve as Development Manager for Storylands Sessions, a monthly gathering in Badenoch celebrating intangible cultural heritage through music, storytelling, poetry, and shared experience.

Badenoch remains a landscape I know intimately, having lived and worked there for years. I continue to offer exclusive walks and experiences in the area, drawing on deep familiarity with its glens, routes, and stories. Storytelling sessions, however, are not bound to one place. Stories travel, after all, and I’m always happy to bring them wherever they are welcomed.

Landscape Lore grew from a desire to take scholarship, curatorial practice, and storytelling back outdoors — under open skies, beside old paths, stones, shorelines, and kitchen tables. Many travellers encounter these landscapes while journeying the North Coast 500, often sensing that there is more here than meets the eye. Landscape Lore offers a chance to slow down, step off the road, and spend time with someone who lives here — to hear the land spoken of with care, context, and curiosity.

I am a historian and curator, but also an outdoor person, a writer of poetry, a mum, a dog owner, and someone who simply enjoys life in the Highlands. Through guided walks and storytelling sessions, I invite you to share a small snapshot of that life, and to experience place not as a backdrop, but as a living presence: layered, complex, and still speaking. After all, my mission is to bring memory, knowledge, and story back into the landscapes they belong to, allowing heritage to be experienced with all the senses.