Letters posted to commemorate Scottish archipelago evacuation wash up on Norwegian beach after decade at sea

Prince Charles among those to receive postcard from discovered mailboat, Rory Sullivan reports

Ian McHardy, an archaeologist at the National Trust for Scotland, launched the mailboat with seven letters from St Kilda on 29 August, 2010. (National Trust for Scotland/PA Wire)

A small mailboat that was filled with letters to mark the 80th anniversary of the evacuation of a Scottish island has been found in Norway nearly a decade after it was put to sea.

The last 36 people living on St Kilda, an archipelago to the west of the Outer Hebrides, left their island homes on 29 August, 1930, because life there was becoming untenable.

Eighty years later, an archaeologist working for the National Trust for Scotland (NTS), which has been in charge of the islands since 1957, decided to pay tribute to the islanders by posting seven letters in a boat he had made out of pine.