How Scotland’s hotels are moving away from tartan and stag heads

Mark Jones finds almost 800 years after the Vikings fled Scotland, their influence is back with a vengeance

Fit for the gods: guests at 57 Nord can enjoy unbeatable views (57 Nord)

The one-storey, larch-clad cabin sits in a glade of silver birches overlooking a lake in a landscape of low hills. Inside, the strippers have been going wild: there are stripped pine floors and stripped, rough-hewn tables. There are also Sami-patterned rugs, soft grey furnishings and Ikea bucket chairs.

Sheer Scandinavia it might be, but we’re not on a Finnish lake, much less a Norwegian fjord. Hame Hotel* sits on a very Scottish loch in the northern part of Skye. The furnishings are by a proudly Scottish company, Anta.

It’s a newly-opened hotel that’s part of Scotland’s newly crafted aesthetic landscape. Anne Storm Holch Povlsen, the Danish wife of Scotland’s biggest landowner, calls it “Scandi-Scot”. Mumtaz Lalani of the luxury lodge 57 Nord calls it “Norse-Gael”. Scottish hotelier Gordon Campbell-Grey of The Three Chimneys calls it “McScandi”.