ABSTRACT
This chapter engages with practices and experiences of remoteness on the Isle of Coll, Scotland, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between August 2020 and August 2021, it traces the re-making of remoteness from the ferry pier along narrow island roads to a warmly lit living room. The pandemic altered practices of separation and connection, and closeness and distance, highlighting both established ways of making remoteness and giving rise to new ones. The chapter analyzes this, showing that remoteness can be understood as an everyday practice and experience that results in particular from islanders’ im/mobilities. It argues that remoteness is dynamic and relational, constantly oscillating between closeness and distance, insulation and isolation.
