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FRONT PAGE

Image:  Cairngorms National Park brand
Outline of eagle showing view of Cairngorms


Sharing the stories of the 
Cairngorms National Park 

A guide to interpreting the area’s distinct 
character and coherent identity 



PAGE 2

…a fresh and original approach… 

Foreword – by Sam Ham 

Establishment of National Parks throughout the world has mainly 
involved drawing lines around pristine lands and setting them 
‘aside,’ to be forever protected in their natural state, spared both 
from cultivation and the influences of urbanisation. This has been 
comparatively easy in countries such as the USA which entered the 
National Parks business early in its history, when it had the luxury 
of massive tracts of relatively unmodified land along with enormous 
agricultural regions to grow its food and take care of the everyday 
economic needs of people. Such has also been the experience 
of other developed countries such as Canada, New Zealand, and 
Australia where the benefits of nature conservation were easier to 
balance against the economic opportunities ‘lost’ to protection, and 
sometimes the displacement of indigenous populations. 

Image:  colour photograph of Sam Ham

But the experience of these countries is not the norm in places where 
human resource exploitation has been ongoing for many centuries and 
where drawing lines around ‘undeveloped’ lands of any significant size 
is virtually impossible. Indeed, if National Parks are to be established 
in most of today’s world, they cannot be set aside; rather they must be 
set within the human-modified landscape. Scots, arguably more so than 
any other people, have seized upon this idea and have led the rest of 
the world into a new and enlightened way of understanding the role 
of National Parks in contemporary society. 

Image:  colour photograph of mist covered trees and river

Nowhere is the brilliance of this new way of viewing National Parks 
more evident than in the Cairngorms National Park, where about 
16,000 people live in one of the most strikingly beautiful landscapes 
on Earth. Here, the National Park Authority does not ‘manage’ the 
Park in the traditional sense, but rather, it provides guidance and 
facilitates decisions taken largely by the communities themselves. 
This document about interpreting the Park, Sharing the stories of the 
Cairngorms National Park, is a perfect example of this thinking, and to 
my knowledge represents the first of its type anywhere in the world. 

Image:  colour photograph of Pipe band


PAGE 3

The document does not prescribe how the Park should be interpreted, nor does it dictate how the 
people who live and work in the Park should interpret themselves. Rather it provides broad directions for 
collectively presenting the region through the key concepts that define and describe its unique character. 
Thus, the themes outlined in this document provide an all-important starting point, allowing every land 
manager and every community to find its own way to each theme, deciding how to express it, how to 
tease from it the nuances that connect most strongly or resonate most loudly in each case and for each 
audience. I cannot overstate how important this approach will be to the interpretation of the Cairngorms 
National Park now and long into the future. 

The reader who turns these pages will be treated, not to a ‘how-to’ or ‘do it only this way’ discussion of 
the enormous interpretive potential of the Park, but rather to inspiring, exceptionally well written words 
of encouragement that they can, and should, represent the National Park and themselves as part of what 
makes it special. If you are looking to be told what to do, the guidelines offered in Sharing the stories of the 
Cairngorms National Park will probably not be wholly adequate. But readers who are looking for a starting 
point, and the motivation to tell their own story in the context of the National Park, will find the document 
immensely valuable. The guidelines it offers are based on state-of-the-art thinking and the findings of 
current research on how thematic interpretation can deliver to communities the kinds of outcomes they 
expect and deserve. As such, it stands in my mind as a fresh and original approach to interpretive planning 
that is long overdue. 

I have always felt that there are few places in the developed world outside the North of Scotland where 
the people reflect the land as much as the land reflects the people. To the visitor’s eyes, this is an 
inescapable observation, one that is borne out in your language, your food and drink, your music and your 
literature, your roads and schools and farms, and in your sports and pastimes. It is a moral to the story of 
every visit to the Cairngorms National Park, and it is a conclusion that one inevitably draws from reading 
this superb document. I am pleased and proud to be associated with such an important and potentially 
far-reaching effort. The lessons about sustainable living we can all learn from your example are priceless. 
May the experience of every visitor and the life of every resident be enhanced as a result. 

Image:  signature of Sam H Ham

Professor Sam H. Ham 
University of Idaho 
USA