Many people know Shetland only through the popular mystery books and TV series, or from a Shetland pony, but the Scottish islands actually have a long and varied history with more twists and turns than the average thriller.
The Shetland Museum and Archives is a good place to get a start on it. It’s located in Lerwick, Shetland’s only ‘city,’ a waterfront town that is home to 7500 of the 22,000 Shetlanders; another quarter live just near it.
The museum, logically, starts at the beginning, with the first signs of human habitation going back about 6,000 years. A lot has been learned, including the fact that there’s a lot more to be learned, as new discoveries keep coming up. One of them, a large gravesite from about 5,000 years ago, was used by physical anthropologists and others to recreate what early Shetlanders might have looked like.
Long after the neolithic peoples were replaced by Picts, they were replaced in the 800s by Norwegian Vikings, who eventually came under Scottish rule in a feudal transaction that boggles the mind.
Shetland was under the rule of the kings of Norway and Denmark, who in earlier years had found it frustratingly independent. But by the 1460s, that was a matter of the past, and the present—a wedding present—took Shetland in a different direction. Christian I, king of Norway and Denmark, arranged the marriage of his daughter Margaret to James III of Scotland, hoping for a good alliance with a well-off house.
But, since he was out of cash, he pawned the Orkney and Shetland archipelagos to James, exacting a promise that Norse law and language would be untouched, and setting the price to be paid to get the islands back. As if. For over 200 years, the Scandinavians attempted to redeem the pledge and were alternately ignored and rejected.
But the Norwegian ties remained strong. Most islanders have significant Scandinavian DNA, almost all the placenames in the islands come from Norse, and many families feel a dual loyalty. During World War II, that worked to the advantage of Norwegian resistance fighters; the highly-secret Shetland Bus, a flotilla of small boats, became a two-way lifeline.
So, its probably not surprising that when the museum opened its new building on Lerwick’s waterfront the ribbon was cut by the Duke of Rothesay (that’s Prince Charles, to you) and Queen Sonja of Norway.
Shetlanders found life hard under the new Scottish rulers, who traded rights to the islands as if they were game tokens, and came to control more and more of the land, leaving crofters, the island’s small farmers, as little more than serfs or tenants. Some overlords were worse than others: Robert Stewart, a cousin of the Queen, was actually hanged for his actions.
One of the museum’s best exhibits represents the inside of a small family home, a croft, from about 1750, showing the simple furnishings and small spaces, often shared with livestock. George G recognized it as our one-clue mystery answer, after considering a variety of culturally-related choices from other Norse-influenced lands.
Living in those conditions was tough enough, but most crofters, to make the rents, were forced into fishing as well. Going out into deep waters in a six-oar open boat like this was extremely dangerous, and many lost their lives. It was not until late in the 1800s and into the early 1900s that crofters were able to become independent, and put an end to the worst abuses.
One thing that Shetland has always lacked is wood; what grows is too precious to burn for fuel, or even to build houses, which are mostly stone. But peat bogs are found all over the island, and provided most of the fuel until the arrival of oil and gas. These early 20th-century boys were paid to deliver peat to homes.
In recent years, Shetland has taken on a different energy role; at Sullom Voe, there is a large terminal that receives oil from the North Sea fields and sends it south by tanker. With significant forethought, Shetland leaders negotiated a fee for every gallon; it’s helped Shetland seem relatively prosperous.
Shetland’s traditional crafts get a good look at the museum, both knitting (below) and taatit rugs. Those are a traditional wool pile bed cover that is found in various forms across Scandinavia. They were commonly made as wedding gifts, and handed down for generations,
There’s also room for some of the archipelago’s more recent developments, including machinery, albeit small, that has had a big effect on farming.
