Scots think outside the box as Shetland is put in rightful place
New law will put an end to official mapmakers moving islands around for the sake of convenience
THE Shetland Islands have been “freed from their box” after new legislation came into force preventing the archipelago from being sectioned off on official maps.
Cartographers argue that putting Shetland, and sometimes Orkney, in a box allows them to save space and avoid publishing maps which are “mostly sea”. The remote islands have been placed in boxes for hundreds of years, with 17th-century maps showing the islands in the wrong place for the sake of convenience.
Lerwick, the main port of the subarctic archipelago, which has a population of about 22,000, is closer to Oslo than London. It is more than 150 miles north of the Scottish mainland.
But under the new Shetland mapping requirement section of the Islands (Scotland) Act, in future the islands “must be displayed in a manner that accurately and proportionately represents their geographical location in relation to the rest of Scotland”.
The Act, which only applies in Scotland, does give public bodies a get-out clause if they provide reasons why a box must be used.
The practice of putting remote areas in boxes is common throughout the world. Other examples include the Isles of Scilly, off the south-west coast of England; Spain’s Canary Islands; and the US state of Hawaii.
Paul Wheelhouse, Scotland’s Islands Minister, said that putting Shetland in a box had been a source of “irritation” for Shetlanders and the legislation meant there would be a “sustained focus across government to meet the needs of island communities”.
The change in law was championed by Tavish Scott, the Liberal Democrat MSP for Shetland, who said that there was now no excuse for the Scottish Government or others to “put Shetland in a box”.
“The box is closed. It doesn’t exist, whether that be in the Moray Firth or east of Orkney,” he added. “Shetland is now in the right place. It is ridiculous that I had to change the law to make this happen, but so be it.”
He said the practice of putting Shetland off the Moray Firth or the Aberdeenshire coast was “intensely annoying”, creating a false impression of the challenges faced by islanders.
The Scottish Conservatives opposed the move, claiming it would be impractical and warning that it would reduce the amount of detail in maps.
A spokesman for the Ordnance Survey mapping agency said: “The Shetland Islands are approximately 245km (152 miles) from the Scottish mainland, and 690km (428 miles) from the most southerly point of the Scottish and English border. It would be virtually impossible to print a map, with any usable detail, of this vast geography.”
The rule will not apply to the Ordnance Survey or to private publishers.
‘The box is closed. It doesn’t exist, whether that be in the Moray Firth or east of Orkney’
The Scottish Parliament has passed a law to ban public bodies from placing the Shetland Islands in a little box on a map, requiring them instead to draw them in their full, glorious setting of leagues of sea. This may inspire others, such as the people of the Canary Islands, a constituent part of Spain, to insist on their own 800 miles of sea being included on maps. Plenty of other maps could be redrawn by law. Mercator’s projection makes Scotland appear bigger than its true size; an equal-area projection like that of Arno Peters would make it look squidgier but the right size in relation to England. But the most common error is to publish maps of Scotland omitting its southern neighbour, making it look like an island. Perhaps that is accurate, though, if Scotland’s cartographic outlook is to adopt an insular attitude.