From longboat to space ship, Shetland’s spectacular northern isle is flying high
There’s “up north” and then there’s Unst, the most northerly of Britain’s inhabited islands. Part of Shetland’s North Isles – along with Yell and Fetlar – at 19km (12 miles) long and 8km (5 miles) wide, Unst has all you could want for an island adventure.
The Vikings of nearby Scandinavia would stop at Unst and by around AD700 many had settled, with modern
Unst home to the remains of more than 60 longhouses.
Anyone interested in the lives of
Vikings should stop at Haroldswick for the longhouse reconstruction, as well as the longboat there – a reconstruction of the vessels in which the Vikings travelled to Unst.
Unst is spectacular – soaring cliffs looking out to sea, beautiful beaches and fantastic walks, like the stunning 2.6km (1.5 mile) coastal path at Easting Beach. Unst is also home to a vast array of seabirds, many of which can be can found at the Hermaness National Nature Reserve in the north of the island.
Gannets, puffins and guillemots can all be spotted, while the isle is famed for the number of great skua, known as “bonxie” by locals.
But it isn’t just wildlife that makes Unst so special. Indeed plans to send rockets carrying satellites into orbit from the island recently received a major boost from a legal ruling. When an objection by a company owned by billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen was thrown out, it was hailed as an important step in the bid to develop the UK’s first vertical launch spaceport in the far north. The decision kept the £17.3 million Space Hub Sutherland (SHS) project, on the A’Mhoine peninsula, with other launch
facilities in North Uist and Unst, in pole position in the region’s mini space race.
With Scotland aiming to win a £4 billion share of the global space market by 2030, there are also plans to develop launch facilities on North Uist, in the Outer Hebrides, and on the island of Unst.
Povlsen’s Wildland company, which owns tens of thousands of acres neighbouring the SHS site, had said the development will be “completely inappropriate for such an environmentally vulnerable area and the habitats it sustains,” a view shared by many people.
Highlands and Islands Enterprise, which is leading the project, argues that it will “provide high- quality local jobs and create vital infrastructure to support the growth of the UK space sector in Scotland”.