The Simple Things

A short history of Shetland

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Shetland is like another country but isn’t one. To find it, jump on the boat from Aberdeen; you’ll arc around Orkney, which is really only a hop, skip and a jump off the mainland, keep going right a bit and after 12 or 14 hours you arrive in Lerwick, the capital. It’s also the only town on a long scattering of over 100 islands and islets, only 15 of which are inhabited by humans. Welcome to Shetland. On a map you’ll usually find us in a little box, near the oil. It’s not, never has been and never is ‘The Shetlands’. Despite what it says in your newspaper, magazine, dictionary or that guy you met down the pub who says he used to work in the North Sea oil industry. It’s ‘Shetland’, singular.

It’s singular in Norse (Hjaltland) and Faroese (Hetland). ‘Shetland’ is simply a phonetic transliter­ation taken from a drunk Norseman with no teeth by an even drunker Scot with a shaky quill. ‘Hjalt’ and ‘Het’ both mean the hilt or cross guard of a sword, bringing to mind the archipelag­o’s shape and capturing the place’s strategica­l importance in the warlike raiding of the (much more fertile and lucrative) bits of land to the south.

Up until the ninth century, the Vikings are content to plunder. Then, as more and more of the weak, seasick and feartie Vikings get left behind (one view), or big, strong, well balanced and quite brave Vikings fall for the undoubtedl­y attractive local women and decide to stay, they decide they might as well just take over (the other view).

Moving on a few centuries, it’s 1469, and the bankrupt king of Norway, Christian, needs to sort out a bit of a political stand-off by marrying off his daughter to William, King of Scots. There’s no money for a dowry so, having already pawned Orkney to raise some gold, he does the same with Shetland. From this point on, Shetland is essentiall­y under Scots control, though the marriage never happens, and there are frequent attempts right up until the 19th century to redeem the pledge with large lumps of currency. Still, that’s it. Shetland becomes and remains Scottish, despite retaining a land tenure system and legal system based on Norse principles.

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