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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

They founded or re-engineered a festival and
called it Up Helly Aa – ‘The Lightening of the
Year’. They took the traditional fiery elements
of pagan end-of-winter celebrations, combined
with the Christian festival of Candlemas, and
Viking-ised them.
There is feasting, of course. Lots of feasting.
Frolicking and cavorting. Reestit mutton (or
just ‘reest’, dry cured and smoked on the bone
over a peat fire before being boiled) and tattie
soup with bannocks. There is no foy without
reest, no frolicking without bannocks. There
are sandwiches, fancies, or cakes, tray-bakes
and tiffin. And tea, strong tea, made in gigantic
aluminium pots with great ladles of loose
Nambarrie leaf. Tea that catches in your teeth,
and goes exceedingly well with the dark rum in
many a warming hip f lask.

WE’RE ALL VIKINGS NOW
Up Helly Aa is more than a boozy parade
for fire-raisers, though. It’s a spectacle, a
somewhat fantastical celebration of Shetland’s

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.

AshorthistoryofShetland

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ESCAPE (^) | TRADITIONS