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History

A History Of Shetland

Shetland's earliest mention may be a Latin text about Agricola's circumnavigation of the British Isles, which reads: 'Dispecta est et Thule' ('and even Thule was sighted'). But scholars still argue about whether Thule was Fair Isle or Foula, or Faroe or Iceland, so the first written records of Shetland are really the Norse sagas.

Mousa Broch

For over 600 years after the Viking invasions in the late 8th and early 9th centuries AD, the islands' trade, language and social life were thoroughly Norwegian.

The Norse

Shetland became the northern third of the great earldom based on Orkney during the golden age of the Vikings, chronicled in the Orkneyinga Saga - which contains numerous references to the islands.

In 1263 King Harald of Norway's fleet rendezvoused at 'Breideyarsund' (probably Bressay Sound, the 'broad islands' in the place-name being Bressay and Noss, then joined by a shallow beach at low tide) en route to the Battle of Largs, which marked the end of Norwegian domination on the west coast of Scotland.

Scandinavian Heritage

But in Shetland the Norse held sway for another 200 years, leaving thousands of place-names and dialect words which still testify to the Scandinavian influence.

On land now occupied by the BP oil terminal at Sullom Voe, a 15th century dispute about grazing and foreshore rights left us a record in Old Norse, describing land management customs which survived well into the 18th century. Traces of the ancient method of strip cultivation can be found in many places, notably at Rerwick, Dunrossness, and at Petester ("the Picts' farm") in Unst.

Fish And Trade

Because of the climate, Shetland could never feed itself from the land so, from earliest times, there was trade in the one commodity the islands had in plenty - fish. After the eclipse of the Norse warlords came four centuries when Shetland sold its salted fish to the outside world through the Hanseatic League of merchants, based in Bergen, Bremen, Lubeck and Hamburg.

Every summer, until the economic disasters of the late 17th century, German traders fitted out ships to buy salt cod and ling, bringing the islanders cash, corn, cloth, beer and other goods in exchange. The Hansa trade is commemorated in the restored trading booth at Symbister, in the island of Whalsay, 12 miles north of Lerwick.

Politics

The Hansa survived the transfer of political power from Scandinavia to Scotland in 1469, when a Danish king pawned his lands and taxes in Shetland to complete his daughter's dowry to the royal house of Scotland. The Privy Council in Edinburgh ignored repeated Danish attempts to redeem the pledge but Shetland became Scottish only very slowly, despite the depredations of Scots earls such as the Stewart family. Their roofless Scalloway Castle (last occupied by Government troops at the time of William of Orange's 'Glorious Revolution' in 1689) houses an informative display on this turbulent period.

After the 1707 Treaty of Union the new British government ousted the Hansa, causing an economic slump because Scots and local merchants were less skilled in the salt fish trade. During the 18th century these merchant-lairds reduced Shetland's independent small farmers to tenants to a state of near-serfdom.

Grand houses such as Busta, near Brae, (now one of Shetland's best hotels) speak of the power of the hated lairds. To hold enough land to scrape a living, Shetlanders were obliged to fish for their landlords. The lairds were loyal agents of crown, supplying their quota of seamen to the fleet which defeated Napoleon.

Military Conflicts

About 3,000 Shetland men served in the Royal Navy at one time or another during the Napoleonic wars. Folklore and historical documents record the barbarity of Press Gangs on the Shetland coast. One who narrowly escaped them, by promising to volunteer when he was old enough, was Arthur Anderson, a Shetland boy who went on to become a co-founder of the P&O shipping line. His birthplace at the Bf Gremista, on the outskirts of Lerwick, is preserved as a museum.

A Shetland Crofthouse

Population

The growth of Shetland's population was checked by deaths at sea and from epidemics. Smallpox was the scourge of the islands in the 17th and 18th centuries. Inoculation, which became general after 1760, led to a great increase in the population and by 1861 there were about 40,000 Shetlanders.

The Liberal Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, is still remembered in Shetland for emancipating the crofters in the 1880s but even when freed of landlord despotism, it was impossible to make a living from the land in Shetland.

Overpopulation and land hunger in the 19th century led many young men into the Merchant Navy. A related tradition was the lighthouse service, phased out in the 1990s as electronic robots took over from human keepers at imposing 19th century lights such as Sumburgh Head and Muckle Flugga.

Shetland In The 20th Century

The economic history of the islands in the 20th century was booms and slumps, punctuated by wars. In both world wars Shetland lost a disproportionate share of its menfolk in torpedoed merchant ships.

The First World War

The First World War destroyed the markets for the extraordinary boom in the herring fisheries which, at the turn of the century, had lifted many islanders our of subsistence poverty. Emigration increased during the 1920s and 30s, to the extent that there are now many more people with Shetland connections living in Canada, Australia and New Zealand than there are on 'The Auld Rock' itself.

The Second World War

The Second World War brought a temporary economic boom, amid all the disruption, destruction and grief, but after 1945 emigration resumed, despite state-sponsored programmes of house-building and subsidies for agriculture and fishing.

Salmon Farming

1960s To Present Day

By the 1960s a home-grown revival was under way, based on fishing, agriculture, knitwear and tourism. Aided by the Highlands and Islands Development Board, Shetland's economy grew so strong that, when oil and gas were discovered offshore in the early 1970s, some said we didn't need the new industry.

The huge oil terminal at Sullom Voe was built, however, and since 1978 has shipped out billions of barrels of oil in tankers, while pumping millions of pounds into the local economy. Serious, long-term pollution damage was avoided; the community acquired trust funds to spend on social care, the environment, the arts, sport and economic development; and the population increased for the first time in 100 years.

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