Willie Irvine, survivor. Those who came back from WW1 bore the scars for the rest of their lives THE DARKNESS

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1 All at sea Tom Kidd s photographs of people in boats show Shetland s reliance on and need to deal with the sea Willie Irvine, survivor Those who came back from WW1 bore the scars for the rest of their lives Saddle sore Elizabeth Elliott pedals her way to the National Cycle Network s northernmost point in Unst Connecting Creativity Issue No 16 Spring THE DARKNESS Tom Morton on Shetland s short winter days and long nights

2 4 Contents All at sea 4 Tom Kidd s photographs of people in boats show Shetland s reliance on and need to deal with the sea, says Tom Morton Willie Irvine, survivor 9 Those who came back from World War One bore the scars for the rest of their lives, writes Laurie Goodlad Proclamations, fish suppers and suffragettes 12 Douglas M Sinclair investigates the history of Lerwick s Market Cross A cunning plan 15 Long, long ago, before Ann Cleeves was even born, a wildly successful thriller was published that put Shetland on the literary map. Are you 18 #inspiredbyshetland? Our new Instagram feature showcasing a few of our favourite #inspiredbyshetland photographs taken by you. Saddle sore 22 Elizabeth Elliott pedals her way from Lerwick to the National Cycle Network s northernmost point in Unst. 245 kilometres in a day! The lives of otters 28 Brydon Thomason on a lifetime s obsession with draatsis Treasure hunting 31 via satellite Elizabeth Atia gets her GPS in gear and goes looking for hidden goodies When Shetland s reality 34 becomes Shetland s fiction Davie Gardner on the benefits of having an international TV drama filming in the isles The battle of Bressay Sound 38 Laurie Goodlad imagines what the residents of Lerwick felt, waking up to cannon fire and a full-scale sea battle The Darkness 40 Tom Morton on Shetland s short winter days and long nights The sweetest thing 44 Abby Faulkner seeks out a sugary sensation in Shetland The essence of Shetland 49 Kathi Kamleitner set out to visit the islands for a week during Up Helly Aa. As she encountered local traditions, people and crafts she began wondering what draws people north and what the essence of Shetland s island life might be Luckiest woman in Britain? 52 Kellie Naulls is living her dream on the UK s northernmost landmass Shetland Books 54 Hayley Anderton trawls through two books about fish, one about a line of latitude and another about someone all at sea The art of Sumburgh Head 56 Artists from across the world are spending time on the edge at Shetland s state-of-the-art lighthouse and wildlife centre Hjaltibonhoga down under 60 Claire White reflects on the contribution of Shetland fiddlers to the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo tour of Australia Shetland s Spring Calendar 62 Alastair Hamilton has details of just some of the delights Shetland s spring has to offer North SPRING

3 56 Editor s Note Misa Hay, Promote Shetland Editor: Misa Hay Design: Left, Cover image: Liam Henderson Contributions and suggestions are more than welcome. Submissions can be made directly to the Editor by to misa.hay@promoteshetland.com Welcome to the spring issue of 60 North. What a busy start to the year it s been! In January we attended Vogue Knitting Live in New York to promote Shetland Wool Week. The event was a resounding success and it has illustrated the importance of the American market when it comes to knitting and island textiles generally. Donna Smith s design for the official 2015 Baa-ble hat clearly captured the imagination of our American followers. It was the most queued pattern on the craft textiles social network site Ravelry in 2015 and we even saw some of the hats being worn in Times Square! We got back to Shetland just in time for Up Helly Aa. As Tom Morton writes in his article, the translation of Up Helly Aa is the lightening of the year. The shortest day is over and brighter ones are on the way. Every year this festival attracts thousands of visitors who are keen to experience this unique community event. This year was particularly special for me as both my husband and my son were in the Jarl Squad which was a great honour. So the whole of 2015 was spent meticulously researching, planning and making the suites. Being able to see the effort and hard work involved in preparing for the event has made me really appreciate the dedication of everyone who takes part. For the sixth year running the evening procession went out live on our 60 North TV service - this time to over 14,000 people in 78 countries! In this, so far the biggest issue of 60 North, there s a collection of interesting articles from Shetland s past and present. We ll introduce you to some inspiring locals and businesses too. We re bringing a couple of new features one on Shetland books and another one showcasing a few of our favourite photos taken by you. So if you are on Instagram make sure you use our #inspiredbyshetland hashtag! Happy reading and snapping! Disclaimer: Although Promote Shetland has taken reasonable steps to confirm the information contained in the magazine at the time of publishing, it cannot guarantee that the information published is and remains accurate. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Promote Shetland. Events can be subject to change, we recommend you check details before travelling. /promoteshetland 60 North SPRING

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5 Tom Kidd s photographs of people in boats show Shetland s reliance on and need to deal with the sea by tom morton Boats. They come in all shapes, sizes and materials, from rubber to wood, fibreglass to steel and concrete. For all purposes - fishing, leisure, transportation, diving and powered in many different ways: sail, petrol, oars, diesel, hope and prayer. But one thing is for sure, always: none of them are cheap, no matter how little capital outlay is involved in the initial purpose. For boats are, as the old joke goes, holes in the water you throw money into.

6 was a time, though, in Shetland, when having a boat was crucial to survival. In these islands, most inhabitants were fisher-crofters, as opposed to in Orkney, where landlubber farmers with occasional forays into the briny for their Omega 3. You can glimpse those days in Tom Kidd s 1970s photographs. The Shetland Model, the double-ended design which has its origins in Norway, is seen frequently, often with the traditional, ultra-reliable Stuart-Turner two-stroke inboard engine. And made of wood, not the fibreglass versions which used older timber designs to provide moulds from which several, or several dozen boats could be made. There s one picture I m particularly fond of, showing a carefully-maintained Shetland Model which even has neatly-cut linoleum to guard the hull from the helmsman s feet. And there s a sense of purpose in nearly all of the Kidd boating pictures, even if it s just the collective need of all on board to consume Red Tins and enjoy the isolating fellowship of being all at sea. But mostly it s movement, transport to otherwise inaccessible islands or lumps of roadless land. Crucially, the boats all hold or form the backdrop to people. It s human beings Kidd finds so fascinating, and in Shetland, humans have to cope with the sea. Or turn it to their own ends. An archipelago like Shetland needs to connect up its disparate islands, and so we come to the ferries - so much Essential equipment in those days meant plastic oilskins, wellington boots, a heavy Fair Isle gansie and a Breton felt cap from LHD smaller in the 1970s than the much bigger Bigga and her ilk today, but Shetland s inter-island links, for the most part, were being upgraded or already had been to cope with the funnelling of manpower to Sullom Voe. Fishing boats too, were a combination of then-modern steel vessels and the older, larch-on-oak stalwarts of the Shetland trawler fleet. It was the time of klondikers, and the Polish, Soviet Russian or East German factory ships and transhipping feature, along with their crews. It s hard to believe that this went on, but in the 70s and 80s hundreds of these ships would turn up each year in the designated Scottish ports - Ullapool and Lerwick to buy and gobble up mackerel and herring from local fishing boats. The crews, sometimes disciplined by political commissars, sometimes not, came ashore and socialised or traded with local folk. I remember the two heavily built Russian sailors who turned up one day at The Shetland Times, asking if anyone wanted to buy a shirt. What were they like, I asked, and the bigger fellow began unbuttoning the one he had on. He was wearing at least four North SPRING

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8 One thing notably absent, in most of these at-sea pictures, is the lifejacket. Essential equipment in those days meant plastic oilskins, wellington boots, a heavy Fair Isle gansie and a Breton felt cap from LHD. There was still a notion in some circles that learning to swim, if you were a fisherman, was actually not very useful as it was better, once you hit the freezing waters of the North Sea, to slip away into unconsciousness as quickly as possible. Now, with survival suits, impact-triggered lifejackets, GPS and more, not to mention far stiffer health and safety rules, things are different. And better. Fatalism is no longer the default outlook. Leisure boating is different now. While the specialist dipping lug and maid racing is still the province of the few, and yoal rowing has become a genuine community activity, the tendency for da eela seems to have moved towards fast fibreglass cruisers and plastic specialist fishing boats with cuddies. Engines are bigger, people seem to want to move faster. The pottering around in open wooden Shetland Models with slow, reliable motors seems to fit less well with current lifestyles. And the fishing industry is more streamlined, more dependent on hightech boats and in the case of pelagic fleet, enormous, hugely expensive fish catchers. The klondikers are long gone, but the catching and processing of fish remains of course a major industry. One thing will always survive: The simple joy of escaping the shore. A wise man once said to me, when I arrived in Shetland, that people here could be divided into boat obsessives, those who were prepared to commit, invest themselves and their money in getting to sea as much as they could, and those who preferred to stay on dry land at almost any cost. And pretend they weren t on an island. What you see in the Kidd photographs are those who used boats as tools, as transport or a means of living, but still, in many cases, loved the moment of departure, of giddy, simple floating. And those who just loved being at sea. You can find the very same people today. They know they live on an island. Tom Kidd and 60 North would love your comments on the pictures, and especially information on the people and places shown. The complete archive of Tom s Shetland pictures is online at where prints can be ordered North SPRING 2016

9 Those who came back from World War One bore the scars for the rest of their lives, writes Laurie Goodlad In the last issue we explored the story of Private Karl Manson, killed at the Battle of Arras on 9 April His story initiated the search for a letter, which gave details about finding Karl s body on the battlefields of France. Karl was found by fellow Shetlander, Willie Irvine, through sheer chance, whilst their Company were looking for casualties following the bitter fighting at Arras. Willie wrote home, explaining these events in a poignant letter to his wife, Gracie. A queer thing happened last week, after we had taken the line and things had quietened down a bit I was having a look round and there was a chap lying just over our parapet, a Seaforth Highlander he was, he had been killed by a German sniper. I thought I had seen him somewhere so I looked for his pay book to see his name, it was Karl Manson (a son of Tom Manson of The Shetland News) he had a photograph of his father and sister in his pocket, so I took them and will send them on to his father after he has heard from the War Office. The Seaforths were attacking on our left - that s how he came to be so near us, I expect he has been on their right, it was queer for me to be the first to come on him though wasn t it? Not long after the last issue went to print, Willie s grandson, Raymond Irvine, got in touch and invited me to his house to delve into the letters his late grandfather had left. We tend to remember those who were killed in the First World War but the stories of those who returned home are no less harrowing; these should also be commemorated and their names honoured. So here is the story of Willie Irvine. William Magnus Irvine was born on 4 July 1882 to William and Jane (nee Halcrow). He spent his early years living in South Shields where his father was based, as a sea captain. Willie, his mother, and two siblings returned to Shetland in 1889 following the tragic death of their father in an accident with a horse and cart in Portsmouth. In 1910 he married Grace (Gracie) Harper from Toab; they stayed in Levenwick and raised six children, spending a few years in Scalloway during the war. Willie was a skilled carpenter/joiner before and after the war, and we get an idea of what type of man he was from the letters of reference and character from his various employers and associates. Gifford Gray, Chief Constable of Zetland, wrote in 1905 that, as Secretary and Treasurer of the Christian Endeavour Society of the Church of Scotland, Willie was an excellent and unreproachable character being strictly honest, sober, diligent, courteous, obliging and in every way a most respectable and highly esteemed young man. It is unclear when Willie joined up, but it appears to have been in 1916, possibly as a result of conscription. The first letters to Gracie date to this time. Private Willie Irvine was assigned to the Sixth Battalion, Gordon Highlanders. Thirty two years old when the war began, Willie was older than many of the young men who signed up to fight. His letters convey his maturity. Where the younger boys are filled with excitement at the prospect and adventure of war, Willie longs to see his family, misses his children and worries about his mother s health and advancing years. He writes of his children in January 1917 that I was trying to picture them all sleeping last night you see I was on guard and had a lonely watch a few hours after midnight and I just imagined the difference where you all are in peace and quietness and the horror and noise of guns and shells bursting around this place. Thoughts of his children are never far away. He describes a camp they made in the woods and asks Gracie to tell Willie about the wild strawberries and how he wished he was here u Raymond Irvine with the letters 60 North SPRING

10 Above: Letters to the bairns; Opposite: Willie Irvine (middle) & friends u and there were no shells flying around as he would have a great time gathering them. He seems to have a maturity beyond his years, which is conveyed through his letters. He writes that, I was just thinking coming over the field just now how sad it is to see so many men lying dead, there s a wee bit (little) cross just outside the hut and it s a New Zealander, poor lad coming all this distance and getting knocked out here, there are hundreds of these wee crosses about here. Willie was wounded three times during his time in France. These injuries would go on to haunt him for the rest of his life as he suffered from shell shock and deafness in one ear following a shell blast in April 1917 during the Arras offensive. He explains the moment he received the blow in a letter from a hospital tent in France. He writes that I was amongst D Coy (Company) but I think they were all mixed up with the Black Watch and C Force and Gordons. We got orders to prepare for a counter attack so I thought it advisable to get beside some of our own company boys, two of the Black Watch fellows asked me to show them where their Bat(talion) was so I took them over with me and while going over one of Johnnies 5.9 s landed. We heard it hissing over and I ran to the left and they ran to the right, and they got the iron and I think I got all the explosion, poor beggars they were blown to pieces and I didn t get a scratch, Willie was wounded three times during his time in France. These injuries would go on to haunt him for the rest of his life isn t it wonderful? I still feel a bit shaky but otherwise I m quite all right except for my deafness and I hope that will pass away soon PS. Don t worry if the war office notifies you that I am wounded as shell shock is classified as such. Willie s grandson, Raymond, states that he suffered from the effects of this blast for the rest of his life. Not only did his hearing never return in one ear he also temporarily blacked out if he was overly excited about anything. Despite this, he was able to return to work after the war and lived until 1962, aged 80. These events which took place on 23 April 1917 are recorded in the War Diary of the Gordon Highlanders. The role of the Sixth Gordons that day was to capture a German trench where they were assisting the 153rd Brigade and were to support the Seventh Black Watch. They were fighting east of the French town of Fampoux. They had to deploy earlier than intended as the Black Watch had failed to take its first objective. This may have been the cause of some of the confusion which Willie describes. The War Diary notes that on that day the Battalion went into battle North SPRING

11 strong, with a casualty rate of 40 percent, 241 men were either killed or wounded as a result, Willie amongst the casualties recorded. He spent a short spell convalescing in hospital before being sent back to the line where he was again wounded on 16 August He was admitted to hospital with a gun-shot wound to the right fore-arm, this injury is described as mild in the official papers sent home. One thing which stands out when reading Willie s letters are the descriptions, and detail, which he conveys to Gracie, about the horrors of war. Servicemen s letters quite often gloss over the atrocities faced, but Willie, without going into too much detail honestly captures and portrays an eye-opening image of the type of hardships and suffering they faced. In one letter he gives a graphic portrayal of the death of his officer, he writes that I was dispatch carrier to our officer (or a runner as they are called here) and we had not advanced above 400 yards when he got two machine gun bullets to himself, one through his calf and the other through his thigh, so I got him trailed into a trench (he was too heavy to carry) and got his leg dressed. I then went and got two stretcher bearers and we got him down to where our doctor was dressing the wounded, not far away, and poor chap he had not been there two minutes when a shell burst near and a piece struck him in the throat and killed him. He also describes the moment 24 men were killed and 19 injured when an aeroplane s bomb consignment exploded. Jerry is tormenting us with his planes as soon as it darkens, our lads brought another Jerry down the night before last about 10 O clock it was a great sight and you should have heard the cheering, it was one of his big bombing planes with 5 men in, of course they were all cinders when they reached the ground, but a rather pitiable thing happened as the flaming aeroplane came down a lot of the lads ran to look at the burning and some of the bombs exploded. He gives an amusing account of the problem with lice: now my dear Gracie I must stop as I have to pick my shirt and pants before it gets dark as I m as lousy as a cuckoo and it s the only way to keep them down. Willie also discusses the local French folk living near the line frequently in his letters. Stationed in France, he is in contact with the locals attempting to remain in their homes and make the best of the war. Literature often paints a picture of the plight of the local people who are forced to live in a war-torn area; however, the insight which is given through Willie s letters shows a different side. He often writes about the greed and selfishness he sees on a daily basis. In one letter he writes, only yesterday as were marching through the village Johnnie began throwing shells over and the women and bairns were going flying along the street surely to some cellar. Of course there is no need for them to be here, it is I really believe only greed that keeps them so near the line. Almost every house where people are living has its bit shop and they are making at least 200% profit on everything they sell. I can assure you they are making more money through selling stuff to soldiers than they would make in a lifetime in time of peace. He also discusses the price of fish, women selling hoes about as long as your arm and they got three francs each for them a franc is 10 pence, so you can see what price they are paying for stuff here. It seems an awful pity that war should be going on such a quiet peaceful night, only about a mile from us Johnnie is shelling an old castle and the explosion of shells is the only sound that breaks the silence. It is Willie s honest interpretation of war which draws the reader in, his poetic descriptions capture the heart and imagination of the reader and his maturity convey the utter futility of war and the needless waste of life. In some ways Willie was one of the lucky ones, who returned home to his family. However, the effects of deafness and shell-shock troubled him for the rest of his life North SPRING

12 Douglas M Sinclair investigates the history of Lerwick s Market Cross Every visitor to Lerwick will, sooner or later, find themselves at the Market Cross. The main attraction being VisitScotland s Visitor Information Centre, based in a former shop centrally situated on Commercial Street and visible from Victoria Pier where many cruise ships berth. The office is open every day during the summer months and weekdays at other times during the year. The Market Cross is first mentioned in 1838 when, in response to a petition, the open space of ground near the centre of the Burgh of Lerwick was approved as the site of a market cross where public notices could be displayed. Despite the fact that the Sheriff Court had relocated to Lerwick from the ancient capital of Scalloway in 1747, all public notices had continued to be announced at Scalloway Banks or at Scalloway Castle Gate, (seven miles from Lerwick). This state of affairs had caused a great deal of trouble and expense, which was resolved when the order for the formation of the Market Cross was finalised on 11 March 1839 and a stone pillar was duly erected. Previously the Market Cross area bordered an open beach, referred to as Heddell s beach, over which Miss Heddell s burn, or stream, flowed down Bakers Closs, (now Mounthooly Street), into the sea. The Heddell family had property at the top of the closs also the building containing their grocer shop, which is now the present Visitor Information Centre. Boats were hauled up almost to the edge of the path that bordered the shore. A pump well had existed to the south of the beach since the middle of the 18th century and perhaps earlier. It is described as being a rectangular structure of stone with panels on each side with two steps at the base, a plinth and pointed top. Lions heads were on the north and south panels from where water poured when a chain was pulled. It was removed in By the end of the 18th century the town of Lerwick had grown since the first permanent houses were built in the 1640s. With the development along the waterfront of piers and merchants houses with lodberries, the bordering path, known simply as da Shore now a street, was widened and flagstones were laid. In addition numerous lanes or closses led up to what is now known as the Hillhead. In 1833 the Commissioners of Police, the Local Authority of the time, was established with the power to levy rates. The income raised was used to pave and clean the streets and lanes, also to maintain and improve water supplies, that is, wells. On 14 February 1845, at a sub-committee meeting of the Commissioners of Police, the early names of some of the closses and lanes were replaced and Da Shore formally became Commercial Street. In 1854 a group of local businessmen formed the Lerwick Gas Light Company and by 1858 the Market Cross was lit by gas with a lamp post presented to the town u North SPRING

13 & suffragettes Far left; Musicians playing at Market Cross, a peddlar selling books and Dutch fishermen in their clogs in the mid 1920 s Left; Bressay folk selling tatties at the Market Cross 60 North SPRING

14 u by F Dundas MP. The gradients of Commercial Street around the Cross were improved initially to prevent many of the shops in the cross being flooded, but the problem was resolved with the construction of Victoria Pier in The previously mentioned lamp post was subsequently moved to the Pier. Over the years the Market Cross became the hub of a thriving town with many meetings and activities taking place in the vicinity. There are too many to write extensively about but some merit a mention. Early visitors were folk from the island of Bressay, situated opposite Lerwick, who came across to sell potatoes at the Market Cross. Every summer during the early decades of the 20th century at the height of the fishing season the town was invaded by thousands of herring workers, many of whom flocked to Commercial Street when their work was over for the day. Many open air meetings were held at the Market Cross, drawing large crowds. One such occasion was in 1914 when Miss Bury of the National Union Of Women s Suffrage spoke on The Need for Female Suffrage. Meetings and protests continue to be held to this day. The Cross has always been a magnet for music, and musicians, ranging from the Sankey hymns of the evangelist preachers to performances by Lerwick Brass Band. For many years the blind fiddler from Dundee, George Stark, accompanied by his guitarist Willie Jordan, visited Lerwick regularly and drew large crowds. During both the First and Second World Wars the Cross was an ideal location for War Savings Weeks to be held. During the early 1940s queues of Naval ratings formed in the mornings to await the opening of the Victoria Restaurant (presently part of the High Level Music Centre) to have their breakfast or take a bath, while up until 1973 folk of all ages queued for Fish and Chips from Albert Stevenson s popular shop with hatch opening on to the Market Cross. Albert was also in charge of the restaurant upstairs. Ever since 1879, when the first proclamation was posted announcing that a torchlight procession was to be held, the Cross has maintained a very close relationship with Lerwick s famous Up-Helly-Aa festival, held annually on the last Tuesday in January. Early in the morning while it is still dark and people are asleep the Bill is fastened to the pillar and at about 10.00am the Guizer Jarl and his squad stop there during their morning parade to sing their songs and cheer. The Market Cross still carries out the function for which it was created in 1839, namely to display notices and advertise events. A large Christmas Tree is placed there during the Winter Festival and it is where people gather to bring in the New Year to the sounds of cheering, ship s sirens and fireworks. At this present time the area resounds to the sound of local traditional music emanating from the High Level Music Centre and cruise ship passengers arrive in large numbers during the summer months creating a carnival atmosphere. To experience all the comings and goings at Lerwick s Market Cross at any time of the day or night all you have to do is view Promote Shetland s webcam at shetland.org/60n/webcams

15 Gonfirth A CUNNING PLAN Long, long ago, before Ann Cleeves was even born, a wildly successful thriller was published that put Shetland on the literary map. With a little help from World War Two. Tom Morton takes The Shetland Plan tour But... but... you can t get there from there! There has been a degree of spluttering from Shetlanders at some of the geographical liberties taken by the makers of Shetland the TV series, where characters are forever walking from Eshaness to Sumburgh in seconds, wandering that lonely mountainside next to the Gilbert Bain Hospital, or squelching through the wild moorland just behind Commercial Street. It all looks moodily beautiful, of course, and if you haven t been to Shetland (the real place), the fact that in reality it s a 35 minute drive from Lerwick to Hillswick, not a 10-second stroll, matters not a whit. It s the telly, after all. In print, too, liberties with landscape are often taken by writers who want to employ a particular setting but avoid going into too much detail. Sometimes there are good reasons for that. After all, you don t want to libel the inhabitant of a particular, identifiable house as a murdering psychopath, do you? And yet there is delight for readers in being able to inhabit the genuine version of a fictional world. Ann Cleeves has recognised this with her non-fiction Ann Cleeves Shetland book and the book locations map on her website. Fascinating hours can be spent following in Jimmy Perez s footsteps. It s fun, and you don t have to murder anyone. Unless you really want to. There are other Shetland-set books offering the possibility of literary tourism, from probably the greatest Shetland novel - Robert Allan Jamieson s Thin Wealth - to the riotous brilliance of Frank Renwick s Unst and Yell epic Noost. But my favourite is long out of print, although it was an enormous success when it was first published 77 years ago. Henry Taprell Dorling, who was a prolific writer of fiction under the pen name Taffrail, was born in 1883 and had a career as an officer in the Royal Navy which spanned both First and Second World Wars. His first book, Pincher Martin, is probably his best known, but he published dozens of enormously successful novels during a long life which ended in And in 1939 he published The Shetland Plan. Angus Johnson in the Shetland Archives found Dorling s obituary in The Times, which only hints at what was a very colourful Naval career, from The Relief of Peking (Beijing) in 1900 through North Sea destroyer and minelayer action in World War One to staff work for the Commander in Chief (Mediterranean) during World War Two. There is no biographical detail about his time in Shetland, but it s clear from The Shetland Plan that he spent enough time in the isles, probably during world War One, to amass a great deal of detailed local knowledge. During World War One, Swarbacks Minn, the deep, sheltered channel bounded by the islands of Muckle Roe, Papa Little and Vementry was the base for the Royal Navy s 10th Cruiser Squadron - something celebrated last year by the Voe Bakery, which was founded in 1915 specifically to supply the fleet with bread, pies and cakes. You can still see the 10-inch guns which were mounted on Vementry to defend the ships. The Shetland Plan is largely set, both at sea and land, in an area stretching from Papa Stour to Bridge of Walls and on to Voe, with trips to Brae, Lerwick, Scalloway and the mysterious and very isolated house called Jackville at Binna Ness (sold in 2015 and currently being renovated). Although published after World War Two had started, u

16 u The Shetland Plan was written in 1937 and 1938, and its plot must have seemed terrifyingly plausible to readers 77 years ago. An author s note from September 1939 stresses that this novel was at its proof stage before the outbreak of the present war. Needless to say, the events described exist only in my imagination. But a German plan to land spies, arms and explosives in Shetland by submarine in the run-up to what Taffrail certainly saw as an inevitable war must, at the very least, have been considered in Berlin and anticipated in London. Hence the massive build up of troops and defences in the isles almost as soon as war was declared. The book itself has at first a very Arthur Ransome feel, and is full of a jaunty, upper middle class, jolly-hockey-sticks sense of well-heeled Englishness. The Rivers family (retired Naval officer Andy, teenage son John, 20-something daughter Margaret, a wife referred to only as Mrs (!) Rivers and a dog, Sandy, who is always vomiting) come to Shetland in August for a fishing holiday. Every stage of their trip north is beautifully described - half the family travel by air from Aberdeen, half take their car aboard the Scalloway Princess. But it s when they arrive in Shetland that Dorling, with some clear help from the Ordnance Survey, gets down to detail and conjures up what travel in the isles was like nearly eight decades ago. The road twisted and turned through many right angles, sometimes almost doubling on its tracks. They passed over a little bridge, with the Loch of Strom to the right, and Stromness Voe to the left - through the cluster of houses called Olligarth, and along the east side of the inlet called Wesidale Voe. A sharp turn at the head of it found them climbing a long slope, with the road cut out of the hillside and the voe, with its green foreshore and a little village with a few scattered dwellings, far below. Then, right between the Hill of Sound and Leaskie Knowe, over the Burn of Tactigill and so downhill through the villages of Tresta and Bixter, with views of Tresta Voe, the Firth, the Ness of Bixter and Effirth Voes on the left... This description is early in the novel and prepares you for a glorious set of drives, walks and sea voyages on and around the isles. The family meet a mysterious German refugee called Mr Boomer, the landowner Sir Richard Carmel and his wife, Lady Carmel (who also has a repulsive dog) and their daughter Alice. The Carmels own a 50-foot motor boat called Olna which is crucial to the action. This involves the sighting of a submarine, the discovery of an arms cache at the abandoned whaling station also called Olna (between Voe and Brae), and the pursuit of a gang of German spies who murder one of the main Clockwise; Souther Hill, Olna,the sign for Olna today, Voe and Old Voe Kirk characters (Mr Boomer, actually, who turns out to be a bit of a hero). An aircraft carrier, several destroyers and a survey ship are involved. While the book begins in quite a jokey, Swallows and Amazons sort of way, it ends with major bloodshed, explosions, death and destruction. There is, as you might expect from something of this age, frequent rampant sexism and gender stereotyping, not to mention some rough attempts at Shetland dialect and misspelled place names. But it has tremendous pace and, as I say, a delight in and sense of place. I spent a day tracing the locations mentioned in the book and travelling to them by car. I would love, in summer, to follow the Olna s marine voyages, especially the high speed trip to Scalloway and back to Bridge of Walls and then Gonfirth and Voe. I was especially interested in the family s base while in Shetland, The Bridge of Walls Hotel. Thanks to Mariane Tarrant and Rose Young on the West Side, I discovered that the long, extended straggle of old houses just opposite the bus stop at Brig o Waas had indeed been a former shop and fishing hotel, at a time when angling in Shetland and Orkney was a major tourism attraction. I d never even given the place - now a private house - a second glance, but sure enough, the description in The Shetland Plan still matches up: The hotel obviously hadn t been built as such. It looked more like three cottages knocked into one - a long, two storied house of grey stone, with a row of dormer windows in the slate roof giving light and air to the bedrooms on the second floor. It stood on a terrace overlooking a narrow patch of walled garden, beyond which was Browland Voe. I had more trouble with Sir Richard and Lady Carmel s house near a little village called Gonfirth reached in the Carmels chauffeur-driven Mostyn car by driving to the village of Aith and, twisting and turning, along part of the east shore of Aith Voe, through East Burrafirth, up hill and down again over a tract of wild, undulating moorland, and so to Gonfirth. From here, turning left, the chauffeur came down to low gear to negotiate what was little more than a rough cart track winding through the heather, with view of sea and islands in the distance. I initially thought Dorling was describing East House, Grobsness, though South Voxter and the abandoned Lea of Gonfirth were also possibilities. However, the fact that Andy recognised the old anchorage of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron...the irreverent used to call them The Muckle Flugga Hussars also made me think of the Old Haa at Grobsness. It s fun to speculate and a tramp about may give you some ideas. Bearing in mind the decades since it was written, much could have changed: It was a row of three or four squat, singlestoreyed cottages apparently knocked into one, with some modern looking outbuildings at the far end. They lay within 50 yards of the rock shore of Gonfirth, with a stretch of sloping lawn. Probably South Voxter, then. The derelict whaling station at Olna still looks very much like a derelict whaling station, its pier littered with scrap. Voe, one of the most beautiful villages in Shetland, still has its century-old bakery, though the North SPRING

17 Every stage of their trip north is beautifully described half the family travel by air from Aberdeen, half take their car aboard the Scalloway Princess shop referred to in The Shetland Plan is now the Pierhead Bar and Restaurant. Souther Hill, crucial to the plot and site of one of the most gruesome scenes (though Dorling only hints that a body is found with ravens having pecked out its eyes) is probably best viewed from the steep, almost alpine road to The Lost Valley of Collafirth. And then there s the story s finale, which takes place in two locations I think deliberately made vague, as one is the home of a gang of treacherous spies and is, in fact, blown off the face of the earth, while the other is the crofthouse of their local collaborator, who shops in a certain village about seven miles away from Bridge of Walls. This could be Voe, Aith or Bixter (with some liberties taken in terms of distance) and as the croft can only be reached by several miles of trekking over rough ground with cup-like depressions and small hummocky hills on the way, my money is on the still rather mysterious community of Tumblin, where the road runs out and you can indeed hike over the hills to Voe or Aith through that sort of landscape. If you re feeling adventurous and have a stout pair of hobnailed boots, the right sort of Mackintosh (the coat, not the computer) and a deerstalker hat. Jolly good! The Shetland Plan transports me to a different Shetland. In 1938 Shetland would still have been a very upmarket holiday destination for a certain type of wealthy person. One where tweedy, wealthy families rejoiced in plain mutton teas and roaring fires, despised mackerel fishing as far too easy and effortlessly patronised the characterful Shetlanders. And of course you had to bring your own gin and whisky as the islands were entirely dry, with neither pub nor off licence. All of which may seem alienating. But the book actually provides a sense of wonderment, of joy, in a landscape which, as you retrace the Rivers family s increasingly scary steps, remains very much as it was on the eve of war. As for the weather, some things never change It blew like the wrath of God - a roaring, tearing, rampaging gale which flattened growing crops and shrieked through the tough heather. The water from the voes was hidden by a layer of wind-flung spume like dense white smoke. Every little burn was in spate, bursting with miniature waterfalls and rapids. Each loch was a small, wildly agitated ocean stained almost to the colour of deep mahogany, with its lee shore, and the weather faces of its islets, fringed with foam like whipped cream or soapsuds The Shetland Plan by Taffrail was originally published by Hodder and Stoughton in It is widely available second hand 60 North SPRING

18 Welcome to our new Instagram feature In every issue we will be showcasing a few of our favourite #inspiredbyshetland photographs taken by you. Whether it s the landscape, the people, the nature or the culture we want to know how Shetland inspires you. We will also repost some of your photos on Instagram account, so remember to follow us and make sure you don t miss out Happy Snapping! myshetlandgarden A cup of tea in the woods. #shetland #inspiredbydhetland #slowliving #campfire Misa Hay stephenmercerproductions Found some #shetlandponies tonight. #Shetland #Shetlandpony #grey #horse #whalsay #sunset #inspiredbyshetland Stephen Mercer donnasmithdesigns #baablehat #knitting #inspiredbyshetland #knittersofinstagram #shetlandwoolweek Donna Smith promoteshetland Meal beach in Burra. With around 1,700 miles of coastline, in #Shetland you re never far from the sound and smell of the ocean. #inspiredbyshetland Kirsty Halcrow North SPRING

19 myshetlandgarden Bright blue sky and a winter chill in the air - a perfect Sunday morning in Shetland. #sundayfunday #inspiredbyshetland Misa Hay shetlandwildlife Shetland traffic jam. #shetlandwildlife #shetlandphotography #shetlandislands #scotland #inspiredbyshetland Hugh Harrop mantona The Drongs, Hillswick and the many sea stacks that surround them. #nature #inspiredbyshetland Ryan Sandison alex.mazurov I lived in this lighthouse on the cliffs and I wrote a post in the blog about it! #inspiredbyshetland Alex Mazurov calimski Nice sunrise yesterday morning heading of to the creels... #Sunrise #Clouds #inspiredbyshetland #PapaStour #Westside Calum Fraser katedaviesdesigns Taking the sheep off the hill. Some of these beauties will be sold at the Shetland flock book next weekend. #inspiredbyshetland Kate Davies bumblebambi En route back home again! Hoping for more stunning sunsets like this one. #olnafirth #voe #seapinks #inspiredbyshetland Bernadette Leask islanderjoy Beautiful Meal beach, Burra. #shetland #scotlan #shetlandphotography #inspiredbyshetland Joy Allan vrosssmith Fresh. #Lerwick #islandlife #coastal #shetland #inspiredbyshetland #theculturetrip #instascotland #liveauthentic Vivian Ross-Smith 60 North SPRING

20 travelettes We spent a day cut off from the rest of the world on #Unst #inspiredbyshetland Kathi Kamleitner ellalcgordon Knitting something top secret with that naturally dyed jumper weight I got at the craft fair. #inspiredbyshetland #fairislefriday Ella Gordon promoteshetland #shetlandsunrise Kevin Ritch took this photo while he was fishing east of Shetland. #inspiredbyshetland Kevin Ritch promoteshetland Enjoying a brilliant display of mirrie dancers tonight in Shetland. #inspiredbyshetland #mirriedancers #aurora David Gifford promoteshetland Guizers beginning to circle the galley with burning torches this evening at Up Helly Aa. #inspiredbyshetland #uphellyaa #firefestival #lerwick #Shetland David Gifford waddleselfcatering #crofthouse #inspiredbyshetland #countryside #countryliving #remoteandrural #millstones Fiona Sinclair North SPRING

21 shetlandburgess #inspiredbyshetland #shetlandphotography #love #bestoftheday #shetland Andrew Hutton islanderjoy Amazing sun halo over Wormadale today. #Shetland #scotland #shetlandphotography #inspiredbyshetland Joy Allan watchmesee Hello sheep. #visitunst #inspiredbyshetland #Shetland #sheep Kathi Kamleitner kierandodds The coolest conference room of earth? #inspiredbyshetland #scotland #travel #architecture #landscape Kieran Dodds alex.mazurov I am here for less than a day but I am already #inspiredbyshetland so much! Alex Mazurov vagabondbaker #inspiredbyshetland #eshaness #loch #steppingstones #wanderlust #getoutthere Rachel Davis joeflask #Home! #inspiredbyshetland. This guy is scaring his sheep with a quad a wife and a #sheepdog Joe Leask donnasmithdesigns Relaxing weekend at Sumburgh lighthouse knitting. #knitting #sumburghlighthouse #inspiredbyshetland #hermanesshat Donna Smith stephenmercerproductions #sheep #caddylamb #sunset #whalsay #vevoe #shetlandphotography #inspiredbyshetland #shetland #lamb Stephen Mercer 60 North SPRING

22 SADDLE SORE Elizabeth Elliott pedals her way from Lerwick to the National Cycle Network s northernmost point in Unst. 245 kilometres in a day Photography by Ben Mullay North SPRING

23 The climbs can be long and steady with long sweeping descents your reward 60 North SPRING

24 ycling development agency Sustrans C National Cycle Network runs throughout the entire UK, and the island of Unst in beautiful and bike-friendly Shetland is its most northerly point. Lying 400 miles south of the Arctic Circle on the same latitude as Alaska, Greenland and St Petersburg, and reached via a 225-mile ferry crossing, Shetland may not even seem like part of Britain. But it is, and it s a cycling haven. Add the fact Shetland has more daylight hours during summer than anywhere else in the UK and you have the perfect destination for enjoying long days in the saddle. Although the wind has to be borne in mind! Joining me on my ride to the farthest north was Shetland Wheelers sport development officer Robin Atkinson. I d borrowed part of the route of his summer sportive to plot this ride, so it only seemed polite to invite him along. Despite the 245km that lay ahead of us, we didn t head off at the crack of dawn because there wasn t one. We were in Shetland in mid-summer when it never actually gets dark. Instead there s the lingering twilight known as the Simmer Dim, and since we were never going to run out of light it made sense to put together a ride that made the most of the endless day ahead. We met up at the Shetland Museum and Archives in Lerwick, which neighbours a great pre- or post- ride coffee option at the Mareel arts centre. It was a hill start as we headed out of Lerwick and this was by no means the last climb of the day. While I only saw one sign indicating a steep gradient of nine per cent there are plenty of steady long mid-gradient climbs and it s certainly rarely flat. Above: Descending from Skaw into Norwick in Unst We started to retrace our route and couldn t resist a stop at the most welcoming bus shelter you re likely to come across, featuring a sofa and some books After ascending out of Lerwick we dropped down into a valley, after which another of those mid-gradient climbs greeted us. At the top, surrounded now by fields and lochdotted moorland, we joined a single track road that took us back out towards the sea and alongside spectacular rugged coastline. Except for the main roads, which cut through the middle of the islands, single track roads are the norm in Shetland. But they re not like single track roads I ve come across anywhere else in the UK. When confronted with oncoming traffic in Shetland there s no throwing yourself into a hedge while avoiding the potholed and broken up road edges that have turned into muddy streams. Here the single track roads have good-sized, regular, purpose-built passing areas and they re just as well maintained as the main roads, while being even quieter. As we turned back inland through moorland that stretched as far as the eye could see we headed up another North SPRING

25 Top right: A quick ferry crossing opens up more islands to explore Left: Sheltand s stunning scenery proves it s not always grim up north enjoyable climb before rejoining the A970. From here it was a long stretch of steady, almost continual climbing before we once again found ourselves alongside the coast, this time on the west of the mainland. Brae was the next town we came to, home to the UK s best fish and chip restaurant, Frankie s. That s reason enough to do more than just pass through like we did, but Brae makes an ideal alternative start and finish point for the ride if you d prefer to split it up over a couple of days, doing the northern loop one day and the mainland loop the next. Heading out of Brae I started to get the feeling of remoteness I d expected from the moment I stepped off the ferry from Aberdeen. While only 15 of Shetland s more than 100 islands are inhabited, with the rest given over to huge bird colonies and other wildlife, it s still home to 22,000 people, so, on the mainland at least, it doesn t feel as isolated as you may think. Now running out of mainland, we arrived at the ferry port to continue our journey north. The journey takes around 20 minutes, and while it was mostly moorland and rough grazing, Yell has its own charm if wild and windswept is your thing. It also boasts two of Shetland s three u 60 North SPRING

26 Right: This Viking ship near Haroldswick was just one sign of how much Shetlanders celebrate their Nordic heritage Below: A quick ferry crossing opens up more islands to explore u tombolos a natural phenomenon where a beach or bar, created by waves, connects two landmasses but the other one we d seen the previous day at St Ninian s Isle on the mainland topped them. Shetland has a spectacular coast featuring all kinds of geological formations such as stacks, natural arches, caves and blowholes, so it s worth keeping an eye out whenever the sea comes into view. We pressed on across all 19 miles of Yell with the promise of a cafe at the ferry port in Gutcher keeping me going against the relentless head wind. It wasn t until reaching for the handle of the cafe door that I noticed the paint pots and dust sheets. So instead we watched the dive-bombing gannets while we waited for the boat to arrive. They were clearly having more luck than us finding a mid-morning snack. It was just a 10-minute journey across the sea to Unst, the most northerly inhabited island in Britain. Approximately 12 miles long and five miles wide, there s only one way through it until the road splits at Haroldswick just after a Viking boat. Straight on takes you to the UK s most northerly point but we turned right to the NCN s most northerly point. As we passed a sign to Britain s most northerly church I wondered if the NCN would be similarly marked. It wasn t, so we just kept riding along NCN Route 1 until we ran out of road and ended up on someone s drive! A beautiful bay ran alongside the final section and with the waves crashing onto its sandy shore and feeling the full force of a cross wind it really felt like we were at the end of the earth, never mind Britain. We started to retrace our route and couldn t resist a stop at the most welcoming bus shelter you re likely to come across, featuring a sofa and some books. I got the feeling the wait for a bus can be long round these parts. As we neared the ferry port, equally hard to ignore was a group of Shetland ponies and their foals next to the roadside. Directions From the Shetland catch the ferry to Unst. the B9071 towards Voe. 1 Museum in Lerwick Continue on the A968 north Stay on this road through head out to North once on Unst, then take the the Alps (stop for cake!) and Road and turn right, then join the A970 out of town. B9087 after Haroldswick towards Norwick, turning then turn left on the A971 at Bixter. back and retracing your After about 17km route once you reach the Turn right after 2 turn right onto the beach! 7 Tingwall airport, B9075, then turn then right again left at Laxo onto the B9071 Retrace your route until you join the B9074 to rejoin the A970 heading 5 across Unst and (right) past Tingwall north. for the first part of Loch and down towards Yell, but after 151km take Scalloway. At Brae take the a left onto the B9081 down 3 B9076 for about through Burravoe before At the end of the 12km, before rejoining the A968 just 8 B9074, turn left taking a left onto the A968 before the ferry terminal. onto the A970, and heading to the ferry then right onto the B9073, terminal at Toft. Back on Mainland, then left onto the A970 6 follow the A968 again and follow this road After disembarking south to Hillside, back to Lerwick, winding 4 take the A968 where you join the A970 your way along the north across Yell south for a kilometre seafront and back to the to Gutcher, where you can before turning right onto Shetland Museum North SPRING

27 We d just seen a boat pull away so we had time for a photo opportunity with perhaps the islands most famous export. Back on Yell we took the singletrack road from Mid Yell that runs along the eastern coast down to Burravoe in the south-east corner. An attractive village, Burravoe is home to the Old Haa Museum, which is housed in an old merchant s cottage. Crammed with local history, it s well worth a visit not least because there s also a tearoom offering a good selection of home-baked cakes. From the ferry a fun, long, relaxed descent alongside the spectacular Dales Voe took us back to Brae from where we continued our journey south along the west side of the mainland. A particularly enjoyable section from Voe to just beyond Twatt on the B9071 took us along more singletrack roads and through an area Robin dubbed the Alps, which as the name suggests is an area of hilly, rocky, barren and beautiful terrain with steady climbs and sweeping descents. I was so absorbed in the fun I forgot to look out for a fridge stocked with homemade cake outside a house just before Aith. Fortunately Robin didn t. He d told us about it even before we d set off and particularly talked up the tiffin. Packed with nuts and sultanas I can confirm it was worth a You ll need your sea legs as well as your riding ones, as you hop from island to island visit to Shetland in itself. Rejoining the main road, the toughest climb of the day rewarded us with far-reaching views across Weisdale Voe, the kind of sight you associate more with Norway than the UK. Instead of retracing our steps into Lerwick we went back via the picturesque town of Scalloway. Our route didn t take us through the centre but up another steady climb we could see the town below with the castle and harbour in the distance and the red timber-frame Scandinavian-style houses in the foreground. If you have time to stop, there s a great museum that houses an exhibition about the Shetland Bus a resistance movement that operated between Norway and Scalloway during World War II. Unsurprisingly, we arrived back in Lerwick with plenty of daylight in hand, and even after cycling 245km in one day there were still many parts of Shetland we hadn t been to, so there s plenty of scope to make a cycling holiday of your visit. Forget John O Groats. Shetland is the UK s ultimate northern cycling destination. For full details of cycling options in Shetland, shetland.org/things/outdoor/cycling 60 North SPRING

28 IN PRAISE OF THE GANNET Brydon Thomason on a lifetime s obsession with draatsis Ok, so I don t actually live with Shetland s otters that would be pretty extreme. However I am very fortunate to spend a large percentage of my working life watching them. Like so many others with a passion for a particular animal, my love for otters started at a very young age and has grown with me throughout my life, until eventually I was able to make it my profession North SPRING

29 60 North SPRING

30 The lives of otters rowing up I have vivid memories of being tantalised by yarns from my family and the many old characters I knew about the sharp wits and secretive nature of draatsis. I m quite sure I was hooked before I ever even saw one. Stories from the days of trapping; attacks on ducks and hens; accounts of them frequenting farm buildings or even an old fellow that kept one as a pet! By the time I was eight years old I was already familiar with their tell-tale signs and had my eye in on being able spot them along the shores where I enjoyed so many adventures. Through time and familiarity I learned to recognise individuals along the stretches of shoreline and realised they had specific ranges that they stayed within which fascinated me. Realising that I could identify them individually allowed me to be able to watch the same otters along the same coasts year after year and get to know their daily routines. This in-depth local knowledge has provided me with a fascinating and emotive insight into the lives of otters. The most special of all has always been to watch a mother raise her cubs, through the many trials and tribulations mother nature throws at her. Through a combination of my work and my own personal; projects and interests, I monitor many otter ranges throughout the seasons and keep up-to-date knowledge of otter ranges along many shores of Shetland. I pay particular interest on sites that are active with families. This winter it is one particular family that, when time allows l have been trying to work on more than any other, a mother and her three cubs. I first started to monitor them in November last year when the cubs were only three months old. Typically a mother will only start to bring her infant cubs above ground at around eight to ten weeks old. Female otters are known to be particularly committed mothers but when cubs are at this tender age they are especially so. When she starts to introduce her cubs to what must be a scary new world to them above ground, she is even more cautious and elusive. It may not come as a surprise that I have yet to match the sheer magic that this experience brings me - with the exception of my own family I must add! Sharing the many new and magical moments that the cubs experience as they grow in size, confidence, character and ability throughout the seasons is a very special privilege. For a mother to be successful in raising a litter of three cubs she really does have her work cut out. In Shetland most families will average just one or two cubs and if you see the difficulties they face, especially over the winter months it becomes pretty obvious why. On average an otter needs to catch and eat close to two kilograms of fish each day (approximately one third of its own body weight!) to fuel their fast metabolic rate. As a mother she is also provisioning her cubs with live prey from about three months through to when they leave and fend for themselves, which is usually about 12 months. This particular aspect of behaviour within a family group dynamic can be particularly exhilarating. There is such competition between siblings to claim their mothers catch that disputes and rivalry are constant throughout the periods of a day that the family forages together. Of course when prey is abundant and cubs have plenty it can be less so and they even start to catch their own by the time they are around five to six months of age. It is through their interactions as siblings that you start to see their individual characters grow and develop. Some cubs are dominant, some more mischievous and boisterous than others and of course there is sometimes one that is just that bit slower, the runt of the litter is what such an individual would usually be referred as. However I could never use such a term to describe them, no matter how small or slow. Runt is far too cruel and belittling for such a beautiful animal! I see all this and more in this mother and her cubs and no matter how many families I have studied throughout my life, I fall for each and every one in the same way. But as much of an emotional attachment I have for them, I have always known and respected the distance between us. Otters here in Shetland are to me the true essence of the islands; wild, beautiful and full of character and magic and neither my life or the islands would be the same without them North SPRING

31 In 2009 Shetland gained geopark status. Shetland was recognised as a territory with outstanding geological heritage and this heritage is used to protect its geodiversity, promote further understanding and provide sustainable economic benefits to the area through tourism and education. From the Precambrian to the Carboniferous period, Shetland geology dates back three billion years and it has it all - where else can you hike up an ancient magma chamber, find fossilised fish at the bottom of Middle Devonian lakebed or shelter from the wind and have your lunch in the shade of a 2000 tonne glacial erratic? In November 2015 the Shetland Geopark gained UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Global Geopark status, one of 120\UNESCO geoparks located in 33 different countries. This is a pretty big deal for Shetland. We ve got all this natural geological beauty on our doorstep, but how do we go about exploring it? Where do we begin? Well, in 2010 a friend of mine introduced me to the wonderful world of geocaching. u 60 North SPRING

32 n a nutshell, geocaching is I a worldwide treasure hunt. Treasures (aka geocaches), usually small click-lock boxes, are hidden in secret locations and the co-ordinates for these locations and hints on how to find them are uploaded to the official Geocaching website. At the time of writing there are 2,772,530 geocaches hidden around the world, including one in the International Space Station! When I first began geocaching in 2010 there were only 86 geocaches in Shetland. Today, there are 180 geocaches hidden throughout these islands from Sumburgh to Fair Isle to the Out Skerries and the northernmost tip of Unst. Inside the geocaches you will find a notebook or tiny scroll of paper for you to sign and date, evidence that you have found it. In the larger caches you may also find mainly child-friendly swappable items like pencils, plastic toys or other novelty items. The best item I ever found was hidden in a tree nook in Nottingham Forest - a gorgeous Pandora style beaded bracelet. When you take an item you add an item, keeping each treasure interesting and hopefully even more appealing for children. You don t need much equipment to get started with geocaching. You can download the free app on Android and Alicek s Raith Gras Geocoin Geocaching is a fantastic way to explore an area, be it somewhere new and unfamiliar or even in your own back yard iphone but I would really recommend paying the few pounds for the full app as there are so many handy features, like storing co-ordinates for offline use, just in case you re in an area with no signal. Simply launch the app and it will tell you where the nearby geocaches are hidden. Alternatively, you can use the desk top version (I started this way), register for free, click on the Play button, enter your post code, search for a nearby geocache and enter the co-ordinates into a handheld GPS. Geocaching is a fantastic way to explore an area, be somewhere new and unfamiliar or even in your own back yard or that hill you drive by on your way to work each morning. The caches themselves are set by outdoor enthusiasts like you and me. We want people to visit areas that we find special, so we set caches in out of the way places with fantastic views, or with a special geological feature or an area with history to tell. There are over 15 million geocachers world wide, and you never know when you might bump into one. I myself was geocaching in the grounds of the Eiffel Tower late last year, and after ruffling around in a hedgerow I found what I was looking for. I was just getting ready to sign the paper when a business man from Slovakia approached me, his phone held out in front of him. Aha! We were looking for the same thing. We spent the next two hours together on a Paris geocaching blitz and it was one of the highlights of my holiday. There are several different types of geocache. The traditional geocache is the click box I described above, but there are also microcaches - sometimes a simple inch long, half inch wide magnetic cylinder hidden in the most obscure of locations (these ones are great for cities and areas with a lot of muggles - aka non-geocaching folk). Some of these microcaches are very cleverly disguised as the ends of screws on bus shelters, or they are fake rocks hidden next to a path, or even camouflaged to appear part of an object like a parking meter or public garden feature. arth Caches are a little bit more E interesting. There is nothing man made to find, rather, it is a natural geological feature, and in order to claim it as a find you have to answer a few educational questions. The beach at St. Ninian s and the Stanes of Stofast are two examples of such caches in Shetland. A word of experience - don t bother bringing a measuring tape to the Stanes of Stofast. They re too big! Mystery or Puzzle Caches involve solving a problem to determine the co-ordinates of the final cache. At the time of writing there is only one of these in Shetland located in the south mainland. One of my favourite aspects of geocaching (besides exploring new and unfamiliar locations) are the trackables. Trackables can be something as simple as a keyring with a travel bug tag attached to it, or some beautiful specimens of geocoins such as the the Alicek s Raith Gras North SPRING

33 Clockwise; Vementry, Der Rotfuchs Travel Bug, St Ninians Earth Cache and Burra Lighthouse Geocoin pictured. This geocoin originated in the Czech Republic in 2009, and I found it up the hill behind my house in the spring of Each trackable item has a unique code on it that you enter into the Geocaching website to log. You don t keep these trackable items - they move from cache to cache. Another of my favourite finds was Der Rotfuchs - a red fox cuddly key ring, originating from Germany. Its goal is to travel to areas where red foxes live. I found it at the Hams of Muckle Roe (a most decidedly fox-less location) and took it to Paris with me via Aberdeen, where I gave it to the geocaching fellow I met at the Eiffel Tower. He took it on his business travels to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Belarus and dropped it off at his home in Slovakia. These travel bugs can really clock up the miles, and with the geocaching app you can track them, if you fancy. I know of a few schools in Shetland who have set some of these trackable items. Sometimes these geocoins go missing from circulation, so if you ever find one please do try and return it to your nearest geocache. I collected several while travelling through England one year only to have the entire geocache I d placed them in up one of Lerwick s lanes muggled (stolen by a non-geocacher). I - and the people who released the trackables - would really love it if they were returned to the geocaching community. Geocaching is a fantastic family thing to do and my children love it. The journey to the caches are just as much fun as finding them, but sometimes (on the more hillier treks!) bribery via sweetie is required. A pocket of jelly babies certainly keeps them - and me - going! As a family we have explored so much of Shetland through geocaching, and although we ve only found 144 caches so far, I m looking forward to the finer weather so we can get back out again. To find out more about geocaching and sign up for a free account visit geocaching.com 60 North SPRING

34 Davie Gardner on the benefits of having an international TV drama filming in the isles QUIET PLEASE... rolling... and... ACTION! Those famous TV and film-industry related words usually barked loudly by the set s first assistant director not only demand the cast and crews full and undivided attention but, through their very utterance, instantaneously transform the reality and buzz of a working TV drama or film set more often than not a scene of frantic crew-orientated preparatory work - into one focused entirely on the fictional element of that specific trade; namely one where the story-line is then acted out in front of the cameras for us to ultimately view and hopefully enjoy. When viewing the final result of a film or TV drama it s all too easy for us to forget that behind the scenes, tucked away in the background, are all manner of people (crew) who don t ordinarily appear on screen. These include the director and his assistant directors, the director of photography plus camera crew(s), riggers, electricians / lighting teams, sound engineers, costume and make-up artists, props people and the art department to name but a few. Crew numbers on these occasions can vary from around 60 people on smaller to average shoots, up to almost certainly double that for larger productions all backed up by a continually near-athand fleet of support vehicles which also have to be tucked away out of sight of the cameras. The whole thing constitutes an impressive logistical undertaking not least the challenge of getting almost everything and everyone onto and off the islands in the first place. When Shetland s reality becomes Shetland s Fiction But it s this blend of fictional subject matter and industrious reality which has served and benefitted Shetland so well in recent times, thanks to the hugely popular BBC TV detective series Shetland not only named after but also extensively filmed in the islands themselves. The series stars Douglas Henshall as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, Steven Robertson (a Shetlander himself in real life) as Detective Sergeant Sandy Wilson and Alison O Donnell as Detective Sergeant Alison Tosh McIntosh, spearheading a stellar cast of top Scottish and UK actors including - over the three series to date - the likes of Julie Graham, Brian Cox, Bill Patterson, David Hayman, Archie Panjabi, Ciaran Hinds and James Cosmo to name but a few. Shetland the TV series that is - which regularly attracts between 6 8 million viewers per episode - is largely based on the The Lodberrie North SPRING

35 Jimmy Perez lives in the Lodberrie, a house right on the water in Lerwick On location Detective Sergeant Alison Tosh McIntosh View south from the Lodberries Shetland s local tourism sector measuring a substantial increase in interest and indeed visitor related numbers as a result best-selling crime-fiction novels by author Ann Cleeves who herself once used to live and work in the island. So what exactly are the benefits to Shetland as a community of such a series and are they tangible? Well, it s becoming increasingly clear that the benefits are indeed there for all to see and that these come directly as a result of the interlinked blend of fiction and reality mentioned earlier. Fiction in as much as the crime-related stories have, through their TV related incarnation alone, brought the islands particularly their rugged, unique and scenic beauty - to the attention of a huge, worldwide television audience - the series is now not only screened nationally throughout the UK but also in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia and Japan among others. In turn, the reality for the islands is a hugely positive impact on the local tourism sector and economy in general. Forget the fact that the fictional content of the programmes may be a dark, crimerelated one especially in a community where the last real murder happened well over twenty years ago here again the reality of the matter is that viewers appear to see beyond its fictional manifestation to the real place that lies behind it all, with Shetland s local tourism sector measuring a substantial increase in interest and indeed visitor related numbers as a result of this many of whom now quote the series as being an influencing factor on their decision to visit the islands. u 60 North SPRING

36 Shetland is currently enjoying a significantly enhanced profile throughout the national and international community u Shetlanders for their part appear to have become largely accustomed to the frenetic travelling circus which constitutes an active TV drama production unit not to mention the locals regularly rubbing shoulders with famous television, theatre and film related faces on their streets or in the islands hotels, cafes, bars and restaurants. The impact of all this has subsequently encouraged or inspired many of them to become directly involved with the production itself, perhaps through putting themselves forward as television extras for the show - something which occasionally provides a fleeting instance of local fame or notoriety albeit largely background orientated - while others have become directly involved with the logistical side of the production through either providing locations for the series or perhaps plant, vehicle and man-power hire, on-set jobs such as runners and so on. Involvement of this kind offers the locals not only a unique, enlightening and usually enjoyable experience, but here again ones which have further positive impact on the local economy too. But that s only part of the economic impact. The primary benefit comes through the fact that the crew around 60 or so in total at any one time also require to be accommodated (each in single occupancy accommodation), fed, watered and transported here and there during their time in Shetland. This requirement can be spread over three months or more each time the series is filmed on the islands. So here again the economic impact is substantial to say the least let alone placing the islands in front of tens of millions of worldwide viewers. Now Shetland - series three is currently profiling the islands to an even greater extent than before, with around 90 percent of all external scenes filmed there, while the series in general is increasingly attracting great reviews from all quarters too. More importantly perhaps, by far the greater percentage of Shetlanders are delighted with the end result too irrespective of the fact that the fictional body count continues to rise. The fictional content generally meets with their approval too bar, in reality, the aforementioned lack of actual murders in the islands, or perhaps the occasional comment re the perceived lack of genuine Shetland accents in the show. But let s take a look at just one important behind-thescenes component of the series locations and how these come together in the first place; the component Above: Fair Isle perhaps at the very centre of the benefits currently being felt in Shetland as a result of the series. Right from the time the scripts are first offered up by the writers for visual interpretation and translation into actual locations to fit the story-line (both scenic and property wise) a task that s primarily the remit of the director(s), producer(s) and their location manager - getting these locations right in order to fit the script, be believable and effectively bring the story-line to life sits at the top of everyone s agenda. Here again fiction meets reality, with the scripted fiction requiring to be tied into the reality of the Shetland community and landscape. In terms of maintaining realism it can t all be picture postcard stuff either. Equally however, the demand for the landscape to visually cry out to the viewer that THIS IS SHETLAND is a vital consideration so the uniqueness of the local landscape inevitably plays a pivotal role too. Identifying locations to set particular scenes can be a painstaking business in itself especially when those tasked with making such decisions may, initially at least, hold only vague visions and ideas not to mention very different perspectives - as to what they require for each scene. It s a process that usually demands several intense scouting trips ordinarily over a number of weeks - ahead of the full production crew s arrival - with many hundreds of photos of potential or suitable locations taken, subsequently to be poured over and debated by the production heads before a final decision is arrived at. In series three Shetland once again plays a starring role in itself, with some breathtaking locations and scenery North SPRING

37 ultimately selected to set off the exciting and intriguing story-line to best effect. For instance expect to see, among other places, the beautiful Eshaness cliffs and further scenes set around Eshaness itself; the historic town of Scalloway with it s foreboding, ruined castle; the isolated but hugely scenic area of Sandwater with its single house virtually in the middle of nowhere; a ruined traditional croft-house at Clavel near Rerwick which overlooks some of the most picturesque coastal scenery in Shetland; the historic, cliff-top located Sumburgh Head Lighthouse again overlooking some of the most stunning coastal scenery Shetland has to offer; the famous beach and sand tombolo at the historic St Ninian s Isle; the dramatic Spiggie beach; the small fishing village of Hamnavoe in Burra Isle where an old, traditional Shetland fishing boat figures as part of the scene; the village of Vidlin (where Shetland actor Steven Robertson lived and still lives while resident in the islands); the quaint and extremely photogenic village of Voe and, of course, the capital Lerwick itself. All in all a veritable tour of the Shetland mainland while it, in turn, plays host to the television series. Accepted it may not have the overall visitor related impact of say a real-life documentary series but as to affording the viewer a general taste of the Shetland landscape from a slightly different perspective, it s a pretty good place to start. As previously mentioned Shetlanders have not only got used to rubbing shoulders with the stars, cast and crew of the series, but equally to most of the idiosyncrasies and on-screen anomalies that come as part of the package most notably the fact that not every location shown is perhaps where it is or should be in reality, or even the fact that one location is occasionally made to look as if it links directly into another, even though they may be, in reality again, miles apart. This particular film related technique, although admittedly not entirely accurate from a geographical stand-point, is employed with the best of intentions to enhance both the dramatic and scenic impact but of course such a thing can be disconcerting or even amusing to those actually in the know. Take for instance one particular scene in the most recent series where a gunman / hit-man initially fires at and then pursues Michael McGuire (Ciaran Hinds) from an old ruined croft-house through some nearby reed-beds and subsequently on into the hills, before ultimately trapping him on the edge of a sheer cliff. Great drama for sure and in fictional terms at least a relatively short chase scene - but in reality the two locations used for this particular scene (Rerwick and Eshaness) are in fact over 50 miles apart. This particular geographical anomaly prompted more than one islander to observe Boy that was some chase; they ran a helluva distance before the gunman eventually caught him. But McGuire s elongated run is not the only one that locals currently have their eye on. The hope now is that the series itself will also run and run into a fourth series at least and given the positive reviews it s been garnering to date surely nothing is impossible? Here again the reality of the matter is that Shetland - as a possible destination at least - is currently enjoying a significantly enhanced profile throughout the national and international community a marketing opportunity you couldn t possibly buy, as one local Councillor termed it and, directly coupled to that, a very welcome boost to its economy into the bargain. So, all in all, this clearly constitutes a win, win situation for this small group of islands something that s most certainly NOT a work of fiction for them. Above: Market Cross Left: On location in Sandwater 60 North SPRING

38 THE BATTLE OF BRESSAY S O U N D Laurie Goodlad imagines what the residents of Lerwick felt, waking up to cannon fire and a full-scale sea battle During the 17th century the Netherlands was one of the most powerful trading nations in the world. With trading colonies in the Far East (Indonesia) the Dutch East India Company brought goods from the Netherlands to the settlers, which were bartered in exchange for precious commodities such as spices and silks. In order to prevent any conflict of interest between various traders and private interests there was, from 1602 until 1799, the establishment of the United Netherlands Chartered East India Company (the VOC). The company held a monopoly on all Dutch trade and navigation east of the Cape of Good Hope and furthered trading interests in the Indian Ocean, becoming one of the most powerful trading companies in the world. It is incredible that Shetland should play such a central role in the lives and fate of many of the ships bound to and from the East, laden with great cargoes to trade in these emerging overseas markets. But the shores of Shetland were often surrounded with fleets of East Indiamen and accompanying Dutch warships. Ships frequently chose the achter om (north about) route around Shetland, avoiding the Wenceslas Hollar, Dutch East Indiamen

39 perils of the English Channel. As they often ran into bad weather, a total of 27 East India ships were lost. This northern route was chosen for several reasons. Firstly, the Dutch East Indiamen were heavy, unwieldy craft which needed a lot of sea room for manoeuvring and the North Sea offered more space for sailing compared to the narrow confines of the English Channel. Secondly, and more importantly, the ships were avoiding conflict. During the mid-17th Century Spain and the Netherlands were locked in hostilities which later became known as the Eighty Year War. The Eighty Year War came to an end in 1648 but during the years of conflict the English Channel was a dangerous route to navigate and crews risked losing their boats and valuable cargoes. Spain had virtual control of all the western coasts of Europe. Dunkirk was an especially strong Spanish stronghold; this made the Channel an unsafe route for Dutch commerce. It was customary for a strong contingent of Dutch Warship s to rendezvous with returning East Indie ships and escort them safely back to Texel. These were known as the retour vloots (return fleets). It was during one of these rendezvous that the first Dutch Indiamen sailed into Shetland s history books with a bang. The first Dutch East Indies ships to be lost in and around Shetland waters were, De Jonas, De Reiger and De Haan. Sailing in The North Sea offered more space for sailing compared to the confines of the English Channel convoy, along with the Dutch warship, De Enkhuizen they were attacked by (Spanish) Dunkirker frigates on 15 June 1640 whilst at anchor in Bresont (Bressay Sound), an anchorage which is noted in Dutch cartographer, Jan Jansson s 1620s chart of Shetland. The ships were waiting to join up with the retour vloot (returning fleet) to be escorted home when they were surprised on that particular early summer morning. The Dutch East Indiamen and their accompanying warship, caught unaware, were hopelessly out-numbered and out-gunned by the determined Spaniards. Following the Bressay Sound attack the Dunkirkers headed westward in search of the eleven returning East Indiamen which were laden with goods. Fortunately for the Dutch, the Dunkirkers never found them and these vessels returned safely to Texel several months later. De Reiger, under the command of Captain Magnus Marousz, was sunk u

40 The Battle of BresSay Sound u somewhere in Lerwick Harbour. Her exact location is unknown, although she was found, by chance, during World War One by a man who dived into the harbour in order to retrieve a piece of beef which had fallen into the sea whilst the boat took on stores. He recovered the beef but also found cannons and parts of an ancient ship. However, he never reported the exact find location. To date, the remains of De Reiger remain undiscovered. De Jonas, under command of Captain Seger escaped her captors and got away out the north entrance to Bressay Sound and was run ashore at Brunthammersland, Tingwall. The crew ran her aground, set fire to the vessel and blew her up in order to prevent enemy hands seizing both ship and crew. All the crewmen made it safely to shore. De Haan, under the command of Captain Cornelius Jacobsz-Me beached just north of where Victoria Pier is now. During dredging operations in 1922 at the northeast corner of Alexandra Wharf remains of the ship were uncovered, including four guns and 60 foot of keel. Collections within the Shetland Museum contain timbers and cannonballs from the ship. One of the cannons is now located outside the Shetland Hotel and another was gifted to Prins Henrik Museum in Rotterdam. De Enkhuizen eventually surrendered to the frigates. It was reported that she only surrendered when she was shattered beyond repair, her scuppers streaming blood, and very few men left on their feet. News of the Bressay Sound disaster was brought to Holland by a ship of the West India Company who touched in at Shetland, probably Bressay Sound, where she found one hundred men on the shore of Hitland who were taken onboard and safely transported back to Amsterdam. The destructive nature of the Dunkirkers was recognised by the Scottish Parliament and several acts were passed during the 17th century. In June 1600 James VI passed an Act regulating traffic with foreign ships which recognised the abuses committed upon the coasts or in the seaports of his realm by foreigners and strangers bringing in prizes taken either by piracy or under the pretence of lawful wars as of late some Dunkirkers have done. The Act stated that none of the King s subjects were permitted to trade with any such vessel in his Highnesses waters. King Charles II was petitioned in July 1630 by the Burghs to take action against the decay of their trade and shipping occasioned by the Dunkirkers and the number of ships taken by them, the King was asked to consider the deplorable estate of the country and ensure that his subjects may be protected in their safe and peaceable trading. This event marked the beginning of a trend of Dutch East India influence and involvement within the isles which would last until 1786 when the last ship, the Concordia was lost and the Dutch East India Company ceased trading in I couldn t help but wonder what the residents of Lerwick thought, on that quiet June morning, noisily awakened by the din of cannons and gunfire as these foreign ships engaged in a bloody battle within the restricted confines of Bressay Sound. There must have been a certain sense of nervousness and trepidation as Shetland entered this new phase of contact with the Dutch traders of the East Indie Company - one which was to last for over a century. Sources Ferguson, D. (1988) Shipwrecks of Orkney, Shetland and Pentland Firth, Devon: David & Charles plc. O Dell; A (1939) The Historical Geography of the Shetland Isles, Lerwick: T&J Manson. Wessex Archaeology (2011), Shipwreck Heritage of Shetland: Desk-based Assessment: Archaeological report, Edinburgh: Historic Scotland. Records of the Parliaments of Scotland (RPS) to Shetland Archives D6/292/3/p Newspaper reports from Shetland News and Times regarding the loss of De Haan (1922). Cannon from De Haan North SPRING

41 T h e Tom Morton on Shetland s short winter days and long nights Darkness 60 North SPRING

42 Top: Eshaness lighthouse Left: South Mainland Up Helly Aa Right: The Guizer Jarl Mark Evans aka Solmund Sigurdsson he translation of Up Helly Aa is the lightening of the year, and there is indeed a sense, as the calendar lurches into a new twelvemonth, of spring beckoning, of winter s closed door just starting to open, to emit the merest chink of illumination. The shortest day is past, change is on the way. But still it s dark, brutally, oppressively dark. A protest seems in order. Or several. The burning of torches and parade of torchwielding guizers, the snarl of vikings in stainless steel, Gore-Tex, composite and carbon fibre, the pungent aroma of kerosene, or paraffin if you prefer - does anyone remember the boom-boom-boom-boom song which advertised Esso Blue, when every household had a paraffin heater and no-one but the super-wealthy central heating? It s Up Helly Aa, a shout of defiance at the night, a great celebration of community to speed spring on its way. It s Mardi Gras meets the Rio Carnival. It s fatter than Fat Tuesday, fierier than Burning Man. Shetland s viking heritage comes out to play, to tell the winter it s time to say goodbye. Liam Henderson This year s Lerwick festival was a triumph of glittering axemanship from the Jarl s Squad, led by Mark Evans, renamed Solmund Sigurdsson for the day and resplendent in full viking array. The Lerwick event is massive, attracting thousands of visitors to the isles and many more watching the live internet streaming of the event. And it is a hugely spectacular display of fire, inventiveness, history, fantasy, Scandinavian identity and community spirit. The joy at the imminent ending of winter is palpable. The 2016 squad are true ambassadors for Shetland, travelling to special events throughout the UK and, in April, to New York for the Tartan Day parade, where their friendly invasion was welcomed with open arms. But Up Helly Aa is not just for Lerwick, or indeed the last Tuesday in January. If you fancy seeing a Shetland viking fire festival up close and sometimes anorak-scorchingly personal, the country festivals start in Scalloway before Lerwick s extravaganza and continue until the end of February. From Unst to Sumburgh, galleys are burnt, some at sea, and women participate on an (almost) equal footing, up to and including female Guizer Jarls at SMUHA - the South Mainland Up Helly Aa. Hall tickets are easier to come by, squad performances are often endearingly informal. These are smaller, very local festivals, but none the worse for that. And for a period, what the various Up Helly Aas do is both signal the coming of the sun and intensify the darkness, exaggerate it. When the torches dim, when the galley embers burn low, you can walk back in the absolute blackness of a Shetland winter night, allow your eyes to adjust and actually enjoy the absence of light. Because Shetland s dark skies are a North SPRING

43 fabulous and often ignored asset. The Mirrie Dancers, the Northern Lights, are a much sought-after sight for visitors, and they are best enjoyed against the cold, clear inkiness of a sky unpolluted by streetlamps. You ll have seen the photographs, nearly all deceptively taken on hugely long exposures and utterly failing to capture the variety of the aurora s manifestations. What s it really like? You may see only a vague greenish glow on the northern horizon. A flicker, a quiver in the air, sometimes accompanied - and only for a few people - by an insistent hum or buzzing noise. A vast, constantly shifting array of searchlight beams cutting clear white and green, pencil thin and massively wide. Great whirling crosses of colour, red, pink and green again, somehow overwhelming and disturbing. Movement. It s as if the universe is restless. And of course, there s no predicting when, not really, although atmospheric conditions and sunspot activity may give you an indication. If the clouds don t intervene. Connoisseurs of darkness, though, go for starlight. In very isolated places, the stars...it s dark, brutally, oppressively dark. A protest seems in order can play tricks. I woke up once in a tent, very far from the nearest road, camping in the first frosts of September. Outside, I looked up and was inside Vincent Van Gogh s The Starry Night, the famous painting of the view from his window in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The stars over Northmavine to me were as big as saucers, haloed and misty, with pin-sharp centres. Apart from the mutter of the waves and waterfalls at Lang Clodie Wick, it was completely silent, utterly still. And the lightlessness of winter Shetland provokes parties, dances, but for me, best of all are the gatherings in stove-warmed houses, the telling of tales, the shivering and laughing at the mythical creatures of the past who may be lurking outside. But cannot come in as long as the whisky or rum is flowing and the fellowship is good. And then, when you have to walk home, you find that really, they were just stories all along, and the darkness is there to be enjoyed, to provide you with a new appreciation of this extraordinary environment. Now, the longer days are here, the longest on their way, and the promise of the simmer Main image: Sumburgh Head Above: Eshaness cliffs All photographs by Alex Mazurov unless otherwise indicated. dim, the midnight sun, sends a tingle through us all. We need that Vitamin D, after all. But as spring flows into summer, many of us are already thinking and planning ahead, cutting, raising, stacking, bagging peat, preparing for the winter. For the coming darkness. The planet spins, orbits the sun. The year turns. The various Up Helly Aa committees are meeting, getting ready, even as the flowers bloom and the harvest is gathered in. Galley keels are being laid down, costumes designed, axes being ground. Guizer Jarls are meditating on what will happen the following year. Lerwick s jarl has been preparing - and saving - for his starring role for a dozen years. And for the rest of us, as the skies lower and the nights draw in, we look forward to the flash of fire, the flying sparks and defiant, flaming destruction. It s the little, out-of-season summer Shetlanders make for themselves out of paraffin and matches, fireworks and flares, and take joy and comfort from in the midst of winter. It makes some of us treasure, too, The Black Stuff: The winter darkness which for some is as essential to Shetland as the white nights of summer. So, even as summer comes, the hillsides bloom and the days lengthen towards infinity, let s embrace, even look forward to The Shortened Days, The Dark Skies. Because they don t last long North SPRING

44 Abby Faulkner seeks out a sugary sensation in Shetland love hot chocolate and if someone asked me, Abby, tell me about the best hot chocolate you ve ever tasted? I wouldn t hesitate to answer: Ronda, Spain picture a very citrus orange and brown café almost like being inside a giant Jaffa Cake, and the creamiest thickest hot choccy I ve ever tasted. A hot choccy sensation that failed to be matched until......christmas 2015 Lerwick, and a flourishing business called The Shetland Fudge Company owned by the very welcoming Nicola and Magnus. But we ll find out more about them later There are certain people who every year I say, and I m sure you do too, what on earth shall I buy them for Christmas? I now have the answer for this universal Christmas quandary Shetland Fudge chunky pieces hot choccy (yes, chunky pieces - not that powdery stuff). Ronda definitely no longer holds the top hot choccy spot. Choose from SFC s hot chocolate with whisky or with Baileys or if you like it without the booze then buy it alcohol free. No matter it s all an amaaaaaazing chocolicious wickedly sumptuous sensation. Believe me, I ve tested every flavour! Now, I have to confess I became a bit of a hot choccy nuisance customer last Christmas. I would go into the shop after work and buy a packet or two of their hot chocolate and then promise myself that I would send to friends and family. But North SPRING

45 the nights were chilly and I d make a peat fire and I just couldn t resist - I kept drinking the gifts. Shameful! I then started getting really anxious when Shetland Fudge ran out of hot choc stock and I would ask Nicola if she would put packets aside for me. Finally, I managed to post my sweet gifts, including lavish Raspblootered preserve (seriously yummy homemade Scottish raspberry jam with raspberry vodka). I sent the preserve, amongst other items, in a fab SFC hamper, to a very discerning customer my mother. She s not one to enthuse or get excitable, unless she s had a sherry, and although I love her dearly - I know when she s not keen on something. She makes this noise from the back of her throat which sounds like a creaking door and then arches a very finely plucked eyebrow and folds her arms over her beige 100 percent cashmere twinset. So when I asked her how s the jam mum? She became quite excitable, gave a five star AA Gill-styley review and demanded more to be sent ASAP! Fast-forward a couple of months: I decided to find out more about The Shetland Fudge Company and I asked Nicola if I could help her out in the SFC kitchen. I know, terrible job! The day I visited I was tired, very tired, however, as soon as I entered this sweet oasis all my worries seemed to melt away. I put on my pinnie, I stirred fudge, I cut fudge, I inhaled fudge, I tempered chocolate, I decorated Peerie Nips (means wee dram): delish shot glass chocs containing a variety of liqueurs, and I learnt about their world famous product: Puffin Poo did you know it s a seriously time-consuming process to hand make each delicious morsel and there s a Puffin Poo making machine in development?! After all this kitchen action and lots of chit-chat - I felt more rejuvenated and clear headed than an hour practicing Ashtanga yoga with a shot of wheatgrass for afters. So, a BIG thank you to Nicola and Magnus for a wonderfully inspiring couple of hours and let s find out more about this dynamic duo. C mon make a cuppa, nibble on some Rum & Raisin Tablet and discover the sweet revolution happening at SFC, as shared by Magnus (with Nicola popping in, when she has a mo). Tell me about yourselves... Magnus: I left school at 15 and went into an apprenticeship with Jim s Garage and trained as a mechanic. I worked there from , the last two years I was service manager at the then newly opened Ford and Mazda dealership. I left in search of something new and got a job with Blueshell Mussels in Walls as a deckhand/ Engineer. I completed my Yachtmaster and various other marine qualifications and after a holiday in Greece sailing, decided that was something I had to try as a job. I left for Greece in 2009 after getting a job with Neilson (Thomas Cook) and spent 3 seasons there, starting as flotilla engineer then flotilla skipper. I also did a season in Sweden as a ski rep, I had never skied or snowboarded before I went but learned quickly. In I spent 6 months in the Caribbean as a charter skipper before moving home. I had a few short-term jobs before settling at Johnson Marine, where I am still working on a 2/2-week rotation. Nicola worked for Shetland Fudge part time since she was 14. She went to Glasgow Caledonian and did a business degree before returning to Shetland and working full time as shop manager. She left SFC in 2012 and got a job with Victim Support Scotland, where she was manager for the Shetland and Orkney bases. She was there until we bought the shop in August Nicola works full-time, making all of the chocolates etc, and I work on my two weeks home from my other job. I try to keep up with the paperwork side of things. We currently employ two full time, three part time and two Saturday staff....and your volunteer work in Malawi? We had the offer of the trip to Malawi to do some volunteer work. We did a lot of fundraising with our small group and visited in We were very humbled by our experience, and whilst it maybe didn t make us come home and live in a mud hut cooking with a fire made from sticks, it certainly made us aware of the difficulties the people of Malawi face every day. We spent our time there helping in classrooms teaching English and math. By classrooms, it was small buildings with up to 70 or so children sat on the floor reading from what had been painted on the walls by previous volunteers. We did sports with them; they are big into football and netball and run around with no shoes, better than we could with trainers on! We also did Surgeries where we went and gave them information about sexual health, oral hygiene and common misperceptions they were led to believe, for example, they believed they could cure diabetes by sprinkling sugar on someone s head. It made us not change how we lived, but work harder so we can hopefully help them again in the future. We use the finest Belgian chocolate we can get, that s the biggest secret to the taste 60 North SPRING

46 Nicola, can you tell me about your training with UK World Chocolate Master Ruth Hinks - one of the top five chocolatiers in the world and entrepreneur behind the multi-award winning chocolatier and patisserie, Cocoa Black? I learned better about how to prepare a selection of chocolate fillings including; caramels, ganaches, truffles and pralines. We also spent a lot of time on handmade chocolates, chocolate bars, chocolate lollipops and moulded chocolate figures. This was paired up with finding out about the origins of chocolate, the bean to bar process, how to temper chocolate and how best to package and store it. I am hoping to get away for the Level Two course later this year. Ruth was an inspiration to me; she is truly amazing at what she does. Hopefully I will get to the course where you learn to make chocolate figures, and then I can make a life size Magnus... What makes Shetland Fudge unique? We use the finest Belgian chocolate we can get, that s the biggest secret to the taste, by using top quality chocolate we get the best taste we can. We also use local produce where we can, Shetland butter, Shetland Reel Gin, Stewart s rum, etc. We make all of our fudges by hand in small two-kilo batches, fresh every day and our tablet is made the traditional way by hand without any machinery and all our recipes are additive-free. We try to give our products Shetland names such as our preserves, named Jarl s breath and Simmer Dim amongst many more. go, they have been very popular and we are hoping to introduce them officially this summer. We have just recruited more staff to allow Nicola more time in the office to try and get contracts with companies south. We are looking into getting to more events within and outwith Shetland, not just with our products, but also hopefully with services such as chocolate parties etc. You had an incredibly busy last year can you tell me what you were up to? Last year was incredible. There were a lot of ups and downs, I was in the Lerwick Jarl Squad which took up a lot of time I didn t necessarily have, we decided to plan our wedding for August and whilst planning it, we moved house into our new home in Voe in April. We wed in Vernazza in the Cinque Terre in Italy in August We set off from Shetland in our 2-seater convertible, with the passenger floor full of bouquets, and the boot filled with favours and whisky for the toast. We drove all the way to Italy and the venue was amazing, we had a very small party of immediate family and our closest friends. We took our own chocolates for a tradition they call the Benediga, where you throw sweets to the well-wishers from a balcony, that was surreal, we felt like royalty! We also lost two close family members, The world famous Puffin Poo my grandfather John Johnston and my uncle Harry Jamieson, as well as our hardworking staff member Tam (Thomas Ramsay). We tried to develop the business as best we could, without trying to do to much as we knew we weren t ready for it and didn t want to be snowed under before we were prepared for it, but we did very well despite our loss, and also had over 40 cruise ships visit during the summer months. We took on a lot of new local suppliers and have been speaking to places on the mainland about the possibility of stocking our range. Thanks to our brilliant staff, we managed to pull it all together and our shelves were always full for customers that came through the door, we certainly learned a lot last year. Tell me about the man who influenced the Fudge recipe and why it s special? Tams Tablet. Tam sadly passed away in the summer last year, he was the only other full time employee at the time (other than Nicola). He was what we called our Trow, he worked all through the night to make what was needed for the following day in the shop. He passed on his secrets in our training days, but Tam had that special touch that made every batch he made delicious. You have a thriving Internet business the furthest flung country you have sent to? We have sent our products all over the world, from Aberdeen to the US to New Zealand and lots of places in between. We are amazed at how far it gets and how people even get to hear about us. We have a board on the wall in the shop titled How far has your Puffin Poo d, which has people taking selfies of themselves proudly holding their Puffin Poo in the most obscure place they can think of. The Himalayas is one of our favourites along with the base camp of Mount Kilimanjaro... Tell me about your children s chocolate parties and your vision for SFC s future? This is a new thing we are still working on and have had two trials to see how they North SPRING

47 How have local business resources i.e. Business Gateway helped build your business? We have only recently started working with Highland and Island Enterprise and they have been offering great advice on various elements of the business. They have put us in contact with marketing people and potentially someone to help us develop a Puffin Poo machine, it s all very early days though but we are really looking forward to working alongside them. Why did you decide to establish a business in Shetland? We think Shetland Fudge is a unique business, especially for somewhere the size of Shetland. Shetland has a massive reputation for its food and drink and we want to do everything we can to help with that. Our shop already had an established name, having been open for approximately nine years before we took it over, so the foundations were already in place, we just have to try and bring the business to the next level now. Nicola had a vision of what was possible with the business and I was keen to get stuck in too. Key ingredients for a successful business? Hard work and patience. We had to jump through a lot of hoops to get where we are, there were ups and downs along the way but we kept each other going when we thought it wasn t going to be possible, we were over the moon when we finally got into the shop. We are a good team; we compliment each other well and help each other out as best we can. We are both strong-minded and for all that may be a good or bad thing depending how you interpret it, it works well for us. Every business is different, our aim is to grow it gradually and challenge ourselves to learn more about business. To have a successful business I believe you need to enjoy what you do and work hard. You also need good support from family and friends, and plenty of enthusiasm. Best piece of advice given concerning the business? Magnus: No matter what, she will always be right... What do you both love most about working at Shetland Fudge? Magnus: How much I have learned from it. I had never done anything remotely close to this beforehand, I was more used to standing in a cold workshop or on the side of a boat in a gale, this has been very satisfying for me to pick up new and skills. Nicola: I love the people we work with and the people we meet. From employees to customers, we meet some incredible people. The tourists love to speak to us and tell us their stories. We are a friendly shop where we also love to hear their adventures before they arrived and what they have in store for their trip. We sometimes get lovely gifts, such as maple candy from the Canadians, pin badges and cuddly Koalas from the Australians! All kept in our shop. Finally, what is your favourite product? Magnus: Mine had been the Filsket & Foo Fudge and Peerie Nips, I am swaying towards the Raspblootered Peerie Nip now though, or the salted caramel, in fact, all of it!! Nicola: its hard to pick just one, I love a bit of Puffin Poo with my coffee and I love a bit of Tablet after my tea. I also love our hot chocolate on a cold night, I try to keep the Peerie Nip range just for a special treat...! Nicola and Magnus - thank you again for a fab SFC experience, and yes, mum a Hair O Da Dug hamper filled with SFC breakfast preserves (including whisky delish Ravenswing) is on it s way for Mother s Day! 60 North SPRING

48 Shetland had always been on her bucket list, and in January 2016 travel writer Kathi Kamleitner finally set out to visit the islands for a week during Up Helly Aa. As she encountered local traditions, people and crafts she began wondering what draws people north and what the essence of Shetland s island life might be North SPRING

49 From wild nature and rough seas, from local heritage to open discourse with other cultures, the essence of Shetland cannot be described by a list of things to see and do lowly we drive along the narrow road towards the coast. Gusts of wind from all directions, thick clouds ahead of us and heavy raindrops splashing on the windshield. The drivers of the big, solid trucks overtaking us seem to withstand the back and forth of the forces of nature without batting an eyelid; me in my little blue rental car not so much. Being able to drive through a hair-raising storm and keeping your calm seems to be an essential skill of an islander in Shetland. But I m getting ahead of myself. I had come to Shetland to experience the Up Helly Aa festival in Lerwick for the first time. Watching men dress up as Vikings and celebrate an old tradition by burning a galley sounded like a great way to learn more about the unique Scottish- Scandinavian culture I had heard so much about. I soon realise, however, that there is nothing much Scottish about the islands. The local dialect is infused with German and Norse expressions; the landscape has more of the barren desert of northern Norway than the rocky mountains of the Highlands; and last but not least, the remoteness of the place paired with the cosmopolitan nature of its people brought to mind the infamous Scandinavian Vikings. Glass artist Cheryl Jamieson tells me, Shetlanders are very much in touch with their heritage, and Up Helly Aa is only one example of this. Cheryl, who grew up on Shetland s northernmost inhabited island, Unst, works with fused glass and crafts - jewellery, bowls and vases among other things. We are so lucky here, she says. In other places, artists might have to travel for inspiration, but I think in Shetland, it is all here: the archaeology, the geology, the unique wildlife, the tradition of Fair Isle knitting patterns, the Viking heritage as artists we get truly spoilt for choice. After some years on mainland Shetland, Cheryl and her family had returned to Unst not an easy choice, I hear. The smaller islands struggle with depopulation and people have to accept that they might not get the job that they want. Some, like Cheryl, decide to make their own. Her workshop for Glansin Glass has long left the spare room of her house and moved into a red trailer overlooking the pastures, shore and village of Uyeasound. Her jewellery has taken Shetland by storm, just as the unusual technique of fusing glass has taken her. I came by it by complete chance. I had been looking for my medium for a while and went on a small business exchange to Norway. There I met someone working with fused glass and was immediately intrigued. One look at Cheryl s designs and I see that Shetland is an integral part of her inspiration. She captures her essence of Shetland in the colours, shapes and decorations of her work. Everything she produces represents her home the sheep dotting the green and yellow hills, the rocks, drift wood and wildlife of the coast, the iconic colours of puffins or distinctive shapes of the fishing boats. And if my work can reach out to people, tell them about my island and even make them visit Unst to see my source of inspiration, it means a lot to me. After meeting Cheryl I am very keen to see where her work originates. Leaving Uyeasound I head all the way up north. In winter, there is not much to see as the boat museum and heritage centre in Haroldswick are closed for the season. Luckily, nature s museum is always open u 60 North SPRING

50 Top row: A colourful shop front, Lerwick Ninian Knitwear Design knitting machine u throughout the year. My destination is Hermaness National Nature Reserve. It is sunny for now, but the clouds are dark and the wind rough in this Shetland winter; rain is looming in the distance. I stop at the car park at the end of the road and continue on foot. The sun tickles my nose and the dry grass shines golden as I follow the path towards the edge. Suddenly the wind stops, the sun gets stronger and the distant clouds turn more dramatic. Seabirds fly above my head and land in the cliffs beneath my feet. I can see lonely rocks out at sea resisting the constant battle with the waves. I have made it almost to the very end of the UK, and am looking out at another essence of Shetland: the unforgiving sea. I experience even more of its strength, as I am fighting my way through Storm Gertrude to reach Weisdale where visual artist Vivian Ross-Smith has invited me into her studio. Vivian is one of many young Shetlanders, who left the islands for school and training, but eventually came back to island life. I think there is an idyllic vision of living on a remote rock in the middle of the North Atlantic, and it is gorgeous to live here she says. Originally from Fair Isle, Vivian went to art school in Aberdeen and spent some time in Glasgow before moving back to mainland Shetland. Like Cheryl, she found her trade by chance. In art school we spent one semester on producing art without using paint. I always thought I wanted to paint, but all of a sudden a world of materials opened up to me. Scrap metal, rocks from the beach and even fish skins are the things Vivian picks up during her walks which help capture the essence of Shetland in her artwork. The rich geology and environment of the islands are her main concern. Her most recent work, which she presented at a solo show in Aberdeen, focuses on recent debates about a wind farm on Yell. I realise a Shetlander s identity is inseparably connected with their heritage; their art impossibly distinguishable from their home. And yet island life has its undeniable downsides. I understand how dark and rough winters in Shetland can be when Vivian tells me about an occasion where no boat or plane could reach or leave Fair Isle due to a storm for three weeks. To counter-balance the remoteness Vivian travels for workshops, residencies and exhibitions and sees artists around the world. She always comes home with a bag of inspiration to incorporate these influences in her Shetland art. Knitwear designer Joanna Hunter offers an explanation: Shetlanders are notorious for going everywhere and seeing a lot. I think it has to do with the traditions of fishing and seafaring. Just like Vivian, Joanna leaves Shetland frequently but always swings back like a yo-yo. She fell in love with weaving and machine-knitting on a school exchange to Japan, and at the age of 20 she packed her car with knitting patterns to present her work in Scotland, England and even America. Life is too short to be in a job you hate, she tells me, and so she created her own and started a knitwear label. She welcomes me in the studio attached to her shop Ninian North SPRING

51 in the centre of Lerwick. The little room burst with colours, mood-boards, piles of knitting samples and scrapbooks. She talks me through her most recent ideas, material from her colour workshops and explains the entire process from first inspiration to ready-to-wear product. I quickly realise that Joanna is a globetrotter, very much like myself. She snaps photos of people, buildings and colour combinations she sees on her journeys. Every four weeks or so, she says, she needs to leave Shetland to pick up new ideas and colours. Many of her patterns however are inspired by old family traditions such as the piles of jumpers in her grandmothers houses, museum and archives collecting knitting patterns from Fair Isle. The mix of old and new influences very much represents the re-discovered fashion of knitting itself. In primary school every child knitted, but it went out of fashion. Luckily, now the old trade is coming back. Time to ask someone who is no native to the islands what is it about Shetland? Architect and jewellery-designer Mike Finnie from mainland Scotland has lived here for over 20 years. We moved, because I found a job that paid me several times what Middle row: Mike Finnie and China Jewellery, Red Hoauss Joanna Hunter, Ninian Knitwear Design Bottom row: Vivian Ross-Smith Cheryl Jamieson, Glansin glass earrings I earned back home. The plan was to save up money and buy a house in Edinburgh. This of course never happened, because Mike and his wife fell in love with the islands. He captures the landscapes in his watercolour paintings and linocut prints, crafts silver jewellery and does jewellery workshops in his studio. Intrigued I take up the offer to forge my own Shetland souvenir and make my way to Burra on a windy day. The hours fly by as we grind pieces of china from the beach, cut the silver into shape, solder hooks into place and sand down the finished piece. I also have plenty of time to discover all the little treasures in the studio the whale bones Mike found on the beach, boxes of scrap and shells, colourful collections of different materials ready to be turned into jewellery. It feels like Mike gathers random items, but inside the studio they form a miniverse of Shetland. They have everything they need right here, he tells me over a bowl of soup in his kitchen. From my seat I can see the stormy sea crashing on the rocks in the shallow bay. Although Mike s house is filled with souvenirs from all over the world he seems to belong right here. From wild nature and rough seas, from local heritage to open discourse with other cultures, the essence of Shetland cannot be described by a list of things to see and do. It constitutes the ups and downs of island life, the new impressions from afar and the old traditions from within. I stand and watch in awe as the Vikings throw their burning torches into the majestic galley, and I realise it was my curiosity that brought me here and it will be my appetite to understand my own home and heritage that drives me to explore more of the world. In Shetland, I feel, people are one step ahead of me they seem to know that the essence of Shetland lies deep within themselves. Travel writer Kathi Kamleitner fell in love with Scotland years ago and relocated to Glasgow in Her trip to Up Helly Aa was her first visit to Shetland. Kathi contributes her stories to the travel website Travelettes. net, but will soon focus her energy on her side project WatchMeSee.com to share her love for Scotland and beyond 60 North SPRING

52 The luckiest woman in Britain? Kellie Naulls is living her dream on the UK s northernmost landmass Not many folk can say they have ended up with their ideal job in their dream location. But that s me. I have recently moved with my family to live and work in Unst, Britain s most Northerly island. This is my second relocation to the island, I moved on my own 16 years ago when I was the country s northernmost midwife and community nurse. The three years I lived on Unst was one of the most memorable periods of my life. Not only did I meet my husband Steve who was an airman stationed there at RAF Saxa Vord, we also had our son. He was the only baby born in the island in 2001 and arrived unexpectedly seven weeks early. When I went into labour I was still working as the island s on call midwife. After we were airlifted out by air ambulance, Harry was born in Lerwick s Gilbert Bain Hospital maternity unit. Named after the township of Haroldswick, where he was christened in the most northerly church, he is a bit of a celebrity in the island as everyone locally seems to mind the night that he was born. We loved Unst but left unexpectedly in 2003 due to unforeseen family reasons. It was always our dream to return to live and work there but we never thought that it would happen. After working for a Shetland charity called Moving On for a number of years, in 2015 I did some travelling in Australia and India. At the beginning of this year I was fortunate enough to secure an exciting job with the Unst Partnership, a local charity. My new role is to help further develop tourism in the Northern islands of Unst, Yell and Fetlar. We have now moved our household two islands up from Shetland s Mainland. Reaching Unst from there involves a ferry crossing and a drive through Yell, then catching another ferry to Unst. During the six weeks moving period I travelled a total of 880 miles up and down and caught 36 separate ferries. Now we are happily settled in our new home with two new additions to the family, Snoopy the black cocker spaniel and Charlie the cat. A lot has changed in the 13 years since I last stayed here, with fewer people living on the island due to the 2006 closure of RAF Saxa Vord. However, there are more visitors due to the new developments such as the award-winning UnstFest festival, the Final Checkout café, shop and garage, the Shetland Reel Gin distillery, North Base Café and Visitor s Centre and the opening of Victoria s Vintage Tearooms. With Saxa Vord now being a resort, it provides facilities and services for not only tourists but locals too. Technology has brought big improvements to planning travel to and from the islands, with a ZetTrans travel information mobile North SPRING

53 The unique scenery is breathtaking and being so close to nature is wonderful app and being able to book ferries online. Despite this, living in a very remote and rural area connected to the Mainland by ferries means that life is still at times quite unpredictable. Though I am always impressed how flexible and resourceful everyone is and how well they work together to help each other when they can. When I travelled to Unst for my interview for my new job, I arrived at the Toft ferry terminal in my car, there was a problem with the ferry and it could only take foot passengers. There was no way of me getting 17 miles across the island of Yell or 5 miles across Unst to the interview location. However, I quickly found some kind locals and explained my dilemma and they offered me a lift across Yell and then through Unst and I arrived for my interview in time. What I love about Unst and living in the Northern Isles hasn t changed. People couldn t have been more welcoming or do enough for us all. The unique scenery is breathtaking and being so close to nature is wonderful. It feels safe and it is such a brilliant place to bring up a young family. Harry is now enrolled in the local Junior High school and is enjoying meeting new friends and getting involved in new activities already. There is so much going on for people of all ages to take part in and my family and I feel a part of a vibrant and enthusiastic community. I am privileged that my new role, like the one I previously had, involves working in partnership with the local community. This time though I am not only working with the Unst community but also those of Yell and Fetlar. I have got to know each of the islands and I am surprised by how very different each one is but also by how much they complement each other and how much they have to offer. With progress bring made already, I am looking forward to seeing the number of tourist and visitors to the North Isles continue to grow and to working with the rest of the team to develop new ideas that will help to achieve this North SPRING

54 Herring: A History of the Silver Darlings Mike Smylie I consider Mike Kipperman Smylie s Herring to be something of a cult classic. It was certainly hard to get hold of for a while and those I knew who had a copy were careful to keep hold of it; I didn t have a copy at the time so was really very pleased when it came back into print. Initially my main interest was in the recipes that preface each chapter; there may not be many of them, but they re good, especially the one for pickling your own Christmas herring. More importantly this is also a well-illustrated and comprehensive history of everything herring related and encompasses the entire Atlantic pool and North Sea - and that includes Shetland. Herring are an integral part of the history of the islands, though visitors might be forgiven for failing to realise that; almost all the physical signs of an industry that in Baltasound, Unst alone saw 52 curing houses at its peak, (around ) have disappeared. To get an idea of the scale of it have a quick browse through the Shetland museum s photo archive. There is also a tantalising chapter on The Fisher Lassies, the girls who left home as young as 13 to follow the fleet from Shetland down the coast to Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth gutting and packing the fish. An experienced gutter could process up to 60 herring a minute, they worked outdoors in all conditions, and must have been a formidable group of women, as well as being something of a phenomenon in their day. Truly, they deserve a book of their own. Smylie, as well as being The Kipperman and all-round herring expert (he s a familiar figure at various maritime festivals with his mobile smokehouse) is also a noted maritime historian who knows his boats so there s an excellent overview of the different craft that made up the fleet over the centuries. Like so much else about the trade the thousands of boats that crowded the herring ports during the season have basically vanished - seeing pictures of harbours so crowded with boats you can t see water really brings the scale of the industry into focus in a way that statistics simply do not. The history of the silver darlings is the history of those who made a living from them, and it s fascinating. Herring: A History of the Silver Darlings by Mike Smylie is published by The History Press. It is available in book shops ( 12.99, hardback). The Naked Shore: Of the North Sea Tom Blass The Naked Shore is the result of a journey that Blass sets out on... to write a book about this sea and its world, too often snubbed by writers, derided for its moody lugubriousness, it s inclination towards inclemency, damp chilly sands, and a decidedly utilitarian aspect when glanced at from a certain angle. Because as he knows...both the sea and shores it beats upon possess their own allure. Just as the sparkle of the Mediterranean out-twinkles a multitude of vices, do not the mists, miasmas, and surliness of the North Sea cloak a multitude of gems? They do indeed, and Blass neatly proceeds to reveal some of them. In doing so he joins a growing group of travel writers exploring not exotic, but known landscapes, places that might seem too peripheral, obscure, or mundane, to bother with in the ordinary way - but which do nonetheless have things to offer. Will Self calls it psychogeography: the study of how places make us feel; it s hard to come up with a better description. weach chapter could easily be expanded into a book of its own, so what we get is necessarily an overview; Blass gems are bits of history, superstition, legend, and encounters (planned or by chance), that he has along the way. In Shetland he meets construction workers for the new gas plant, men from the rigs, fishermen, teachers, historians, and more, all of whom offer a different perspective. The common thread throughout the book is, (to paraphrase) a communality of experience that binds together North Sea peoples, almost regardless of nationality. This is our sea, a sea that s shaped us as a people quite as much as anything else has, and something that will continue to both define and reshape our islands. Blass s observations on even the driest sounding topics are entertaining as well as informative - maybe the most important thing to say about this, or any other, book is that it s a proper page turner. It s also the perfect jumping off point to explore all sorts of things from, providing just enough information to whet the appetite, and that s a precious thing in a book. It makes it the start of a journey in its own right. The Naked Shore: Of the North Sea by Tom Blass is published by Bloomsbury. It is available in book shops ( 20, hardback) North SPRING

55 Hayley Anderton trawls through two books about fish, one about a line of latitude and another about someone all at sea Sixty Degrees North Malachy Tallack Look at a map of the UK and the chances are Shetland will be in a little box somewhere to one side, so peripheral it s denied its proper geographical location. Looked at from a southern perspective it could indeed seem like the edge of the known world, but when you re there it s nothing of the sort. Its cultural links are as Scandinavian as they are British; more than that it s a place that s extremely confident in its traditions and history. It s not on the edge of anything, but a centre for its own community, and part of a bigger picture. The 60th parallel crosses Shetland at its southern tip. Follow it west (which is what Tallack does) and the next stop is Greenland, followed by Canada, Alaska, Russia (a lot of Russia), Finland, Sweden, Norway, and finally Shetland again. From this perspective the islands are pinned firmly back on the map, and something more than that. The 60th parallel also marks the line between almost-north and North. The long hours of daylight in summer (at 60 degrees the sun is above the horizon for 19 hours a day around midsummer, and for a few weeks at least it doesn t get really dark at all) hint at the need to adapt to the elements that challenging winter weather makes explicit. This near North is the accessible part of something that is almost as much idea as actual place. Where life is quite supportable but there are constant reminders of something wilder, of places that can t be tamed. Shetland is only part of the story here, a point of departure and return - Sixty Degrees North is a book with a strong autobiographical element, and beyond that it s part travel writing, part natural history, and something else too. That something else is a meditation on place and community, a lament for the way we re losing our connection to the land we live on. At the beginning of the book Tallack talks about the Shetland hill - common ground which he sees as being in many senses, an in-between land...where time itself seems to move at another pace... and where, he says, the land inhabits the people just as much as they inhabit it. Sixty Degrees North: Around the World in Search of Home by Malachy Tallack is published by Polygon. It is available in book shops and from ( 12.99, hardback). Herring Tales: How the Silver Darlings Shaped Human Taste and History Donald S. Murray Two books about herring are a lot to read in a short space of time, halfway through Donald S. Murray s Herring Tales I found I had an overwhelming craving for pickled herring and gin. Fortunately both were easy to find so I was suitably fortified for the second half. Herring Tales is more of a travelogue than Mike Smylie s book, and spends much more time exploring how herring have impacted on the art, literature, craft, music, and folklore of Northern Europe. Indeed music is so important to Murray that his chapter headings are all song titles, with the exception of an Eric Cantona quote. It s a nice idea, and one that suits Murray s sometimes meandering and discursive style, but it also made me grateful for a decent index and comprehensive bibliography. Herring run deep into our history, and have long tied Britain to northern Europe in trade and shared experience. There is one anecdote about a Lerwick man being arrested in short order after his friendly greeting to a First World War German prisoner - it turned out both men had known each other well after years of meeting in various herring ports, and many from Shetland as well as the west coast of Scotland will remember the klondikers - vast factory ships, not always convincingly sea worthy, that appeared to buy and process herring and mackerel all through the Cold War. They were an enigmatic clue to what life might be like behind the iron curtain, though like so much about the herring industry, they re gone now. It also seems that in the difficult post-war, pre-oil years herring were used almost as currency between Norway, Germany, and the eastern block, with herring going one way and cars returning to Norway... Then there s some interesting speculation about knitwear too, and the process by which designs and motifs might almost subconsciously have migrated, especially amongst the herring gutters, as well as how the garments might have evolved to be so fit for purpose. Fit those things together and I hope I m giving an impression of what a treasure trove of unexpected information there is in this book. I ll never take a herring for granted again. Herring Tales: How the Silver Darlings Shaped Human Taste and History by Donald S. Murray is published by Bloomsbury. ( 16.99) hardback North SPRING

56 Artists from across the world are spending time on the edge at Shetland s state-of-the-art lighthouse and wildlife centre THE ART OF SUMBURGH HEAD F he successful Artist-in- Residence programme at Sumburgh Head is continuing into its second year with an impressive line-up of international artists, some of whom loved Shetland so much they couldn t wait to come back. In January, creative writer, Clare Duffy was resident at Sumburgh Head to write and prepare a new work for performance. The effects of living in Shetland s unique environment and light were the central theme. Clare writes for theatre, radio and children s television. She is the current Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities/Traverse Theatre fellow for 2014/15. She teaches Writing For Performance at Glasgow University, where she completed her practice as research PhD in Playwriting. She is a co-director of Unlimited Theatre, which she co-founded with Jon Spooner and Chris Thorpe in Unlimited is resident at The West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds. Jennifer Talbot also made a return trip to Sumburgh Head in January to follow up on the work with felt and stitching she started last February. Jennifer focused on light, and she also worked alongside Clare in classes. February also saw a return visit by Shona Main, who visited Sumburgh Head last year to research and film a biography about Jenny Gilbertson. Jenny was a real inspiration to me when I made by film Clavel, says Shona, and I have been thinking about doing something that honours her life for some time. Then I realised it was 25 years this year since she died and I thought I should do it now. Jenny has never really been given her rightful place in the history of documentary nor is her work as known as it should be. So I am going to write the book and make a documentary about her life and her films. Shona returned to complete the writing and as part of her stay arranged a film screening of Jenny Gilbertson s film In Sheep s Clothing on 21 February, with a new live score, written and performed by Barry David Nisbet, a fiddler from Yell. The event was a Shetland premier of this. In March, Jackie Lakely is at Sumburgh Head. Jackie is a mixed media artist living just outside Chicago. Her work is primarily focussed on environments and landscapes, often weaving between realistic subject matter and abstraction. For her sketchbooks, Jackie prefers realistic renderings of places and things she observes, in pencil and/or watercolour. Her larger paintings use several different sketches in one piece, along with her creative interpretation of the place. Often my larger paintings are recognisable as, but not identified as, specific places, she says. I like to think of them as worlds I want to visit. Shetland has featured in Jackie s work for decades, as she has visited her mother s family in Scalloway since childhood. For her, it has always been a magical place, as she recalls walking over the hill behind her grandparents house to find a giant pile of scallop shells to play in, among so many other memories of tide pools, picnics on various little islands and the mutually existing fear, respect and awe of the landscape and seas surrounding it. Jackie s residency will include sketchbook pages filled with daily observations, along with several large pieces on paper and/or canvas, utilising sketches but creating land and seascapes using both real observations and imagination. I would love the opportunity to immerse myself in painting the land and sea of Sumburgh Head for a month she says. It would be the opportunity of a lifetime to live at the Lighthouse and explore and draw and paint every day. Marianne Greated is an artist who works in paint, often placing this within the context of installation and sound. She has a particular interest in the environment which has included various collaborative projects relating to sound in the environment, the coast and renewable power. Her residency in April follows local and international exhibitions including solo exhibitions such as Sonitus North SPRING

57 Pelamis, Marianne Greated Burgh Stack, felted fibre, stitch Jennifer Talbot in Bangalore, Zvuk in Minsk and Dead or Alive, London. Marianne is Lecturer in Painting and Printmaking at Glasgow School of Art. Her research interests include painting in an expanded field, the panorama, the relationship between sound and vision, contemporary landscape and representations of sustainability. In 2014 she received her doctorate for a project entitled Painting in a Sonic Environment and has published papers on sound and vision, painting and colour. Joanne Kaar will be Artist-in-Residence during May. Joanne takes inspiration from heritage; as both participant and instigator of arts and heritage projects and collaborations, she has worked in Taiwan, South Korea, Iceland, USA, and also exhibited in Japan, Germany, Australia, Sweden and Finland. Her work is varied, and is as much at home in heritage centres and museums as art galleries each piece informed by research drawing, stitching as mark making, print, photography, u 60 North SPRING

58 u text and found objects (both natural and man-made) come together to make tactile objects. During her time at Sumburgh Head, Joanne proposes to make a series of walking books, documenting what she sees, with first hand drawings, annotated sketches, found objects and photography. It s important to experience the landscape/seascape first hand on a series of walks, she says. So much information can be gathered by pen, paper, brush and camera, experiencing the outdoors, taking time to stop and look. Documenting not just the vast landscape, but the smaller details of patterns of lichens on fence posts and rocks, as well as human presence both past and present. Joanne will hold workshops for participants to make their own walking books. In June, Sumburgh will welcome Jan Yates - a Canadian visual artist who is eager to exchange ideas and share work in-progress with visitors to the Head. Jan is looking forward to painting the dramatic vistas from Sumburgh Head s Education Centre during Simmer Dim - working at the same time of night throughout the residency on one very large canvas. For the past decade in all seasons and weather Jan has made work outside on protected farmlands, remote coastlines and dense forests: The process of working on site is integral; cultivating an intimate dialogue with the earth s growth, decay and renewal. These outdoor encounters are the catalysts for in-studio exploration, evolving into a cyclical body of work mapping a quest for preservation, while contemplating the consequence of change. Since moving back to Canada from California Jan has been elected as a member of the Society of Canadian Artists and her work is collected throughout North America, the United Kingdom and Australia. She has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards with recognition from the Ontario Arts Council. OAC international residency grants have Formations, Ellis O Connor also supported her work in Ireland and Shetland. July sees a very different kind of artist. Carla Meijsen is a well-known Dutch author of two books on contemporary knitting design from traditional sources. She will take up residency between 2 and 30 July, using her time at Sumburgh Head to continue research into traditional knitting techniques which she applies to contemporary styles. Carla studied to become a teacher of textile art. In 2008 and 2011 she completed the first two levels of The Knitting Guild of America s Master Knitter certification. She is owner of the company The Dutch Knitters. Under this banner, Carla runs workshops and classes for advanced knitters in the Netherlands, and internationally. She also writes articles on knitting traditions and techniques as well as designing knitting patterns. In October 2011, The Dutch Knitters first book was published Warm Hands Estonian Mittens and Wrist Warmers and in 2014 the second book, So Warm! - Twined Knitting. August will see a number of artists staying on the site. Firstly, Liz Myhill and Lara Scouller. With a growing interest in anthropology, environment and the often uneasy balance struck between humans and nature, the work of Liz Myhill has formed distinct collections based around particular cultural, geographic, social and historical subjects. The Sumburgh Head residency will form a new episode in this series of explorations allowing her to study both changing land use and the historical significance of the site, alongside the flora and fauna which inhabit it. Throughout the residency period Liz will be making works on site, both in the sketchbook as North SPRING

59 a visual diary and larger scale pieces in a variety of media including printmaking, watercolour and mixed media. An integral part of the process will be the gathering of natural fibres which will later be used to construct textural printmaking blocks, as will the collating of additional text based information, found objects etc. On completion of the residency the location pieces will be developed in the studio and print workshop to create more considered final exhibits, to be shown in For Lara Scouller, the residency will play an integral part in a wider initiative she is undertaking which will take place over a year and involve practice-based research trips to different Scottish seabird colonies in the Inner and Outer Hebrides, Shetland Islands and the Firth of Forth. Lara will create pastel drawings and prints in response to these unique locations, encapsulating a sense of place and the grand scale of the colonies. I would like to explore the unique characteristics of Sumburgh Head, says Lara, both in terms of the topology of the landscape and bird colonies that reside there. Unlike the other locations I have chosen, the residency will allow me to live and work in very close proximity to the large puffin colony. On the completion of the field trips, Lara will develop the studies and sketchbook work into more complete compositions. This will be in preparation for an exhibition in Edinburgh in Also in August, Clare Duffy will return to Sumburgh Head for a live performance/ transmission to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival of material written on the site. This is an ambitious work on the theme of the effects of living with Extreme Light and part of a wider residency project in Canada and the Arctic Circle. Julia Barton will arrive for an extended residency in September. Littoral is a Science and Art investigation into beach litter, taking its name from the littoral zone: the area between the low and high tide marks. Julia began Littoral in 2013 to visually explore ways to draw attention to the volume and effects of beach litter. To date Julia has worked with schools and communities on the west coast of Scotland, creating collaborative artworks designed to sensitise viewers to unseen litter and the need to take action. Ellis O Connor is a visual artist working in photography, drawing, and printmaking and she will visit Sumburgh Head in November. Ellis uses visual language to challenge assumptions about the natural environment, to reinterpret the grandeur of natural land forms, and to represent this visual information in a powerful way. Travelling consistently around the Left: Oil and cold wax on canvas, Jan Yates Below: Broken Wall, Liz Myhill North of Scotland, the Islands, and the Northern Isles, Ellis has recently spent a significant period of time in Iceland. Her prints are layered and tactile, responding not only to the land-forms but the textual rock surfaces as well. As her work has developed, it is the internalised grandeur of the landforms that take precedence. These are slightly abstracted from their original source, and start to signify on a spatial level, in imitation of land contours themselves. Artists workshop details are published prior to each residency sumburghhead.com 60 North SPRING

60 Claire White reflects on the contribution of Shetland fiddlers to the February 2016 Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo tour of Australia and New Zealand Hjaltibonhoga Down Under Billed as the greatest show on earth, The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo (REMT) is a Scottish cultural institution. Throughout August each year a performance of military music, ceremony, theatre and dance takes place every weekday evening and twice on Saturdays at Edinburgh Castle. A feast of tartan and bagpipes woven with international vignettes, this spectacle is seen live by 220,000 people annually and is televised internationally for 100 million viewers. In April 2013 Shetland fiddle instructors were approached about the possibility of creating a group of 40 fiddlers to perform at the Tattoo, and local music teacher Margaret Robertson responded to the appeal. After issuing postal invitations to almost 200 local players, a team of 97 fiddlers offered their services to the newly named Hjaltibonhoga group ( Shetland, my spiritual home in Old Norse language) and community fundraising commenced. During August 2014 they performed in 25 shows themed around Our Home, Friends and Family, and a year later returned to play in the East Meets West Edinburgh Castle production. The invitation then came to join the Tattoo s fourth overseas sojourn in the show s 66 year history. February 2016 saw REMT hit the Antipodes, with a nine date Fanfare for the Future tour of Australia and New Zealand. This time just 15 fiddlers travelled from Shetland to participate, gathering up five players now based in Scotland and England en route down under. A further 20 musicians joined Hjaltibonhoga in each of the Tattoo Tour host countries to complete the 40 fiddler line-up, with each player mastering and memorising a demanding repertoire of music ahead of departure. Arrival at Melbourne s Etihad Stadium brought home the enormity of the REMT undertaking. A replica Edinburgh Castle was under construction as rehearsals commenced in the vast, covered arena. Drills during the preceding days at Moonee Valley Racecourse had prepared us well for temperatures of 30 degrees plus, and for the physical demands of the job. Performing as part of a cast of 1200 required precision movement and timing, rehearsed exhaustively to ensure a smoothrunning show. This meant hours on our feet, practising choreography, playing and marching, sometimes simultaneously. Little did we know that traditional Shetland tunes, taken from croft house recordings, would one day be performed military style to an Antipodean audience of 265,000! Our debut Australian performance made every hour of practice in wintry Shetland and marching in sunny Melbourne worthwhile. Hjaltibonhoga appeared six times in the two hour show, initially running into the arena to play a jig as a chaotic civilian contrast to military formations on the show ground. Then came our rendition of music from The Lord of the Rings to accompany the New Zealand Lochiel Marching Drill Team s immaculate display. A set of reels from home followed as we took centre stage for a routine based on Shetland dance. Highland dance resumed as we played pacy tunes in North SPRING

61 Photography by Hjaltibonhoga tricky pipe keys with the Ceilidh Band of The Royal Regiment of Scotland. Margaret Robertson then led us in a moving rendition of James Scott Skinner s Hector the Hero before our finale performance of favourites including Auld Lang Syne and Scotland the Brave amidst 800 musicians. Dressed in hand-crafted Shetland blue jackets and wearing Nielanell designed and Laurence Odie produced knitwear draped over shoulders, our costumes stood out in a sea of military uniforms. It was wonderful to feel an audience connection on exiting the stadium with a wave, and to see an occasional Shetland blue flag flying proudly amongst the audience of 30,000. All too soon our first week of travel passed in a haze of five shows, late-night sessions after day-long rehearsals, coach trips and mass catering. New Zealand and a new branch of the Hjaltibonhoga family now beckoned, pulling us on to further rehearsals in Wellington with some players who were ancestrally connected to Shetland. The show s running order and cast were tweaked to reflect local culture and we were accommodated alongside some of New Zealand s 200 award-winning Kapa Haka performers. Their welcome to Wellington staged by Te Matatini (The Many Faces) was a highlight of the tour for many, a glorious display of Maori performing arts which was reciprocated by a rendition of the hymn Eternal Father, Strong to Save by cast members from overseas. This exchange kicked off a four show stay at the open-air Westpac Stadium, complete with a new replica Edinburgh Castle and the characteristic windy Wellington weather conditions. With one leg of the tour successfully complete, performing in New Zealand was an opportunity to savour the experience of being part of this extraordinary spectacle. Amongst the moments that will live on in our memories are pipers and drummers inching forward during a moving rendition of Going Home, counter-marching to massed military bands playing the 79th Farewell to Gibraltar, and emerging en masse from the castle s drawbridge to perform Hector the Hero. Throughout the show it was thrilling to play silvery strings atop a sea of pipes, percussion, brass and woodwind, enjoying the musical might of what must rank as one of the world s top backing bands. Behind the scenes too we enjoyed countless special moments, getting to know our fellow fiddlers better, making new international friendships and flying the flag for Shetland music over a dram or two at cast parties. Not for one moment did we forget how privileged we were to take a place in this show, to be invited into the Tattoo family and to be enveloped by its exquisite sights and sounds. From a standing start in 2013 Hjaltibonhoga has grown into what REMT Producer Brigadier David Allfrey describes as a core element and pillar of the tattoo. With plans afoot for festival and Tattoo performances this summer, and REMT tours of Jordan and China in 2018 and 2020 respectively, Shetland music has never sounded stronger North SPRING

62 Alastair Hamilton has details of just some of the delights Shetland s spring has to offer North SPRING

63 Spring transforms Shetland. Each week, the length of our days increases by well over half an hour and we look forward to those nights, from mid-may onwards, when there s no complete darkness, just an unfinished sunset that moves around our northern horizon. Slowly but surely, the days become a little warmer, the wind a little gentler. The landscape gradually takes on a greener hue, replacing the browns, purples and golds of winter. There are other signs: our summer birds begin to arrive. Beautiful Arctic terns return to their nesting grounds around the coast, the diminutive Red-necked Phalarope re-appears on the island of Fetlar and, of course, those wonderfully colourful Puffins get ready to pose for pictures. The Spring migration is an annual treat for bird-watchers, offering all sorts of unusual species, such as Hoopoe, Golden Oriole or Bluethroat. Real rarities might include Subalpine Warbler, Rustic Bunting or even Pallas s Sandgrouse. Human activity moves up a key, too. Not long after the fire festival season has drawn to a close with the South Mainland Up Helly Aa (SMUHA), 11 March, and the Delting Up Helly Aa, 18 March, fine days prompt us to think about the garden, or perhaps getting the boat painted for the summer season. In May, we often enjoy a good spell of dry weather and that will see some folk beginning to cut peats for winter fuel. Among many musical evenings, there are some real highlights to look forward to. The highly-regarded Blue Rose Code (aka Scottish singer-songwriter Ross Wilson) will be exploring the fusion of folk and jazz in Lerwick on 14 April and in Aith the following night. A week later, on 21 April, the Scottish Ensemble will present a cello and violin duo and over the next two days, the Shetland Young Fiddler of the Year will be chosen. At the end of the month, the Shetland Folk Festival will, as always, bring an astonishingly diverse range of musicians to the islands. This year, the eclectic mix includes Huun-Huur-Tu, who hail from Tuva, Southern Siberia; they perform astonishing throat-singing as well as playing traditional instruments. Heading in the opposite direction, we ll welcome De Temps Antan from Quebec and The Railsplitters from Colorado. From a bit closer to home, there will be 18th century music from Flemish band Wör and, from Scotland, the very different but equally irresistible sounds of Mànran and Rose Room. Unofficially, it all kicks off on the overnight ferry from Aberdeen on Wednesday 27 April; the event properly gets under way the following day and runs until the evening of Sunday 1 May. One of Shetland s biggest events takes place in the simmer dim (summer twilight) at the end of May, namely the Shetland Relay for Life in aid of Cancer Research. It begins at 8pm on Saturday 28 May and finishes at 8am the following morning. It s one of the largest such events in Europe and the last Shetland relay raised 306,580; to put that another way, Shetland s 23,000 people about 0.04% of the UK s population collected an astonishing 12.7% of the United Kingdom total. Another sure sign that Spring is upon us is the appearance of the first of the year s cruise liners in Lerwick harbour. This year, it will be the Astoria, calling on 24 April when en route from Portree in Skye to Torshavn in the Faroe Islands. She ll be followed by a further ten liners during May and 2016 will be a record year, with 72 visits from cruise ships. Of course, this round-up offers just a taste of what the Shetland community has to offer. All over the islands, local hall committees, clubs and societies will be putting on all kinds of other events to suit just about every interest. And, if it all becomes a little too hectic, we have therapy on hand in the form of Shetland s traditional Sunday afternoon teas, featuring fantastic home baking in community halls up and down the islands, all in aid of good causes. They usually begin in May, run right through the summer and are not to be missed! In Shetland, it s best to buy a big diary 60 North SPRING

64 Subscribe Now 60 North Magazine Subscribe Now! For three years 60 North magazine has been covering stories about all aspects of life in Shetland and bringing you inspiration, interesting information and stunning photography. We are delighted to announce that magazine subscriptions are now available at Price per year/4 issues UK: 15 Europe: 24 Rest of the World: 27 So treat yourself to a piece of Shetland and order your copy now. Happy reading! For more information on Shetland visit /promoteshetland A Promote Shetland Initiative