historiography of picts, vikings, scots, and fairies and its influence on shetland’s twenty-first...

HISTORIOGRAPHY OF PICTS,

VIKINGS, SCOTS, AND FAIRIES AND

ITS INFLUENCE ON SHETLAND’S

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY ECONOMIC

DEVELOPMENT

ADAM GRYDEHØJ,

BA, The Evergreen State College, Olympia, USA

A thesis presented for the degree of PhD in Ethnology and Folklore at the University of

Aberdeen.

This is a thesis researched and composed by Adam Grydehøj and submitted to the University

of Aberdeen for the degree of PhD in Ethnology and Folklore.

No portion of the work referred to in this thesis has been submitted in support of an

application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other

institution of learning. All quotations have been distinguished by either quotation marks or

block indentation, and all sources of information have been explicitly and specifically

acknowledged.

Adam Grydehøj

15 July 2010, Whitstable

ABSTRACT

Making use of knowledge from a wide range of disciplines, this thesis analyses the

interactions of culture and economy, particularly regarding the influence of nineteenth-

century historiography, on Shetland’s present-day economic development.

Shetland’s local identity concept is strongly influenced by this North Sea archipelago’s

Norse history. This is in part the result of the islands’ late nineteenth- and early twentieth-

century national romantic literature, which was inspired by Continental and mainland British

trends in anthropology and philology. The theories of fairy origins proposed in the 1890s by

the Edinburgh anthropologist David MacRitchie exerted a great influence on Shetland writers.

His theories – since shown to be incorrect – led to the historiographic dehumanisation of the

islands’ pre-Norse population and permitted the complete valorisation of the Vikings, most

notably in the work of the Shetland author Jessie Saxby. Since the 1930s, a variation of

MacRitchie’s theory has been repeated in nearly every local book concerning Shetland folk

belief.

These conceptions of history continue to inform the sense of local identity felt by many

Shetlanders. This has come into conflict with the local government’s efforts at place brand,

tourism, heritage, and economic development, all of which tie into a broader struggle between

fostering Shetland’s national awareness and expanding Shetland’s jurisdictional capacity.

Particular attention is paid to how history is used variously by the community to express

exclusivity and by the local government to promote inclusivity.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Form and Content of the Thesis

1.2 Literature on Heritage

1.3 Literature on Ethnicity and Nationalism

1.4 Literature on National Identity Discourses in Britain and Scandinavia

Literature on Shetland Heritage and Identity 25

1.6 Literature on Island Studies 28 1.7 Fieldwork Methodology 31 Chapter 2

Picts, Vikings, Scots, and Fairies in Shetland Historiography Prior to David MacRitchie

When Shetland was Still Scottish 39

‘The Pictish Question’ and the Noble Shetland Viking 44

2.3: ‘Our Reddest, Readiest Blood’: Jessie Saxby’s Shetland Narrative

Descriptions of Trows, 1529–1888 59

2.5: Descriptions of Merfolk, Selkie-Folk, and Finns, 1701–1888

Chapter 3 Picts, Vikings, Scots, and Fairies in Shetland Historiography after David MacRitchie

3.1: David MacRitchie’s Testimony of Tradition

3.2: ‘That Monument of Misguided Industry’: Reactions to MacRitchie

MacRitchieism in Shetland 105

3.4: Shetland Folk Belief Writing after Saxby

3.5: Recent Supernatural Scholarship and Petta- and Finn- Placenames

Chapter 4 Present-Day Conceptions of Picts, Vikings, Scots, and Fairies

4.1: The Interrelated Concepts of Picts, Vikings, and Fairies in Fetlar

4.2: MacRitchieism in Shetland Today 146

Norse Romanticism and Scandinavian Identity in Shetland Today 160

Anti-Scottishness and Shetland Exceptionalism 174

Chapter 5 Shetland Place Branding, Tourism, and Heritage Development

The Roles of Tourism and Place Brands in Island Communities 178

Development of the Shetland Brand 197

The Heritagisation of Shetland 205

What Tourists Want and What Tourists Offer

Brand Values 222

Chapter 6

Conclusion

6.1: Summary 228

6.2: Nationality or Capacity? 231

Endnotes

Bibliograpy

Chapter 1:

Introduction

1.1: Form and Content of the Thesis

This thesis concerns the rather narrow question of how the historiography of Picts, Vikings,

Scots, and fairies influences economic development in Shetland. At its heart though, this is an

investigation into neither Shetland historiography nor Shetland economics. Instead, the

argument advanced here – namely, that historiography is relevant to economic development

inasmuch as it informs and is a reflection of local identity concepts – will be seen from a

broader perspective. This is a case study of how culture and economy are interlinked and why

it is sometimes valuable to research these two fields in tandem.

Due to its varied subject matter, the thesis is broken up into six more or less distinct

chapters. Chapter 1 (the present chapter) offers an introduction to the thesis’ form and content

as well as a literature review and explanation of methodology.

Chapter 2 concerns Shetland historiography from the Early Modern period until the 1890s

and how its development was guided by external scholarly and literary currents. The 1880s

saw influential writings by the Shetland author Jessie Saxby, who was the first popular writer

to shape Shetland’s growing Norse romanticism into something resembling a historical

narrative. The chapter culminates with a discussion of writings about various types of fairies

from Shetland tradition.

Chapter 3 looks at Shetland historiography following the publication of Testimony of

Tradition by the Edinburgh scholar David MacRitchie. Testimony of Tradition provided

Saxby with a scholarly framework for her historical narrative, and her 1932 Shetland

Traditional Lore popularised the Shetland identity concept that persists more or less

unchanged to the present day. The historiography of local folk belief was instrumental in

constructing this identity, and Saxby’s MacRitchie-inspired assertions concerning fairy

traditions have been repeated by most later Shetland authors who touch on the subject at all.

Whereas the research in Chapters 2 and 3 is largely confined to written sources, Chapter 4

presents the results of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in Shetland in 2007. These results

demonstrate that the historiography discussed in the previous chapters has had a lasting

influence on Shetland identity, influencing local nationalism, anti-Scottish sentiment, and

conceptions of history.

Chapter 5 considers how this historiography-informed identity has come into conflict with

the Shetland Islands Council’s attempts to develop a more marketable Shetland brand and

thereby increase tourism revenues, boost investment and skilled immigration, and expand

jurisdictional capacity. This analysis makes use of current theories within a variety of fields,

most notably heritage studies, island studies, and place brand research.

Chapter 6 is the thesis’ Conclusion. This both sums up the contents of the previous

chapters and considers the practical challenges raised in Chapter 5 from a broader perspective,

arguing that questions regarding the role of tourism in small communities are not often graced

with easy answers. What is best for the community is not always best for the local economy;

what is best for the local economy is not always best for the regional and world economy; and

quite often, the cost-benefit analysis of tourism development is more complex on both sides

of the equation than it at first appears.

This thesis’ somewhat unorthodox structure deserves comment, if only because it might

otherwise prove disconcerting. The chapters comprising the thesis’ body (Chapters 2–5) are

each quite distinct. Much of the distinction between the chapters comes from their varying

methodological backdrops. Thus, Chapters 2 and 3, with their focus on textual research, differ

markedly from either Chapters 4 or 5, which use folklore methodology and theories from

island studies respectively and therefore differ markedly from one another. An unfortunate

result of this is that there may at times appear to be a lack of continuity of argument between

the chapters simply because the chapters speak, as it were, different scholarly languages. The

start and close of each of the chapters offer something of a bridge to the next or the preceding

chapter, and the Conclusion represents an attempt to “translate” the findings of the thesis as a

whole into a language that is broadly applicable across the humanities and social sciences.

This is vital because, behind the medley of methodologies, the thesis makes a very real

argument. The historiography analysed in Chapter 3 would be incomprehensible without

Chapter 2. The subject matter of Chapter 4 would remain decontextualised – just as it has in

most previous studies on this topic – without the preceding chapters. The underlying message

of Chapter 5, for its part, is that the study of local economy needs to take historically

influenced identity issues into account, an impossible task unless the historiography itself has

been studied.

Thus, this thesis is not merely an interdisciplinary study; it is an argument for

interdisciplinary studies. However, the exceptional divide between some of the topics and

disciplines considered, at least from a traditional disciplinary mindset, means that this thesis

has its limitations. This thesis, sitting astride as it does four academic traditions (history,

folklore, island studies, and heritage studies) and drawing from a number of others (for

example, place branding research, microeconomics, and tourism studies), could not hope to

deal with the topics in question at a sufficient level of depth when seen from the perspective

of any one discipline’s standards. Additionally, as the literature review below will

demonstrate, some of the topical foci of this thesis have received but scant scholarly attention

over the past half century.

For example, when it comes to historical research concerning Shetland folk belief, nearly

all of our sources are what scholars would consider primary sources, regardless of what the

authors of these sources thought of them personally. In this case, it was necessary to basically

start from scratch insofar as scholarly analysis of the Shetland primary sources was

concerned. This would be a weighty topic for an entire thesis, yet when the present thesis

seeks to consider folk belief specifically in relation to so many other topics as well, it

becomes impossible to hope for the wished-for degree of scholarly thoroughness.

This wished-for degree of thoroughness, however, only exists – it bears repeating – from a

mono-disciplinary perspective. Though split into four distinct chapters, the body of this thesis

is not intended to be evaluated on a piecemeal basis. Its sections on past Shetland folk belief

do not represent a study of Shetland folk belief per se; they represent a portion of what is

ultimately a study of how local identity influences place branding and public diplomacy. To

expect the final word on Shetland folk belief from such a study would be like expecting the

final word on Sir Walter Scott from a study on the emergence of the kilt as the Scottish

national dress. Wide topical range and interdisciplinarity is not an excuse for slipshod

scholarship, but it is a justification for not getting distracted by topics that are tangential to the

overall research question, however interesting they may be in their own right.

The practical result of this is that, in Chapters 2 and 3, we are largely reliant on written

sources, and the breadth of our study prevents us from surveying all kinds of written sources

with equal thoroughness. We are primarily reliant on tracing historical trends through books

about Shetland. For example, when we consider the influence of Jessie Saxby, it is through

the lens of the books that were written subsequent to her important works, and we lack much

evidence concerning the extent of her readership and the immediate reception of her writing.

To a degree, we could expect that such evidence would be forthcoming from dedicated

archival research, but such research will have to wait until a study is undertaken that has these

issues in particular as its central theme. The present depth of historiographic research is

sufficient for the present purposes, and where there exists special uncertainty regarding issues

of the transmission of ideas, this will be made clear in the text.

This thesis was researched and written as a whole and is designed to be evaluated

holistically, specifically as an interdisciplinary study. Such an approach is not entirely novel.

In the field of folk belief research, W. Y. Evans-Wentz’s 1911 The Fairy Faith in Celtic

Countries makes a point of combining historical with ethnographic material precisely because

the author realises that these types of material support his thesis better together than either

would on its own.1 More recently and more convincingly, David Hufford’s The Terror That

Comes in the Night combines historical, ethnographic, and medical research to argue a point

that challenges the very fundamentals of many theories of folk belief.2 Hufford’s study in

particular – with its relatively shallow discussions of the historical and medical research –

raises the question considered above concerning lack of detail. The answer seems simple

enough, however, since becoming either a full-time historian or a neurological expert would

evidently have detracted from Hufford’s ethnographic work, and becoming an expert in all of

these fields at once would have been the work of a lifetime. When confronted with

interdisciplinary studies, we must either make do with what is possible or take the stance

interdisciplinary studies are not viable.

Perhaps a more relevant example of interdisciplinary scholarship is that of Bo Almqvist,

whose work on cultural links between Ireland, Britain, and the Nordic world has not only

touched on the Northern Isles but has also used ethnography, history, and textual analysis to

explicate one another.3 A mixed ethnographic, historical, and sociological approach is taken

by Callum G. Brown in his 1998 Up-Helly-Aa: Custom, Culture and Community in Shetland,

though Brown is notably reticent to associate his work with folklore, which he hardly

recognises as an academic discipline at all.4 Thus, interdisciplinary studies of Shetland do

exist; they are, however, rare, as are academic studies of Shetland in general up until the surge

in Shetland studies that has taken place in the past decade.

Some academics with strong interdisciplinary interests separate their writings from

different disciplinary standpoints into different publications. For example, Michael Herzfeld

has produced key works in ethnography and history; some of his books are resolutely

interdisciplinary, and some are resolutely either ethnography or history, even in cases where

Herzfeld has written from the other topical and methodological standpoint as well.5 As we

shall see in Chapter 1.6 below, island studies has fostered a strongly interdisciplinary

approach, as is evident in the research and publications of many of this emerging field’s

leading lights.

Islands, in fact, may even represent something of a special case: 2010’s Finding Their

Place: Islands in Social Theory conference, sponsored by the International Geographical

Union, is set to consider the past and present-day use of real and imagined insular microcosms

as laboratories for fundamental research in the humanities and social sciences. Although the

present thesis does not attempt anything on so grand a scale – introduces neither a radical

theory nor even a novel framework for examining culture and economy –, it exists within the

tradition of research that seeks to exploit the unique characteristics of island communities in

order to gain a greater depth of understanding of broad sociocultural processes.

1.2: Literature on Heritage

Because heritage is one of the central issues discussed by this thesis, current research within

heritage studies is vital to our understanding of the topics at hand. Although we adopt Owe

Ronström’s conceptual model (see below) and the rather unusual terminological choices that

accompany it, we are informed by a range of other writers on heritage, with Tunbridge and

Ashworth being central among them.

When we refer to history, we do so with the understanding that all history is a selective

interpretation of objectively unknowable past events. Heritage production is a historical

process that creates and maintains ownership over a particular past. For Tunbridge and

Ashworth, when people produce heritage, ‘the present selects an inheritance from an

imagined past for current use and decides what should be passed on to an imagined future’.

Inheritance is thus central to heritage. Furthermore, Tunbridge and Ashworth are keen to

distinguish between the physical heritage objects and the heritage itself:

The idea here is that it is not the physical elements of heritage that are actually traded, such as historic monuments or sites, but intangible ideas and feelings such as fantasy, nostalgia, pleasure, pride and the like, which are communicated through the interpretation of the physical elements. […]

It is obvious that the product of the transformation process is not synonymous with preserved relict historical resources. By definition, heritage exists only in terms of the legatee and thus the heritage product is a response to the specific needs of actual or potential users.

In recent decades, academics and policy makers have increasingly differentiated between

tangible and intangible heritage, a trend supported by the latter’s UNESCO codification.7

Nevertheless, it is the essentially intangible idea of inheritance that distinguishes all heritage

from other forms of tangible or intangible culture. In this sense, all heritage is intangible

inasmuch as it is heritage.

Tunbridge and Ashworth’s 1996 Heritage Dissonance is influential on account of its

assertion that heritage is by its nature contestational:

At its simplest, all heritage is someone’s heritage and therefore logically not someone else’s: the original meaning of an inheritance implies the existence of disinheritance and by extension any creation of heritage from the past disinherits someone completely or

partially, actively or potentially. This disinheritance may be unintentional, temporary, of trivial importance, limited in its effects and concealed; or it may be long-term, widespread, intentional, important and obvious. […] The attempted creation of a universal heritage which provides an equal but full inheritance for all is not only essentially illogical but the attempt to approach it rapidly creates its own problems (p.21).

Nevertheless, in 2005, Ashworth, Graham, and Tunbridge write:

Heritage has thus become a global issue because it is so deeply implicated in the processes of social inclusion and exclusion that define societies characterised by ever more complex forms of cultural diversity. While its origins can be linked to the nineteenth-century rise of ethno-nationalism and Romantic notions of attachment to place, heritage can also function as a form of resistance to such hegemonic discourses and a marker of plurality in multicultural societies.

They key here is that this resistance to hegemonic discourses is itself internally hegemonic.

Various inheritances occupying the same territory only represent ‘a marker of plurality’ when

viewed in aggregate.

Tunbridge and Ashworth’s above opposition to the concept of universal heritage is echoed

in the conceptual model developed by Owe Ronström of Gotland University. This model

avoids labelling heritage as tangible or intangible, and instead of concerning itself with

objects of heritage, it focuses on how heritage is selected and created. Ronström divides what

is generally simply called heritage in English (as we have used the term above) into three

categories, the Swedish concepts of concepts of ancient lore (fornminnen), tradition

(tradition), and heritage (kulturarv). These are both categories of ‘production of collective

memory’ and phases in the Gotland community’s relationship with its past. Ronström uses his

model to analyse the heritage/tradition conflict in today’s Gotland: heritage promoters in the

town of Visby have gained the upper hand, and with the aid of restoration and building codes,

central Visby has been transformed into a homogenous Medieval heritage product.9

For Ronström, although tradition and heritage use similar markets and legitimisations, they

possess ‘two rather different modes of production’. Basically, ‘while tradition tends to use

time to produce “topos”, place, and distinct localities […], heritage tends to use place to

produce “chronos,” specific pasts that are more loosely rooted in place’. Tradition usually

centres on ‘customs, rituals and expressive forms’ and heritage on ‘monuments, groups of

buildings and sites’. Tradition and heritage ‘structure feelings’ differently, with tradition

producing nostalgia, ‘a longing for and mourning over lost good old days, together with

commitments to honour a specific local past’ and heritage evoking ‘a much more generic past

that you may pay an occasional visit to without much nostalgia, obligation or grief’. Tradition

is thus more exclusive than heritage: in order to enter into a tradition, one must have a place

in its genealogical system. One must enter into the community of individuals that makes a

geographical entity a place (Ronström, pp. 8–9).

The interesting point for us is Ronström’s assertion that:

If tradition produces the local, heritage is clearly tied to larger units, such as the nation, Europe, or as in World Heritage, the entire world. Not everybody can have or appoint heritage, which is why heritage production, to a much higher degree than tradition, is in the hands of specially approved professional experts who select what is to be preserved according to certain approved criteria. […] Heritage tends to ‘empty’ spaces, which makes it possible to refill them with all kinds of inhabitants. In Visby, the Middle Ages is rhetorically populated with people of diverse origins, Germans and Swedes, jokers and jesters, tradesmen, knights and violent kings. But the space does not belong to any of these people. Heritage resists local people’s claims for indigenous rights. While tradition can be produced locally, the production of ‘heritage’ is centralised and produces something beyond the local and regional, beyond the distinctive, the ethnic and the multicultural. It is everybody’s and therefore nobody’s (Ronström, p. 9).

Ronström’s distinction between tradition and heritage complements the observations by Smith

and Waterton on intangible heritage and the authorised heritage discourse respectively.10

Although Ronström’s model is based on Gotland’s cultural history, it is applicable to other

communities as well. A procedural consideration of inheritance allows us to distinguish

between types of inheritance objects that are difficult for the tangible/intangible dichotomy to

categorise. For example, Ronström’s work lets us differentiate heritage-centred national

folklife museums like Skansen in Stockholm and Den Gamle By in Århus from tradition-

centred local folklife museums even though both types can be located in old buildings,

include performance traditions, and be either urban or rural.11

One difficulty with using

Ronström’s model is that all other authors who we quote and cite will simply refer to

tradition, heritage, and ancient lore as heritage; it is therefore necessary to view such

references in the generic senses in which their authors intended them.

Section 1.3: Literature on Ethnicity and Nationalism

Ethnicity and nationalism are central to this thesis. It is not our aim to enter into a debate on

the various theoretical approaches to these subjects, but since we interpret these terms in a

broad sense, some justification is necessary.

Regarding ethnicity, we follow Ashworth, Graham, and Tunbridge:

Race is often seen as synonymous with ethnicity, the latter arguably being the most fundamental basis of perceived distinction between human groups. Although the usage of the term is elastic and often vague, an ethnic group can be defined as a socially distinct community of people who share a common history and culture, and often language and religion as well (Sillitoe and White, 1992). While ‘ethnicity’ is very often used simply as a synonym for ‘race’, this definition points to a more flexible interpretation. [...]

Ethnicity and ‘race’ are distinct social phenomena and should not be conflated although they are often difficult to separate. Nor should their derivatives, ethnocentrism and racism (Werbener and Modood, 1997) (Ashworth, Graham, and Tunbridge, pp. 29–30).

We will use race and ethnicity consistently so as not to be misunderstood. Not all of the cited

authors make this distinction, and indeed, it would be ungenerous to insist that everyone be

equally pedantic. Particularly when dealing with pre-twentieth century authors, we will find

that race and ethnicity are often conflated for good reason considering the scholarly theories

of the time. The position taken by recent scholars is more an act of revising and redefining the

words than of correcting popular usage.12

Our use of ethnic group and nation will generally coincide. Though distinctions are often

made and can at times be useful (see below), our decision is bound up in the question of how

to refer to social movements and cultural sentiments that promote a particular ethnic group.

Ethnocentricism is today too loaded of a term for polite debate: just as ethnicity and race have

merged in the popular mindset, so have ethnocentricism and racism. We view the use of

nationalism as preferable in this context since the alternatives are so apt to be differently

understood by non-specialists and even academics in other fields.

This is not to say that nationalism is an ideal alternative. The academic literature on and

the level of theoreticisation of nationalism have increased significantly in the past decades.

Peristianis views this as ‘a development which obviously relates to the resurgence of these

phenomena in the real world’.13

It is equally possible though to consider the recent scholarly

interest in nationalism mainly as a terminological development: Dekker, Malová, and

Hoogendoorn, for instance, look at it as little more than non-empirically informed scholarly

navel gazing.14

As we shall see in Chapter 5 below, the golden age of the nation-state seems to be nearing

its end— if, indeed, it ever really began. Much of the recent literature on nationalism is

couched in the discourse of tumultuous national identity surrounding these trends, even when

it would seem to suit particular authors’ needs were it not so. Boeva, for instance, dates the

current resurgence in scholarship to the 1970s but notes that ‘from the end of the 18th

century,

nationalism has been an extremely important factor in European history’. By taking ‘the

modernity of nations as our starting point’, Boeva thus defines his subject in relation to the

history of the nation-state even though he is primarily interested in subnational nationalism

and grants particular attention to the ethnosymbolist approach, which does not insist on

nationality being an exclusively modern concept.15

In fact, there is a general tendency for scholars of nationalism to link it in one way or

another with territoriality. Boeva’s précis of ethnosymbolism embodies some of the

challenges inherent in this:

National identity and nations should be considered as specialised developments of ethnicity and ethnic communities. In comparison with the ethnic community, the nation has a much more developed public culture and historical home country, in addition to common rights and obligations. Based on these characteristics, Smith defines the nation as:“a named and self-defined human community whose members cultivate common myths, memories and symbols, possess a distinctive public culture, occupy a historical homeland and observe common laws and shared customs (Smith 2004, 17). For the ethnosymbolists, a theory on nations and nationalism must be based on the premise that ethnicity is key in the creation and the continued existence of nations (Boeva, 18).

The necessity of occupying a homeland is a fundamental point for many scholars. For

instance, Pitchford, following Hechter, differentiates nations from ethnic groups explicitly

along these lines:

An ethnic group will have historical links to a homeland, but a nation (or a substantial share of its population) continues to occupy that homeland. In other words, the territoriality of the nation is a present-day reality, rather than part of the group’s “shared historical memory.”

Going beyond mere territoriality, the modernist/constructivist approach to nationalism focuses

on functions of the state (Boeva, p. 20). Thus, for instance, José Itzigsohn’s and Matthias vom

Hau’s study of Latin American nationalisms sees states as playing ‘a central role in

establishing and maintaining national discourses’.17

Tunbridge and Ashworth’s concept of heritage dissonance, however, highlights the flaw in

linking nationalism to the nation-state: a nation-state might only be a nation-state in the eye of

the beholder. Take, for example, the Russian doll formations of nationalism and/or

ethnocentricism within the United Kingdom. There are feelings of distinctive cultural identity

regarding 1) the UK as a whole, 2) the UK’s recognised constituent countries (i.e., England,

Scotland, Wales, and Northern Island), 3) communities within the constituent countries (i.e.,

Cornwall in England and North East Scotland in Scotland), 4) communities within the

communities within the constituent countries (i.e., Isles of Scilly in Cornwall and Shetland in

North East Scotland), etc. This layering of identities is problematic when one insists on

associating national character with sovereignty. Are the English a nation when they lack an

exclusive legislative apparatus? Does Scotland count as a state, and do the Scottish people

therefore qualify as a nation? If so, was this the case prior to the establishment of the Scottish

Parliament in 1998? Furthermore, although large numbers of the Cornish ethnic group reside

in their homeland of Cornwall, can Cornish nationalism be said to exist when Cornwall is not

a state and when only a very small minority of the people of Cornwall are self-described

Cornish nationalists? Are Shetlanders a nation when relatively few of them wish (as we shall

see in Chapter 4) to attain statehood? These questions are more or less easily answered by the

modernist/constructivist approach.

In this thesis, on the other hand, we hold that all of these questions need to be answered in

the affirmative. Peristianis’s study of Cypriot nationalisms is useful to consider here.

Peristianis (pp. 101–02) asks that we look at the Cyprus conflict in terms of a clash between

territorial/civic/“Western” nationalism and ethnic/“Eastern” nationalism. As Colin Kidd has

shown, however, “Western” territorial nationalism has had ethnic justifications since the

Early Modern period.18

As Kearney notes, the question of whether the nation grew out of the

state or the state grew out of the nation is a major issue dividing scholarly discourse regarding

nationalism.19

We cannot attempt to resolve it to everyone’s satisfaction in the present study.

Peristianis nonetheless deserves credit for emphasising the problematic issues involving

discourse on enosis (union with Greece) among Greek Cypriots: here is ethnonationalism on

the part of an expatriate community that also possesses civic nationalism for territory it

occupies as well as territory it does not occupy. This civic nationalism, however, is just as

cultural as is the ethnonationalism itself; it simply delimits the ethnic group in a different way.

Thus, we have some Greek Cypriots identifying themselves primarily as ethnic Greeks, some

as ethnic Cypriots, and some as equally Greeks and Cypriots (Peristianis, p. 108). It would

take a very pedantic – or partial – observer indeed to claim that the Greek Cypriots do not

constitute a nation. This is despite the fact that, from a territorial standpoint, this community

neither inhabits its ancestral homeland (Greece) nor controls and inhabits the entirety of the

Republic of Cyprus (which international law sees as encompassing the whole of the island of

Cyprus).

Nationality has been a fraught topic not just in anthropology and political science but in

international relations (IR) as well. Ole Wæver, writing in a Nordic context on European

Integration and National Identity, stresses that the resurgence in ‘the shared focus on culture

and identity has, unsurprisingly, not led to agreement on how identity and culture should be

studied or how they can inform a general theory of international politics’.20

Pertti Joenniemi,

writing in this same volume, advances the intriguing argument that Finland has been more

open to European integration than its Nordic neighbours precisely because its relatively recent

ascent to sovereignty means that ethnicity is not conceived primarily in relation to the state.21

The developmental history of Finnish nationalism and its relationship to elite and vernacular

conceptions of culture is analysed by Keith Battarbee, who draws some useful generalisations

from the Finnish experience.22

Finland, of course, remains a multiethnic state, though whether

the Finland-Swedes belong to the Finnish nation is a question to which most ethnic Finns are

likely to answer ‘yes’ and most Finland-Swedes are likely to answer ‘no’.23

Lindström, for his

part, sees nations as preceding states and cogently argues that the modern state owes its

modernity to its integration of the nation. From his Åland perspective, the question is less

whether a nation can exist without a state than whether a true state can exist without

integrated cultural and economic functions.24

1.4: Literature on National Identity Discourses in Britain and Scandinavia

Chapter 1.3 considered the state of literature concerning nationalism as a concept. Chapters 2

and 3 of this thesis, however, also look at past nationalist movements in Britain and

Scandinavia, particularly in the nineteenth century, and how these affected the development

of Shetland identity.

This thesis uses the term Scandinavia in the sense that it is used by most Shetlanders, to

mean the Nordic countries (i.e., Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Faroe, Åland,

and Greenland). Practically speaking though, few Shetlanders include Åland and Greenland in

their conception of Scandinavia. We are aware that this definition of Scandinavia runs counter

to the most common usage within the Nordic countries themselves. However, the alternatives

are imperfect. Norden would be awkward in this English-language text, and even the Nordic

countries would be misleading as it would suggest that our Shetland contributors are

explicitly intending to include Finland – and thus the Finnish cultural area – in their

categorisation. In reality, the Shetland usage of Scandinavia is meant to refer to the

Scandinavian cultural area (implicitly, the places in which a Scandinavian language is

spoken). However, Finland’s cultural status (both real and imagined), ignorance concerning

the Nordic languages, and lack of awareness of past cultural and political relations between

the Nordic countries means that such terminological subtleties of are little use when

considering the views of Shetlanders. We thus opt for the Shetland vernacular definitions and

use Scandinavian, Nordic, and Norse synonymously. Although other options may be

preferable in other contexts, this inclusive approach is used – with similar reservations –

frequently enough in the English-language literature concerning the Nordic area as a whole.25

Generally speaking, research on historical nationalisms has not tended to be comparative in

nature, and this lack of ‘a systematic comparative approach’ has made it difficult to detect

‘parallels in the historical development of nationalist and regionalist movements on a

European scale’ (Boeva, p. 11). Thus, for example, although much work has been done,

especially on the British side, to compare nineteenth-century British and Scandinavian

nationalisms with one another, there has been relatively little work comparing these

nationalisms with national movements elsewhere. A notable exception is Herzfeld’s Ours

Once More, which explores nineteenth-century Greek nationalism’s roots in international

scholarship and nationalisms. Though focused on issues of present-day concern, the above-

cited European Integration and National Identity volume, edited by Lene Hansen and Ole

Wæver is, for its part, unusual in its specifically systematic comparative analysis of Nordic

nationalisms.

This thesis does not operate under David Lowenthal’s heritage paradigm, which regards

heritage as a distinctively Western and post-Medieval process. Nevertheless, Lowenthal’s

discussion of how pan-European Enlightenment processes influenced the development of

historical narratives is interesting for the insight it provides into the development of European

nationalisms.26

A similarly broad perspective is provided by Colin Kidd, whose work on the

Early Modern period’s ‘ethnic theology’ and its lasting effects provides this thesis with a

framework for understanding the historical links between the concepts of race, ethnicity, and

nation.27

Kidd sees fundamentally Biblical understandings of race outlasting Biblical

absolutism itself:

Although the disciplines of ethnology and philology were in the process of abandoning the overt Biblical content of ethnic theology, the underlying theological structures of these evolving disciplines would survive well into the nineteenth century, not least in a commitment to the idea of a unitary Creation. By the same token, the idea of polygenesis remained until the middle of the nineteenth century on the radical fringes of British intellectual life. It appeared […] in the work of the late Enlightenment racialist John Pinkerton (1758-1826), which combined a critique of the Old Testament, a Voltairean anti-Judaism, polygenesis and a virulent Celtophobia.

It is no coincidence that Pinkerton’s theories would belatedly influence those of David

MacRitchie, whose writings are central to the argument contained in this thesis. As racial

ethnology did advance, however, it manifested itself in Scotland as a battle between Celtic

and Anglo-Saxon, then Celtic and Norse identities. As we shall see in Chapters 1 and 2,

Shetland Norse romanticism was a fairly direct – and late – import from mainland Scotland

and Scandinavia. Though late-nineteenth century Shetland writers came to portray even

Lowland Scots as Celts, this is at odds with the self-portrayals of many Lowlanders during the

1800s.29

Stefan Hall makes the important argument, however, that the Highland-Lowland

identity divide was long standing, and a sense of ethnic difference in Scotland certainly

preceded a sense of racial difference.30

Focusing on the nineteenth century development of theories of Indo-Europeanism, Stefan

Arvidsson’s 2006 Aryan Idols sheds light on how a field of scholarship that began as a means

of proving the essential unity of mankind (or at least European mankind) came to be used to

assert the inherent superiority of particular European nations. The story of Aryanism is

likewise the story of the birth of philology and racial anthropology, international scholarly

movements that had a profound impact on understandings of Shetland identity.31

folklorist Richard M. Dorson gives further insight on how late-nineteenth century British

folklorists and anthropologists confronted and utilised the emerging theories on race.32

Andrew Wawn’s 2000 The Vikings and the Victorians represents the most thorough study

to date of the crosscurrents of Viking romanticism and Norse scholarship that were so strong

in England, Scotland, and Scandinavia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Though

Wawn pays relatively little attention to Shetland (which was, after all, more influenced by

than influential to mainland romanticism), his excellent survey presents a counterpoint to the

limited perspectives of many authors who have written about Shetland romanticism in

particular. In line with Kidd’s argument above, Wawn shows how interest in the Vikings

developed from a basis in literary and legal ideals into a full-fledged ethnic and eventually

racial romanticism. He also shows that, like the romanticised Celts, the Vikings were mutable

in meaning:

The old northmen are variously buccaneering, triumphalist, defiant, confused, disillusioned, unbiddable, disciplined, elaborately pagan, austerely pious, relentlessly jolly, or self-destructively sybaritic. They are merchant adventurers, mercenary soldiers, pioneering colonists, pitiless raiders, self-sufficient farmers, cutting-edge naval technologists, primitive democrats, psychopathic berserks, ardent lovers, and complicated poets.

We shall see later that it was in part this variety of imagery that made it possible for

Shetland’s groundbreakingly romantic author Jessie Saxby to advance the Viking world as the

best of all worlds.

Although lacking the benefit of present-day theory and post-World War II hindsight, Oscar

J. Falnes’s 1933 National Romanticism in Norway is nevertheless a useful reference on

nineteenth-century Scandinavian Romanticism. Its focus on the constructed ideal of

Norwegian folk language and culture (as opposed to a focus on Viking romanticism) is a

welcome one, particularly since – as we shall see in Chapters 2 and 3 – Shetland’s own

romantic movement took inspiration from Norwegian nationalism and the ethnography the

bolstered it.34

As national romanticism has come to be an accepted feature of nineteenth-

century Scandinavian social development, the topic has gained inclusion in a number of

general historic reviews, including Byron J. Nordstrom’s Scandinavia Since 1500 and Neil

Kent’s The Soul of the North, both of which seek to place the movement in a pan-Nordic

context.35

Authors considering more recent trends in Nordic nationalism as well the historical

influences that play upon these trends offer important material for our understanding of

present-day Shetland nationalism’s own historical roots. We have already had occasion to

mention European Integration and National Identity (edited by Hansen and Wæver), the

constituent essays of which consider the periods of national consolidation in Denmark,

Norway, Sweden, and Finland for clues regarding current attitudes toward the European

Union. Ethnicity and Nation Building in the Nordic World, edited by Sven Tägil, is also

relevant inasmuch as it considers the phenomenon of subnational ethnonationalism across the

Nordic area.36

1.5: Literature on Shetland Heritage and Identity

In 1831, A. G. Groat said of Orkney and Shetland that ‘There are probably few districts of the

same size in the world about which more has been written’.37

Amazing though Groat may

have found it that the Northern Isles should possess one of the world’s best-documented

contemporary regional cultures in the early nineteenth century, it is perhaps just as astounding

that the same can be said of Shetland today. As a result, this North Atlantic archipelago (pop.

22,000) presents both special opportunities and challenges for historiographic research.

Although Shetland, in common with many island communities, can act as a controlled

laboratory, relatively free from unknown external variables, the outsized volume of material

written about the islands is such that it is impossible to study more than a fraction of it. By the

same token, the quantity of publications concerning Shetland makes it easy to overestimate

the amount of secondary material available. As we shall see in Chapter 3, for all of the general

history books that Shetlanders have written about their own community over the past century,

there are none that pass even basic historical muster from an international perspective; they

must be regarded as primary sources on local identity rather than as non-scholarly secondary

sources.

Until recently, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to Shetland identity.

Anthony P. Cohen, who undertook groundbreaking research on the island of Whalsay, spends

little time on Shetland identity as such, focusing on how identity is constructed in Whalsay in

particular. He highlights, as we shall do ourselves, the sense of local exceptionalism:

This does not signify parochialism so much as a deeply ingrained view of the outside world as the source of unpropitious influences. The larger world was not seen as inherently malevolent but as ignorant of the circumstances of life in Whalsay – for which it could be excused if it did not interfere continuously and complicate those circumstances to the extent of appearing to subvert the islanders’ best efforts to cope with them. The line of external domination runs through Scottish landlordism to nineteenth-century mercantilism and on into the political and bureaucratic regimes of the present day.

Not everything which comes across the boundary is negative: but most negatively regarded things do originate elsewhere. Certainly Whalsay beliefs and practise are positively valued relative to those of the outside. Moreover, other outside people, especially if they are not Shetlanders, do tend to be regarded with [...] little sympathy.

The lack of attention Anthony P. Cohen gives Norse romanticism is made up for by

Bronwen J. Cohen’s simultaneous work on this issue in particular. Her 1983 University of

Manchester PhD thesis Norse Imagery in Shetland remains the best study of Shetland

romanticism’s nineteenth- and early-twentieth century development. The present thesis does

not seek to replicate Bronwen J. Cohen’s excellent work; the more limited scope of Cohen’s

research allows her to explore sources – particularly archival sources – at a depth that would

be impossible here. As a result, Chapters 2 and 3 of this thesis refer frequently to Norse

Imagery in Shetland and otherwise operate implicitly from Cohen’s historiographic

perspective. The same is true for how we regard the largely unpublished research of the

Shetland archivist Brian Smith, surely the individual with the most comprehensive knowledge

of Shetland history. Neither Cohen nor Smith have much to say, however, regarding the

historiography of folk belief, which is a central consideration of the present thesis. As such,

although we have avoided needlessly reinventing a very-well made wheel, we seek to

supplement the contributions of Cohen and Smith with analysis of this relatively unexplored

topic.

Bronwen J. Cohen devotes some attention to the survival of Norse romanticism into the

present day, asserting that the voices of anti-romantic reaction have not won out:

The disenchantment with ‘Viking waffle’ does not appear to have become, so far, widely shared. The emphasis and imagery associated with Shetland’s Norse past has been developed and sustained through its continuing exploration and exposition by local antiquarians and through its continuing symbolic representation and ‘ritual’ enactment.

This is, indeed, confirmed in my own fieldwork, some of the results of which are presented in

Chapter 4. Cohen makes note of Up-Helly-Aa here and elsewhere, when she emphasises that

it was the major players on the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Shetland literary

scene who helped develop the festival into its present-day, Viking-oriented form (B. J. Cohen,

pp. 281–82).

While not necessarily disagreeing with this, Callum G. Brown’s Up-Helly-Aa considers the

festival from a more sociological perspective and as such perhaps insufficiently stresses the

degree to which the emergent Norse romanticism motivated changes to the symbolism and

ritual of Up-Helly-Aa: the fact that Up-Helly-Aa did not contain Viking imagery in the mid-

nineteenth century should be considered in light of the fact that Shetlanders in general did not,

as of yet, consider themselves to be particularly Norse. Nevertheless, Brown’s study (p. 53) is

excellent in its discussion of the complex relationship between Up-Helly-Aa’s ‘mythical’

content and the historical knowledge of the festival’s participants:

Convention and customary behaviour become vital as the setting in which rituals acquire such symbols. The origins of symbols – or of the conventions or rituals within which the symbols are set – is also significant. […] The past is used as a community reference, but is used in a selective manner to resonate with the present. A popular or folk history can be constructed which is ahistorical – a myth – and impervious to empirical or rational scrutiny. Academic research on Shetland identity has increased in the past decade, and a number of

other postgraduate researchers were undertaking fieldwork in the islands concurrent with the

present study. The recentness of this research means that many of the results remain

unpublished, yet it has nonetheless informed our own understanding of local identity. For

example, Emma-Reetta Koivunen and Deirdre Hynes have analysed representations of

Shetland in tourism literature. Grassroots tourism literature, Koivunen finds, does not always

represent the community as the community views itself; the absence of brand consultants does

not necessarily mean the absence of cultural commoditisation.40

However, as Koivunen and

Hynes discover, heavily branded tourism literature may be inclined to ignore Shetlanders and

their culture entirely.41

Atina Nihtinen has compared Shetland with Åland, discussing how attitudes toward dialect

and language relate to nationalism. Although Shetland and Åland are by no means directly

comparable, Nihtinen is correct in viewing local dialect/language as a tool for reinforcing

cultural difference.42

Similarly considering how identity is expressed in the present day,

Thomas Simchak has compared the Shetland community’s means of coping with and

exploiting the oil industry with the experiences of Norway and Alaska.43

Meghan Forsyth,

Kathryn Jourdan, and Katarina Juvancic have all continued in the Shetland

ethnomusicological tradition pioneered by such researchers as Patrick Shuldham-Shaw and

Peter Cooke and have studied how musical performance both expresses identity and acts as a

conduit for new ideas and practices into this identity.44

1.6: Literature on Island Studies

Island studies is an emerging field and one that has from its inception emphasised

interdisciplinarity. The two established peer-reviewed periodicals dedicated to island studies,

Island Studies Journal and Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island

Cultures, are nearly manifestations of this approach, hosting articles from business,

economics, the humanities, and the social sciences. Overviews of the field’s history can be

found in the introductory editorials to be both Island Studies Journal and Shima.45

Just as

Owe Ronström, who is active within the field, provides our model of heritage and tradition, so

does island studies’ broader research into the intersections of culture, economy, and

geopolitics inform out perspective on Shetland’s place in the world.

Central to the emerging geopolitical perspective within island studies is the idea that policy

research should not be blind to culture and identity. According to Henry F. Srebrnik:

Culture and ethnicity have in the past often been ‘relegated to the status of epiphenomena’ by many political scientists and economists, regarded as merely part of the ‘superstructure’ of given societies rather than as an engine of change (Brown, 1989, pp. 1–3). Providing non-sovereign ethnic communities with political legitimacy, it was felt, would undermine international stability by encouraging small peoples to seek statehood. Many were enamoured of sheer size, which they equated with efficiency and viability.

However, Srebrnik and others argue that though ethnicity and sovereignty operate on different

levels, they are closely connected in practice.

This has resulted in island studies researchers taking a generally pragmatic approach to

issues of statehood and nationality. Nationality is accepted as a genuine attribute that must be

respected, yet it is also stressed that for even the most strident of island nationalists, full

sovereignty is not always the best option. This is the conclusion of two field-shaping edited

volumes produced by Godfrey Baldacchino and David Milne, Lessons from the Political

Economy of Small Islands: The Resourcefulness of Jurisdiction (2000) and The Case for Non-

Sovereignty: Lessons from Sub-National Island Jurisdictions (2009). Baldacchino and Milne

have been most influential in their emphasis on jurisdiction as a resource that islands may be

uniquely placed to exploit. Like all resources, however, there is a risk of overexploitation, of

jurisdictional capacity being expanded beyond an island community’s abilities. Focus is

therefore placed on the flexing of non-sovereign jurisdictional capacity. Barry Bartmann’s

work has been crucial in this regard, examining how paradiplomacy works in practice.47

Baldacchino, Milne, and Bartmann are all based at the University of Prince Edward Island.

These studies have informed the project work being carried out by the AICIS (Åland

International Institute of Comparative Island Studies) organisation in Åland. For example,

Agneta Karlsson’s modelling of the relationships between jurisdictional capacity, natural and

human resources, and island economies reinforces the findings of the research coming out of

Prince Edward Island.48

Whereas Karlsson grounds her work – interdisciplinary though the

subject matter may be – in the language of economics, Michel Leseure of the Isle of Man

International Business School is taking an operations management approach to some of the

same issues.49

Indeed, the partnership that has formed between the Isle of Man International

Business School and the Island Dynamics organisation serves as evidence of just how

interdisciplinary such collaboration can be. Island Dynamics originated out of the 2009

Taking Shetland out of the Box conference organised by the University of Aberdeen’s

Elphinstone Institute. Though explicitly interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral in scope, Island

Dynamics thus has its roots in the humanities, and its network of participating researchers

includes not only familiar names from island studies such as Godfrey Baldacchino and Philip

Hayward (the latter of whom is editor of Shima) but also academics from folklore,

anthropology, history, archaeology, etc. who happen to be studying islands but are

unaccustomed to viewing their work as island research per se.

My own previous publications are important for the present thesis inasmuch as these peer-

reviewed articles concern issues that have been insufficiently discussed elsewhere. Thus, we

will at times be compelled to refer to my own writings inasmuch as their published status and

positive reception within the field to an extent vouch for the validity of some of my more

ambitious arguments. The articles in question are ‘Nothing but a Shepherd and His Dog:

Social and Economic Effects of Depopulation in Fetlar, Shetland’(Shima), ‘Branding from

Above: Generic Cultural Branding in Shetland and other Islands’ (Island Studies Journal),

and ‘Uninherited Heritage: Community Reaction to Heritage without Inheritors in Shetland,

Åland, and Svalbard’ (International Journal of Heritage Studies).50

Island studies has also nurtured a strong tradition of tourism studies. Since island tourism

presents a number of unique challenges and opportunities, our analysis of tourism in this

thesis will generally take an island studies perspective, except in those cases where our

reference to heritage studies takes us somewhat further afield. We may recall regardless that

Ronström’s model is taken from an insular case (i.e., Gotland).

For its quality and topical breadth, the 2001 Mediterranean Islands and Sustainable

Tourism Development: Practises, Management and Policies (edited by Dimitri Ioannides,

Yorghos Apostolopoulos, and Sevil Sonmez) is particularly noteworthy. In their introductory

essay, the editors make a strong case for viewing island tourism in the context not just of

profits but of its relationship with local governance, culture, the structure of the economy, and

the natural environment.51

In the same volume, Tom Selwyn and Tom Selänniemi separately

discuss what we might see as peculiarly insular issues of heritage dissonance; José Fernando

Vera Rebollo argues, in essence, for greater Mediterranean brand diversity as a means of

safeguarding the environment; and Dimitri Ioannides and Briavel Holcomb, for their part,

question whether upmarket cultural tourism – often taken for granted as being the most

desirable type of tourism – really is the best option.52

The spread of island studies as a

discipline from its Mediterranean strongholds like the University of Malta into the North

Atlantic has led to increasingly sophisticated analysis of tourism in cold-water islands. For

example, Thomas G. Baum et al. discuss the government’s role in guiding tourism policy, and

Baldacchino and Leseure have both considered cold-water island place branding in

particular.53

Thus, while folklore sensibilities and methodologies (discussed in 1.7) drive much of the

present work, the holistic outlook of island studies ties together this thesis’ various topics.

Although the scope of the present work is certainly very wide, its interdisciplinarity is in

keeping with the field of scholarship to which it belongs.

1.7: Fieldwork Methodology

Most folklorists and anthropologists ground their work in the ethnographic method. Although

one can write about folklore without having conducted ethnographic fieldwork, it is this

fieldwork that provides folklore’s primary sources. In splitting the folkloric process into two

actions (identification and interpretation), Alan Dundes emphasises the primacy of

ethnography for contextualising collected folklore “texts”; folklore may need ethnological

interpretation to be relevant, but interpretation without texts is not folklore scholarship.54

Although not many folklorists today argue that the discipline should be accorded scientific

status, ethnographic fieldwork can be said to yield scientifically falsifiable results.

Ethnography is not a monolithic concept. Not only do different disciplines – folklore,

anthropology, oral history, communication studies, sociology, etc. – possess different

ethnographic traditions, but there are wide variations within the fields as well. Some of this

variety owes as much to presentation during the writing-up process as it does to actual

divergence in method while in the field. For instance, Henry Glassie’s 1982 Passing the Time

in Ballymenone, perhaps one of the most important folklore monographs of the past three

decades, can be lauded for its commitment to participant observation. Glassie spends long

periods of time in the field becoming part of the local community by forging close

friendships, attending ceilis, helping out with the farmwork, and so on. Everyone in the

community knows that he is there as a researcher, but the fieldwork transcriptions he places in

his book appear natural and unforced. Indeed, when describing his 1977 research trip, Glassie

emphasises that he tried to only record narratives after first hearing them in something akin to

a natural context:

I came to hear stories from ceilis, from their situation, rather than the other way around, and that was good, for I knew how they fit their scene, and I knew I was dealing with tales that were alive and throbbing with importance. They could lead me into culture, but I happened on them as they were told and had returned to record only those I heard first in ceilis as part of a general program of interview.

In order to obtain his transcripts, Glassie engages in the necessary evil of conducting

interviews, yet his knowledge allows him to a great extent to present even these interview

texts as contextualised activity within the community.

The above quote from 1982 shows Glassie at the height of his own narrative powers: he

has found a poetic narrative voice that roots him firmly in the field. Compare this, however,

with Glassie’s description of this same period of fieldwork from his 1975 All Silver and No

Brass: An Irish Christmas Mumming:

This book’s first part consists of four conversations I had with people about mumming. I present them to you as they happened. They were tape-recorded and in transcribing the recordings I made no changes in the play’s text or any of the anecdotes and kept other editing to a minimum.

Although Glassie brings just as much contextual knowledge to bear on his subject in 1977 as

he does in 1982, his earlier writing presents his recordings more formally. This may in part be

because he has not yet perfected his tone and cadence, but more significant is the effect that

his subject matter has on his presentation. Whereas Passing the Time in Ballymenone focuses

on stories and tales (on self-conscious performance acts), All Silver and No Brass focuses on

personal memories that are rarely discussed by Glassie’s contributors. In other words, while

tales have some natural contexts (for instance, ceilis), descriptions of local Christmas

mumming traditions do not; the mumming anecdotes only come up because Glassie, as an

interviewer with a tape recorder, asks about them. As a result, Passing the Time in

Ballymenone an All Silver and No Brass are presented in such a way that familiarity with

either one of these books alone would not give a reader insight into the full methodological

scope of Glassie’s fieldwork even though both books discuss the same time, place, and

people. To use another example, Anthony Cohen’s aforementioned Whalsay is likewise

based on participant observer fieldwork, yet Cohen’s constant emphasis on the unknowability

of the Other prevents him from ever writing as one who is on the inside of the community.

This can be kept in mind when considering the present thesis, Chapters 4 and 5 of which

make significant use of ethnographic fieldwork I undertook in Shetland in January–July 2007.

During these seven months, I had part-time paid employment in the town of Lerwick as a

youth club worker and supermarket cleaner. In other words, I was a participant observer who

could undertake performance ethnography by working alongside members of the community

who knew that I was a researcher but generally gave this fact little thought.

However, I also conducted interviews with 75 individuals, all but one of whom were

Shetland residents. The semistructured nature of these interviews and the fact that, with only a

few exceptions, they took place in the contributors’ homes, workplaces, or leisure spaces

mean that they were not entirely devoid of context. These were not laboratory conditions. No

matter how unusual of subjects I discussed with contributors, I still saw them to some extent

acting out their daily routines: thus, for instance, I could note that while natives of the town of

Scalloway invariably offered me tea, coffee, and biscuits in the middle of an interview,

contributors living elsewhere in Shetland almost always prepared these refreshments before

the interview began. I never attempted to follow up on this particular observation, but it is an

example of the sort of observation that could not be made in a strictly controlled investigative

environment. Generally speaking, ethnographic interviews permit an excellent understanding

of context.57

They provide knowledge of the contributors’ personal situations, modes of

speaking, and other aspects that come through unclearly – if at all – in non-ethnographic

research. Additionally, the ability to speak about research questions as part of a relatively

natural conversation means that one can follow up on hints from contributors and that

digressions can take place, revealing significant issues that were not known to the researcher

in advance.

My 75 interviewees represent a range of social, geographical, gender, and age backgrounds

within Shetland, including both incomers and natives who have grown up in the islands. I

placed special though not exclusive emphasis on people who I knew to be interested in

Shetland identity. The fieldwork’s most serious methodological weakness is that the all but a

few of my contributors are adults, and a substantial majority of these are over the age of 40.

However, considering that this study aims to analyse Shetland identity’s present-day

expression, particularly by those whose opinions dominate the local media and public sphere,

the older age brackets are of primary importance. In addition, my participant observer status

in youth settings gave me insight into the opinions of young people as well.

I allowed my list of interview contributors to grow organically: one contributor would

suggest another, and so on. While the present investigation names some of its contributors,

the majority are undifferentiated. This is not because of a preference for forced anonymity.

Rather, the scope of the argument is such that offering contextualised accounts of even half of

the contributors would make a thorough investigation of the subject matter impossible.

Furthermore, I have decided not to quote statements that might be construed as embarrassing

to contributors or offensive to others, even where contributors have granted me permission to

do so.58

Unattributed quotation has been avoided as well; in small, dialect-varied communities

like Shetland, lack of attribution is often a poor preserver of anonymity. Because of this,

unattributed statements concerning Shetlanders’ attitudes should be taken as generalisations

resulting from my fieldwork as a whole. Future publications more fully dedicated to working

with interview transcripts and better able to present contributors’ comments in an appropriate

light might be able to strike a finer balance.

All but a handful of my formal interviews were based around a set of questions to which I

requested answers. Nevertheless, an ethnographic interview is not the same as a personally-

administered questionnaire: even though I could generally work my entire set of questions

into the interviews, the interviews’ discussion format precludes strict regularisation of

questions. Thus, wording of questions varies. In many cases, a contributor’s response to one

question from my list would provide the answers to other related questions without

prompting. Indeed, one of the advantages to ethnographic methodology as opposed to some

questionnaires, surveys, and focus groups often carried out within the social sciences is that a

skilled interviewer can elicit many answers without prompting, thereby avoiding responses

given simply on the basis of the contributor answering according to the perceived desired

response of the questioner. Where prompting has been necessary in the quoted material

presented in this thesis, the prompt itself is quoted as well. That said, it has been my

experience – having carried out over 150 formal, in-depth ethnographic interviews in

Denmark and the UK – that the risks of presented by prompting are minimal in cases in which

prior attempts to elicit a statement without recourse to promoting have failed: contributors

rarely recognise prompting when it occurs, and false positives resulting from sensitive,

restrained prompting tend to be quite obvious.

This is not to say that ethnographic fieldwork is a cure-all methodology for every type of

social research. The more purely ethnographic the research is, the less control one has over

variables, and the less useful the resultant data is for purposes of comparison and

reproduction. By the same token, the more purely quantitative the research is, the less ability

the researcher has to learn about unknown unknowns, and the less useful the resultant data is

for understanding how the topic of inquiry influences and is influenced by its environment.

To go back to the Henry Glassie example, we can also note that certain topics are easier to

research by observation, and others are easier to research by means of interviews. For

example, I might not be able to fully understand how Shetland nationalism is expressed unless

I observe Up-Helly-Aa taking place. However, I will have difficulty determining some of the

nuances behind this nationalism (in our case, what Shetlanders think of the Picts) unless I ask

people questions about some subjects that rarely come up in the course of normal

conversation. As a consequence though, in a text like the present one, my research by

interviews is much more prominent than my research by observation. This is not because the

interviews were that much more important to the formation of my conclusions; it is because

transcribed recordings of interviews can be presented as raw data in a way that the results of

observation cannot.

When ethnography is involved though, there is no such thing as truly raw data. One issue

affecting all forms of social research is that of reflexivity. Whether as a naturalist observer, a

participant observer, or a leader of a focus group, the data collected cannot be viewed in

isolation from its collector. In the words of Paul Atkinson and Martyn Hammersley, ‘The

concept of reflexivity acknowledges that the orientations of researchers will be shaped by

their socio-historical locations, including the values and interests that these locations confer

upon them’.59

In relation to the community being studied, ‘all researchers are always marginal

to some degree while they are conducting research’ (Schensul, Schensul, and LeCompte, pp.

71–72). Even if the researcher were to otherwise belong to the community, the act of

researching is itself marginalising and distancing. It is partly out of recognition of this that

even academic folklore and anthropology writing can be more personal and introspective in

tone than academic writing from many other disciplines. As Marlene de Lane (pp. 180–181)

notes, the more scientific tradition of ethnographic realism has been challenged by a

polyvocal approach:

The traditional idealized, ‘scientific’ presentation was at odds with first-person accounts. The person speaking in the first person ‘I’, who could have assumed a persona different from the impersonalized, authorative scholar, was not allowed to surface in the text; being non-representative could be equated with being on an ego trip. […] Part of the contemporary problem with writing is to figure out how to present the author’s self while simultaneously writing the respondent’s accounts, and representing their selves.

If, then, the present thesis at times veers toward the personal, it is a result of an understanding

that the field affects the researcher, and the researcher affects the field. To use a very concrete

example, considering the informality of my semistructured interviews, it is not merely a

matter of indifference whether I get along well with my contributors. My own background

and personality influences the extent to which I can converse with a particular individual

easily and without affectation. It is no coincidence that contributors with whom I became

friends are so well represented among those who I name and from whom I quote in this thesis.

Ethnographic research yields the most usable data when contributors experience the research

and the researcher as natural and informal (de Lane, p. 41).

The most severe limitation to in-depth ethnography involves sample sizes.60

In the case of

my Shetland fieldwork, my 75 interviews amount to about 200 hours of recorded speech, and

probably a similar amount of time was spent in merely travelling to and from contributors’

houses. It takes, on average, six to eight hours to transcribe an hour’s worth of recorded

speech, meaning that, were I to completely transcribe my interviews, I would be undertaking

an additional 1000-or-so hours of work. Were this sort of timescale permitted to a researcher

working with surveys and questionnaires, it would probably be possible to canvass the entire

population of Shetland, not just 75 individuals. Obviously, a sample size of 75 does not allow

for particularly useful statistical rendering of results. Thus, any statements that I can, at the

end of my fieldwork process, make about Shetlanders’ conceptions of Shetland identity will

by nature be generalisations. Related to this is the issue that, while any single ethnographic

text is scientifically falsifiable, this is not true of the text’s interpretation. Interpretation of

ethnographic texts is highly subjective, and even if another researcher wanted to go as far as

to attempt to reproduce a study’s ethnographic component, there are too many variables to

make this possible.61

One of the great advantages of, say, surveys is that the researcher has

complete control over the phrasing of questions, thus reducing variables.

There are inadequacies and strengths to all forms of social research.62

It is because of this

that the present thesis makes use not only of ethnographic material but also more controlled

and statistically applicable research undertaken by other scholars.

Chapter 2:

Picts, Vikings, Scots, and Fairies in Shetland Historiography

2.1: When Shetland was Still Scottish

The first settlers of the Northern Isles were a Mesolithic people from mainland Scotland, and

the Iron Age saw Orkney and Shetland develop communities that are still archaeologically

evidenced by the remains of their villages and brochs (a type of tower house unique to

present-day Scotland). Later, the islands were exposed to Pictish cultural influence, and most

Shetlanders now use Picts as a generic term for Shetland’s pre-Norse inhabitants. Norwegian

pirates likely came to the Northern Isles in the 790s CE, with large-scale Norse settlement

occurring in the following decades. Although it is uncertain whether the Norse drove out,

assimilated, or exterminated the native inhabitants, their conquest resulted in the Northern

Isles possessing an almost-purely Norse culture. Harald Fairhair integrated Orkney and

Shetland into the Norwegian state in around 875, and Shetland retained a predominantly

Scandinavian culture for the following 400 years, after which Lowland Scottish cultural

influence gradually increased.

Although Shetland had been pawned by Denmark-Norway to the Scottish crown in 1469,

only a year after the pawning of Orkney, it does not appear to have taken on a Scottish

identity quite as rapidly as did the southern archipelago, and for all practical purposes,

Shetland remained tied for the next century to Scandinavia and the Continent rather than to

Scotland. Not until the creation of the ambitious Stewart earldom over Orkney and Shetland

in 1581 was there a Scottish attempt to exert political control over the Northern Isles, and

while Orkney’s economy had long been shifting south, that of Shetland was still – and would

still be for the next two and a half centuries – dominated by the Hansa and then the Dutch.

Indeed, the late arrival of Scottish political dominance in Shetland meant that the Reformation

was much delayed, with the Kirk structure only being erected with the arrival of the Stewarts.

Prior to the early 1800s, the extant descriptive texts on the islands to the North of Britain

largely limit themselves to Orkney. The result is that whereas the history of Orcadian

descriptive writing begins with Jo. Ben’s 1529 Description of the Orkney Islands, the earliest

post-Medieval writing of this kind concerning Shetland is a 1633 work by Robert Monteith,

Laird of Egilsay and Gairsay in Orkney, entitled Description of the Islands of Orkney and

Zetland.

In light of Shetland’s late Scottification, it is not surprising that Monteith should say of

Shetland in 1633 that:

The Natives are known from the Incomers by their want of surnames, having only Patronymic names. Many of them are descended from the Norvegians, and speak a Norse Tongue, corrupted, (they call Norn) amongst themselves, which is now much worn out. [...] They are generally very Sharp, and consequently docile, and because of their Commerce with the Hollanders, they promptly speak Low Dutch.

John Marr, writing in 1680, concurs, noting that ‘the Native Inhabitants [of Shetland], being

descended from the Norvegians generally have a Patronymical sirname, are nimble of body,

docile, hospital, dissembling, flattering, false, and lascivious’.64

Over time though, Scottish political and economic ties increased to the detriment of Norn

and other markers of Norse cultural identity.65

Shetland’s gradual linguistic shift is evident in

the 1700 report by the Rev. John Brand, who was sent by the Kirk’s General Assembly to

check up on the church mission in Orkney and Shetland:

English is the Common Language among them yet many of the People speak Norse or corrupt Danish, especially such as live in the more Northern Isles, yea so ordinary it is in some places, that it is the first Language their Children speak. Several here also speak good Dutch, even Servants though they never have been out of the Country, because of the many Dutch Ships which do frequent their Ports. And there are some who have something of all these three Languages, English, Dutch, and Norse. The Norse hath continued ever since the Norvegians had these Isles in Possession, and in Orkney (as hath been said) it is not quite extinct, tho there be by far more of it in Zetland, which many do commonly use.

For many native Shetlanders, English would have been the language of the officialdom,

Dutch of trade, and Norn of family and social life. It is noteworthy that, already at this point,

Brand specifies Shetland’s peripheral North Isles (Yell, Unst, and Fetlar) as Norn strongholds.

In 1733, Thomas Gifford [c. 1680–1760.], the active laird at Busta House, in present-day

Brae, also comments on the prevalence of Dutch and the decline of Norn, holding that the

latter language ‘continued to be that only spoken by the natives till of late, and many of them

speak it to this day amongst themselves; but the language now spoken here is English’.67

the end of the century, Norn would be dead or close to dead (Barnes, p. 26). Indeed, when

Thomas Gifford’s grandson Gideon Gifford writes a letter concerning the Norse influence on

the Shetland language to the visiting botanist George Low (1747–1795) in 1774, he mentions

only the continued existence of patronymics and Norse placenames.68

By the start of the nineteenth century, Norn had disappeared even in its North Isles

redoubts. Arthur Edmondston (1775–1841, uncle of Thomas and Biot Edmondston and Jessie

Saxby) of Buness House, Unst writes in 1809 that:

Zetland has been united to Scotland above three hundred years; and pure Norse or Norwegian is now unknown in it. It has long been wearing out; and the change appears to have begun in the southern extremity, and to have been gradually extended to the northern parts of the country. The island of Unst was its last abode; and not more than thirty years ago, several individuals there could speak it fluently. It was preserved, too, for a considerable length of time, in Foula; but at present there is scarcely a single person who can repeat even a few words of it.

The present language of the islands is certainly English; but good English, although well understood, is rarely spoken. I do not mean this observation to apply to the accent merely, but to the employment of words, and the construction and idiom of the English tongue. The common dialect is a mixture of Norwegian, Scotch, Dutch, and English.

Arthur Edmondston would have known the linguistic situation in Shetland’s North Isles as

well as anyone who cared to write about it. Up to this point, every writer we have considered

save for Marr makes much of the Dutch influence on the Shetland tongue. This should be no

cause for wonder. During his 1774 visit to Lerwick, Low enumerates the ships docked in

Bressay Sound:

There were about 400 Busses of several nations, as Danes, Prussians, French, Ostenders, but the greatest numbers Dutch, whose share alone amounted to upwards of 200 sail; with two English and one Scotch vessel, and one belonging to the town, all these on the herring fishery (Low, p. 66).

It may, then, come as a surprise that although historically knowledgeable Shetlanders today

are aware of the historical importance of the Dutch herring trade, the Dutch are not popularly

reckoned as having left much of a cultural imprint on Shetland. Instead, as we shall see, from

around 1800 on, focus in descriptive writing on Shetland’s Norse history increases

dramatically.

Significant English and Scottish interest in Scandinavian history stretches back to the mid-

1700s. At this early date, the interest was more Gothic than national romantic, largely due to

the extremely poor state of knowledge of Norse history: the first English saga translation of

any quality, James Johnstone’s The Norwegian Account of Haco’s Expedition Against

Scotland, did not appear until 1782.70

As with much else in Scottish cultural history, the

nineteenth-century development of Shetland identity is partly attributable to the efforts of the

author Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). In 1814, Scott wrote the first English-language saga

abstract, published in Weber and Jamieson’s Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, and in this

same year, he visited Shetland with the Commissioners of Northern Lights. This visit would

eventually form the basis for The Pirate, a Shetland-based novel published in December

1822. Just as Scott had played a formative role in the creation of both Highland and Lowland

Scottish romanticism, the author brought his historical knowledge to bear on Shetland:

although The Pirate takes place in the early 1700s, it is rich in overt Scandinavian atmosphere

(Wawn, pp. 60–83).

As an in-depth description of The Pirate would be out of place here, we will simply note a

single example of Scott’s Scandinavianising tendencies, which will be brought up again later.

One of The Pirate’s main settings is Sumburgh, a historical manor house, which was built by

Earl Patrick Stewart in 1605 and was already in ruins by Scott’s time. For the purposes of his

novel, Scott changes the house’s name to Jarlshof [Earl’s Court.] and gives it a Norse – rather

than an Early Modern Lowland Scottish – history. Over the following decades, Jarlshof – its

literary name having stuck – became a regular tourism site for visitors to the isles. The Pirate

not only had a major influence on Mainland Scottish Scandinavian romanticism; it also

alerted this movement to Shetland’s potential as Britain’s Scandinavian exemplar (Wawn, pp.

81–83).

Before there was Norse romanticism in Shetland, there was anti-Scottish sentiment (B. J.

Cohen, pp. 317–318). Shetlanders – or at least the Shetland elite who were writing at the time

– had constructed an “other” but had not yet constructed a clearly defined Shetland identity.

Thus, when Scott visited Shetland, he encountered not only a community that had set itself up

in opposition to Scotland but also one upon which he could overlay his own Norse historical

interests. Whereas Thomas Gifford could, as we will see below, go no further than berating

both Shetland’s Norse and Scottish rulers, Scott is really the first significant writer to refine

Shetland’s “us against them” concept by portraying the local-outsider culture clash as a

conflict of Norse versus Scottish sensibilities.

Even as outside interest in Shetland’s Scandinavian history flourished, conceptions of

identity within Shetland remained more or less stable. There are a few signs of celebration of

Viking heritage locally in the 1830s, such as the naming of a Lerwick boat after a character

from The Pirate, but the local romantic movement was at most a minor undercurrent in

Shetland cultural life (B. J. Cohen, p. 324). As the next section will show, Shetland’s eventual

transformation into a community shaped by Norse nationalism would come not through

literary channels but directly through the international community of philological and

anthropological scholars.

2.2: ‘The Pictish Question’ and the Noble Shetland Viking

It is easy to forget that it was already well into the nineteenth century before British

perceptions of Norse history and culture disassociated themselves from ancient Roman texts.

None of the classical texts deal with what we would now consider Norse culture at all, and

they contain very little of relevance to the Northern Isles. Thus, in 1700, Brand (pp. 22–23)

can write of Orkney and Shetland:

It is also probable, the Government of these Isles continued with the Pictish Princes, till the Dayes of Kenneth 2d. King of Scots, a Warlick Prince, who having prevailed with his Nobles contrairy to their own inclination, by a notable piece of craft, to engage in a War against the Picts, with an undaunted valour and courage, routed the Pictish Army and wasted their Countrey with Fire and Sword, pursueing them to the Orkney Isles which he then annexed to the Crown of Scotland, reigning from Orkney to Adrian’s wall Anno Dom. 854. Thence Orkney continued in the Possession of the Scots, till the Dayes of Donald Bane, about the Year 1099, who that he might secure the Kingdom to himself, promised the Isles to Magnus King of Norway if he would assist him with a necessary force; Which offer Magnus accepting, the Norvegians became Masters of the Isles, till Alexander 3d. about the Year 1263 recovered them by expelling the Norvegians; Which ever since were possessed and disposed of by our Kings.

In reality, the Norse first established settlements in Shetland in the late 700s, and the transfer

to Scotland did not take place until 1469. Brand’s history of Orkney is a highly condensed

account of that in James Wallace’s A Description of the Isles of Orkney, which was written in

1688 and published in 1693. Wallace holds that the Picts were a Germanic people.71

Knowledge of Shetland’s historical Norse rule had fallen away so quickly that an inquisitive

and well-read visitor in 1700 – not to mention a knowledgeable resident in 1688 – was

thoroughly misled.

Seventy-seven years earlier, Monteith had given a more or less correct account of the

pawning of the Northern Isles. Monteith has Orkney and Shetland originally settled by

Norwegian and Baltic Goths, later known as Picts. Eventually, the archipelagos come under

the control of ‘the Crown of Scotland’:

In after times the Norvegian Pirats seased them, from whom they were afterward recovered, and upon the marriage of King James the third, were given up with Orknay to our King, and were since annexed by Act of Parliament to the Crown (Monteith, pp. 79–80).

Like Monteith, Thomas Gifford (An Historical Description, p. 38) may have been better

placed to know the history of his own holdings than would have been the typical scholar or

churchman living in mainland Scotland. In 1733, Gifford provides an uncommonly nuanced

evaluation of contemporary historical thinking: He declines to conclude whether the Picts or

the Norwegians were the first settlers of Shetland, maintaining only that Shetland was settled

and influenced by both of the peoples at one time or another and that both were at any rate

‘Teutonic’ (20–22).72

Interestingly, Gifford (pp. 21–22) seems to attribute some pro-Norse

sentiment to the common Shetlanders:

The names of the islands and places in them are all Danish, and continue so for the most part to this day; and the customs, manners, and language of the old Zetlanders, with their way of living, were the same as in Norway, even down to the time of some old men yet living; and the greatest part of the vulgar inhabitants, and some of considerable note here, still reckon themselves of Danish extract, and are all Patronymics, whereby they are distinguished from those that have come from the continent of Britain, who have all surnames, and have for many years past been the most considerable, though the least numerous. Still these old Danish inhabitants value themselves much upon their antiquity, and scorn to take surnames as a novelty unknown to their fore fathers; particularly one Patrick Gilbertoon, of Islburgh, an old man about ninety years, alive at writing herof, reckons himself the 22d generation, in a lineal succession, possessors of Islburgh, stiled Patronymics; and many more here, that account themselves of very long standing.

Gifford may be somewhat exaggerating the common Shetlander’s Norse pride. It was in the

laird’s commercial interest to portray the Shetland crofters as set apart – both legally and

culturally – from farmers and fishermen elsewhere in Britain. If Gifford is writing in part to

proclaim Shetland’s separate legal status (under udal, rather than feudal, law), it is to be

expected that he would present examples of the native landowners’ similar acceptance of this

contended separateness: Gifford might simply be implying that Patrick Gilbertoon is using his

genealogy to assert udal rights to Islesburgh. It is, in any case, clear that Patrick is not being

used as an example of a typical Shetlander.

Debate about the Picts’ origins intensified as a result of the 1780s writings of John

Pinkerton, who provided new learned – though ultimately incorrect – arguments for the

Germanic origin of the Picts, positing that this had been a Scythian race.73

In the days of

Monteith and Thomas Gifford, the Pictish question would have been a relatively idle one, but

by the late-eighteenth century, it had become a major front in the emergent Celtic-Germanic

nationalism debate (D’Arcy, p. 44). The influential 1805 History of the Orkney Islands by

George Barry, Minister of Shapinsay, cites Pinkerton in holding the Picts to be a rather

civilised ‘people of ancient Scandinavia’ who ‘committed themselves to the mercy of the

waves’ and settled much of Scotland.74

This narrative displays the beginnings of a specifically

romantic account of Northern Isles history, for Barry argues that because Picts were

Germanic, their religion resembled that of the pre-Christian Icelanders. Expanding on

comments by Adamnan, Barry (p. 93) credits the Picts with possessing a supremely moral and

commendable religion. This is a rather early expression of what would become a tendency

within pro-Norse British national romanticism, as the Norse religion was taken to be

symbolically redolent of Christianity, even hinting at a Viking ‘precognitive understanding of

Christianity’ (D’Arcy, p. 40). The eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century idea that the

Northern Isles were first settled by a proto-Viking race is important because, as we shall see

later, it is at odds with what would become an underlying theme in Shetland’s foundation

At the moment, however, it will be difficult to fathom the intellectual development that

presents itself in Arthur Edmondston’s (pp. 17–18) 1809 work, written just two years after

that of Barry:

The Icelandic antiquarian Torfæus states, that the Orkneys were discovered three hundred and eighty-five years before the Christian era. [...] Mr. Pinkerton states that the Picts occupied Scotland three hundred years before the birth of Christ. Hence it is probable, that Orkney and Zetland were inhabited before the first Scandinavian irruption, and that both received their first possessors from Scotland. But the subsequent residence of the Picts and the Norwegians in these islands, obliterated every trace of their primary Caledonian ancestry, and the few imperfect vestiges of antiquity which Zetland at present affords, all bespeak a Scandinavian and Norwegian origin.

While Edmondston, like Barry, accepts Pinkerton’s views on the Picts, he amends their

practical significance for Shetland. Using the evidence of Tacitus differently than had Brand

and Barry, Edmondston takes the Romans at their word. He also makes concessions to logic,

arguing that Shetland’s ‘geographic situation would induce us to believe, that the first

inhabitants came from Orkney, and the northern parts of Scotland’ (p. 14).

Later in his book, Edmondston (pp. 31–32) writes:

The Zetland islands, as well as the other insular conquests of Harold [Fairhair], are said to have been inhabited, at the time of their invasion, by two distinct nations, known by the appellations of Peti and Papæ. The former appear to have been the Picts, who had long possessed them, and the Papæ are supposed, by the ingenious Mr Pinkerton, to have been a species of clergy. “The Papas,” he observes, “by the usual confusion of long tradition, here called a nation, were clearly the Irish papas or priests, long the sole clergy in the Pictish dominions, and who, speaking a different language from the Picts, were by the Norwegian settlers regarded, not as a distinct profession only, but as remains of a different nation.” (Inquiry, vol. ii. p. 297.)

The account of the Peti and Papæ ultimately derives from Historia Norwegie, a twelfth

century Latin-language chronicle of Norway.75

The Historia Norwegie account is particularly

interesting – as it was for Pinkerton and hence Edmondston – because it mentions the

Northern Isles’ previous inhabitants, something that the Orkneyinga Saga does not do. Here is

the Historia Norwegie account:

Originally those islands were inhabited by Pents [Peti.] and Papes [Papae.]. One of these races, the Pents, only a little taller than pygmies, accomplished miraculous achievements by building towns, morning and evening, but at midday every ounce of strength deserted them and they hid for fear in underground chambers. At that period these islands were not called the Orkneys but rather Pentland, so that the sea which separates the islands from Scotland is still known by the natives as the Pentland Firth [...]. Of the place where these Pents came from, we know nothing at all. The Papes were so called on account of the vestments in which they clothed themselves like priests, and for this reason all priests are known as papen in the German tongue. One of the islands is still named Papey from them. However, as the appearance and letter-forms of the books they left there behind them testify, they were from Africa and clove to the Jewish faith.

In the days of Harald Fairhair, king of Norway, certain vikings, descended from the stock of that sturdiest of men, Ragnvald jarl, crossing the Solund Sea with a large fleet, totally destroyed these peoples after stripping them of their long-established dwellings and made the islands subject to themselves (Ekrem and Mortensen, Historia Norwegie, pp. 65–67).

Doubtful though this evidence may be, when it comes to Norse-written testimony concerning

the pre-Norse inhabitants of the Northern Isles, it is all we have. The final paragraph roughly

matches statements in the Orkneyinga Saga. Historia Norwegie does not, at any rate, provide

nourishment for a romantic image of the Northern Isles’ pre-Norse peoples. Barry and

Edmondston both cite Pinkerton, and both would have had access to Wallace’s A Description

of the Isles of Orkney as well. So far, we have seen that Wallace, Brand, Monteith, Gifford,

Barry, and Edmondston all believe in Germanic Picts.

A further refinement to Edmondston’s Pinkerton-inspired chronology of settlement is

found in Samuel Hibbert’s 1822 A Description of the Shetland Islands, published just before

Scott’s The Pirate. Although Hibbert (1782–1848) and Scott were not in contact at the time of

writing their Shetland books, they independently present a unique Shetland cultural history.

By 1822, Pinkerton’s theories of Pictish origins had suffered some major blows, and Hibbert,

again leaning on classical sources, views the first inhabitants of Orkney as Celtic Picts from

Scotland, Pict being to Hibbert a rather confused denomination.76

After a lengthy discussion

of the periods of Northern Isles settlement, Hibbert sums up the issue in this way:

In the first period [of the history of Orkney and Shetland], when Agricola visited Orkney [in A.D. 84], a Celtic race very probably inhabited the country, who appear to have completely forsaken it a century and a half afterwards, since it is described by Solinus in the middle of the third century as a complete desart.

In the second period, Orkney, and probably Shetland also, were infested by a Gothic tribe of Saxon rovers: these were routed in A.D. 368, by Theodosius.

In the third period, probably at or before the sixth century, succeeded in the possession of these islands the Scandinavians, who were the progenitors of the present race of inhabitants in Orkney and Shetland (p. 18).

The pre-Norse Gothic tribe described by Hibbert spoke a Germanic language, and ‘it has been

supposed, that the Goths, the Getæ of Thrace, and the Scythians of Little Tartary, were of the

same race of people’ (p. 17). Hibbert thus rather audaciously circumvents the Pictish problem

by re-defining the word Pict as it is relevant to the Northern Isles experience. Hibbert labels

as Picts the people who we now know to have been proto-Picts or precursors of the Picts, and

the people who were, in reality, probably Celtic-speaking Picts, he turns into a nameless tribe

of Germanic pirates.

At issue in the misdating of the Vikings’ arrival in Shetland is the lack of information

regarding this event in the surviving contemporary or Medieval literature. Despite the

foregoing, Hibbert is aware of the Historia Norwegie account via Wallace. Hibbert (p. 249n)

writes:

There is a very obscure tradition, scarcely deserving the notice bestowed upon it by Antiquaries, on the subject of two nations named the Peti and Papae, who were utterly destroyed by Harold Harfagre. The Papae were the Irish priests; but by the Peti, a race of Picts is understood,– this name being indiscriminately given by the Scotch in the 15

century, to any description of early tribes or nations whom they had but indistinct traditions.

Part of Hibbert’s difficulty is that he sees Shetland’s brochs as essentially Germanic

constructions with Scandinavian parallels (p. 252). This point had been made previously by

both Barry (pp. 96–07) and Arthur Edmondston (pp. 117), the latter of whom states that

‘Some [of the brochs] would be built by the first Scandinavians who settled in the islands

[i.e., the Picts.], [...] and some would be erected [...] by the Norwegians’. Scotland’s brochs

are, in fact, of pre-Pictish or proto-Pictish origin. Clarification of the common scholarly early

nineteenth-century opinion concerning brochs is vital since the later shift away from this view

turns out to have been a prerequisite for today’s local perception of Shetland identity.

Like Barry, Hibbert presents an anachronistic, Christianised version of Norse religion, not

only emphasising Odin’s role as All-Father but also presenting ‘a personified evil principle

under the name of Surtur’ (p. 160). He furthermore envisions the proto-Viking Scandinavians

who came to Shetland sometime between the middle of the third century and the middle of the

fourth century CE driving out Druidic Picts (p. 161): since Hibbert quite reasonably

disregards the Historia Norwegie-derived account, he does not need to suggest that the Gothic

tribe crushed by Theodosius ever converted to Christianity and is at no pains to explain that

the Vikings encountered a Christian culture in the Northern Isles.

Far more than most of his predecessors, Hibbert (p. 39) is an admirer of the Norse legal

system:

The colonists of Shetland never acknowledged any legal civil authority but that with which the Grand Foude or Lawman was arrayed, who was the King of Norway’s representative. To the Earl of Orkney was granted the power of a military commander, but that it was never to be exerted in wresting from the udaller the free possession of his national laws, rights and privileges.

This echoes the long-running call of Gothic and Saxon freedom. It also anticipates the

elevation of Norse law that was to soon be undertaken by the expatriate Orcadian Samuel

Laing (Wawn, pp. 97–100). Although Hibbert appreciates the Old Norse, it is noteworthy that

he does not romanticise contemporary Shetlanders.

The next important description of Shetland comes from Eliza Edmondston (1801–69),

originally of Glasgow, in 1856. Intriguing though Eliza Edmondston’s Sketches and Tales of

the Shetland Islands may be on its own terms, it interests us primarily because it is written by

the mother of Jessie Saxby, who, as we shall see, played a central role in the formation of

Shetland identity. Eliza Edmondston romanticises Shetlanders even less than Hibbert and far

less than her brother-in-law Arthur Edmondston. Ever present in her book is a disapproval of

the irreligiousness of the common Shetlanders, who are ‘totally deficient in that deep,

reverential impression of sacred things, which has so long, and so favourably distinguished

the Scottish peasantry’.77

As to the vexed Pict question, however, Eliza Edmondston (pp. 14–

15) reflects the clash of Celtic and Norse/Saxon romanticisms raging in mainland Britain at

the time.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, the weight of scholarship had been creeping

toward ascribing the Picts non-Germanic origins. In 1866, for example, Hector MacLean

could use philology to argue that:

The first name given by the Romans to the bravest and most prominent people in North Britain, was Caledonii, Gael daoine, the fair or kindred men, which, it will be observed, is identical with one of the names, Gael or Gaedal, by which the Irish Scots were distinguished. And as it may be inferred from Tacitus’s remarks that they were fairer than the rest of the Britons, the name Gael daoine, or Geal daoine, was in every respect appropriate; indeed, from Tacitus’s description, and from the accounts of the ancient Gael or Feinn handed down by tradition and old Irish writings, it must be concluded, inevitably, that both peoples were of the same race, and that, in this respect, the Dalriads did not differ from the Picts, on whom they encroached. The name of Picts, latterly applied to the Caledonians by the Romans, is from the Gaelic word feadch, an army.

MacLean seems to posit a separate, pre-Dalriadic wave of Celtic migration to Scotland.

Considering that this is substantially closer to the truth than the earlier Germanic derivation of

the Picts, it may appear surprising to find this same author stating in 1891 that:

Pictones is a name apparently cognate with Picti, and the latter people were no doubt akin to the former. The Pictones were situated along the southern bank of the Loire, and were an Aquitanian people, on account of which, evidently, Augustus extended Aquitania to the banks of the Loire. Strabo tells us that the Aquitanians resembled the Iberians more than the Gauls. They were seemingly a Turanian people.

Furthermore, MacLean traces placename references to Picts or proto-Picts quite far afield:

‘With pet or pett, now Pit, sometimes, in a few instances, yet, Pet, a townland or hamlet, or

village, correspond Uraon Padda; Ho Hattu; Mundala, Hatu in Central India; Kota Patti, in

Southern India; all denoting village’. Here, Picts are Finnic and in the same family as the pre-

Celtic conquest inhabitants of Ireland.

MacLean’s development of thought is not, perhaps, as strange as it at first appears. More

than anything else, it represents a terminological shift. The debate on the hypothesised Uralic-

Altaic language family was exerting a practical influence on the study of Scottish and Irish

history. In 1866, MacLean is interested in showing that the pre-Anglo-Saxon and pre-Norse

inhabitants of the British Isles were non-Germanic while in 1891, he is intent on showing that

they were non-Aryan. The Celt/Teuton distinction in the earlier work nearly disappears, and

the British Isles are populated with a profusion of tribes, some basically Iberian, others

Finnic, others Median, others Urgic, and so on (MacLean, ‘The Ancient Peoples’, pp. 171–72

and 176–77). Despite what the term Iberian may suggest to readers today, the reference is to a

non-Aryan people, the proto-Basques who were believed to have once been the chief

inhabitants of Spain.80

Between 1866 and 1891, intervening scholarship had removed some of

the difficulties in MacLean’s theoretical development since, by this point, John Rhŷs had

argued that the Scots themselves were non-Celtic, thus permitting MacLean’s early assertion

of Scot-Pict unity to stand. Note also the increased blurring between racial and linguistic

research that was taking place in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Like MacLean, the Shetland antiquarian, Gilbert Goudie (1843–1918), is in possession of

this new scholarly understanding when he writes an illustrated academic article in 1893 on the

‘date and origin’ of the ‘round towers’ of Orkney and Shetland. Goudie discusses the debate

as to whether the brochs are Celtic or Scandinavian and chooses the non-Scandinavian side.

Indeed, he even (correctly) argues that the brochs could date ‘as far back as the

commencement of the Christian era, or earlier’.81

As Goudie’s sophisticated arguments show,

it is impossible to understand the local Shetland opinion of the Picts without recourse to off-

island scholarship. Men like Brand, Low, and Hibbert were more or less dilettantes when it

came to history and anthropology, but “the Pictish problem” had long been a matter of serious

scholarly dispute, the precise details of which are beyond the scope of this study.

It is with this movement in anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and philology in mind

that we must interpret our late nineteenth-century sources on Shetland racial theory, for

Shetland was by no means isolated from international intellectual currents. Laurence

Williamson of Gardie (1855–1936) – a postmaster, crofter, and intellectual in Yell – followed

philological trends, placing racial anthropology/ethnology among other aspects of

Shetlanders’ inheritance, and inheritance that he fears is ‘year by year slipping into the

grave’.82

In an 1894 letter to Francis Grant, Williamson writes:

This is one of the great “crises” in Shetland history, and ethnology, language, legends, folk-lore, customs, remains of the old religion, the unsecured archaeological and historical documents, will soon if uninvestigated be obscured, obliterated and lost for ever. I know the persistence of some of these things, but also how very much has been lost in my short life, and the signs of the times are not clear.

The ethnology, always interesting, I have got a clearer and enlarged view of during the last years. While I thought of the long history of migrations, flittings and intermarriages it seemed hopeless to discriminate the various elements to any extent or the source of many physical and mental traits. But since I became conversant with and used to apply the results reached by Professors Vigfussen [sic], Sayce and Weissman from diverse standpoints, and more locally by your book, which shows the Shetland feudal families to be one Norman-French kin, intricately intermarried, I find that the view of the persistence of race-types in a people, despite many intermarriages, is amply upheld by observation in Shetland. True, among the elements spoken of by history it seems to look here for the Frisian, or for the fair Aryan part of the Celtic mixture among the allied Norse and Scotch types.

Williamson was a member of a loose group of Shetland intellectuals – among them, Arthur

Laurenson, Gilbert Goudie, and J. J. Haldane Burgess – who cultivated links with foreign

scholars of Norse history and language, including Gudbrand Vigfússon, Jakob Jakobsen, Sir

George Dasent, and Karl Blind. Laurenson and Goudie led active public lives and, during the

early and mid-1880s, helped install Norse symbolism on an official level by planning the

historically allusive contents of Lerwick’s town hall and crest. For his part, Burgess was

instrumental in inserting Viking elements into the Up-Helly-Aa festival in the decades

surrounding the turn of the century (B. J. Cohen, pp. 451–58 and 472–76).

To what extent the ideas of these interesting and well-connected individuals have directly

influenced the Norse romanticism that forms a part of the prevalent Shetland identity concept

is, however, open to question. For example, although Laurence Williamson was a fascinating

character who actually made, via his correspondence with Jakobsen, a real impact on Shetland

scholarship, his impact on the way people across Shetland identified themselves seems, on the

basis of the extant literature, to have been minimal. The contributions of Laurenson and

Goudie, meanwhile, were primarily symbolic, and it is noteworthy that they had a definite

aim of promoting closer Shetland relations with Scandinavia, hence their disappointment at

the reluctance of the Scandinavian states to reciprocate (B. J. Cohen, pp. 452–53).

Although this circle of Shetland intellectuals exercised a significant influence on the

development of a distinctive Shetland identity concept, they did not create a decisive Shetland

narrative. As the nineteenth century came to a close, however, they did begin embracing a

narrative. Previous researchers seem to have missed the fact that this narrative had its roots in

the writings of another Shetland author, one whose romantic, populist style and aristocratic

background were quite dissimilar from those of the authors mentioned above, who tended

toward scholarship, socialism, or a mixture of the two. This was the novelist and poet Jessie

Saxby (1842–1940).

2.3: ‘Our Reddest, Readiest Blood’: Jessie Saxby’s Shetland Narrative It would be incorrect to say that the pre-1890 work of Laurence Williamson, Gilbert Goudie,

Arthur Laurenson, and J. J. Haldane Burgess had no impact on Shetland community

consciousness. Nevertheless, on the basis of the available evidence, it seems that their ideas

had yet to coalesce into a holistic worldview, and inasmuch as their writings were published

at all, they were published as newspaper or periodical articles or, in the case of Gilbert

Goudie, as specialist scholarly works. When the tradition of book-length descriptive writing

again began to flourish in Shetland, the deep narrative that it was able to sculpt quickly

superseded the somewhat empty symbolism publicly promoted by the periodical contributors.

John R. Tudor’s 1883 The Orkneys and Shetland: Their Past and Present State represents

the first significant Shetland descriptive book since Eliza Edmondston’s Sketches and Tales

was published in 1856. As we have seen, historiography had evolved significantly in the

intervening years, largely dropping the idea of Scandinavian origins for the Picts and by-

passing the Germanic/Celtic conflict in favour of philological Aryanism. From his book’s

start, Tudor writes of the Picts and the prehistoric broch-builders who inhabited the Northern

Isles as advanced and eventually Christian peoples without suggesting that they were of

Germanic origin.

Although it may appear contradictory, the de-Germanification of the broch-builders

represents the essential first step toward the complete romanticisation of the Norse: while

previous writers viewed the brochs as early marvels of construction, when this view quite

abruptly swung in the opposite direction in the 1890s, as we shall see below, it was no longer

beneficial for Shetland’s expanding middle class to associate its own racial origins with the

broch-builders. Tudor comments on the racial characteristics of Norsemen past and present:

A finer race, from a physical point of view, to all outward appearances, than the Shetlanders would be hard to find. One can almost fancy, when standing at one of the haaf stations, amongst the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed fishermen, that the crews which manned the long ships of the Viking fleets, have somehow come to life again, so little has the old Norse type been altered, as far as the peasantry are concerned, by the influx of Scottish settlers, who from time to time have taken up their abode in the islands.

Good looking, handsome even at times, as are the men-kind, you occasionally see

amongst the women faces of the most beautifully refined cast, such as are to be found rarely, if ever, elsewhere, amongst people of the same rank and file, in the British Isles.

Tudor’s description is hardly value-free and may be compared with that given by Hibbert

back in 1822:

The natives of these islands are rarely very tall; they are of the middle size, remarkably well proportioned, light and nimble. It is true, that all these characters are less observable among the females of the country; for the male sex, in relinquishing most species of domestic drudgery for the adventurous occupation of fishing, cause a more than ordinary portion of labour, fatal to the preservation of a delicate and symmetrical form, to devolve upon the poor females. The features of the Shetlanders are rather small, and have nothing of the harshness that so peculiarly distinguishes many of the Anglo-Saxon provincials in the north of England, or in some of the lowland districts of Scotland. The constitutional temperament of the Scandinavians is generally conceived to be sanguine, and since its characteristics are supposed to consist in a florid complexion, a smooth skin and hair brown, white, or slightly auburn, the natives of Shetland give satisfactory tokens of their national descent (p. 23).

We should perhaps consider it unlikely that the passage of time between 1822 and 1883 saw

Shetlanders, both male and female, physiologically transform in accordance with romantic

Viking imagery. Both Tudor and Hibbert see Shetlanders as racially Scandinavian, but the

two authors have much different ideas about what characteristics this implies. At the time of

Hibbert’s writing, the fusion of philology and anthropology – that is, the scholarly

development that first permitted the insertion of moral and ethnic values into race – was still

in its early stages. When Tudor wrote in 1883, on the other hand, “the new philology” had

reached its academic peak and been taken up by the public. Tudor’s racial statements are not

particularly original however, for the Viking/Saxon racial ideal had begun being forwarded in

both England and Scotland in mutual reaction to the earlier heyday of Celtic/Gaelic

nationalism.85

A child of this era of oppositional racial philology was Jessie Saxby, the daughter of Eliza

and Laurence Edmondston of Unst’s Buness House, niece to Arthur Edmondston, and sister

of Thomas and Biot Edmondston. We have already considered Eliza and Arthur, but it is

noteworthy that Laurence was himself interested in Scandinavian and natural history, and

Thomas would become a prominent botanist. The Edmondstons hosted a string of notable

visitors (including Adam Clarke, George Dasent, Prince Louis Bonaparte, Jean-Baptiste Biot,

Sir William Edward Parry, and Lady Franklin) at Buness House, but as Bronwen J. Cohen

notes, they had relatively poor links with “common” Shetlanders outside of Unst, and ‘the

family’s friendship with Lerwegians appears to have been within the upper echelon of

Lerwick society’ (pp. 367–68).

Jessie Edmondston married Henry Saxby, an ornithologist and later medical doctor, at the

age of 17. In 1871, they moved to Inverary, where Henry died two years later, widowing his

32-year-old wife shortly after the birth of their sixth child (B.J. Cohen, pp. 368–69). It was

during her ensuing 24 years in Edinburgh, prior to returning to Unst in 1898, that Saxby,

moved by circumstances to make a living from writing, was most literarily productive. This

period saw her publish dozens of books of poetry, popular history, prose fiction, and

autobiography. Saxby’s expatriate status and familial connections meant that her views on

Shetland history were considerably coloured by external theories and conceptions. Although

her works are now more or less forgotten in Shetland as well as elsewhere in the UK, her

influence on Shetland cultural consciousness can hardly be overstated.

In 1888, Saxby co-wrote with her brother Biot Edmondston the now unfairly disregarded

autobiographical-descriptive book The Home of a Naturalist. Despite Biot’s involvement in

the creation of this volume, the writing relevant to the present thesis is Saxby’s work. It is in

Home of a Naturalist that a distinctive Shetland romanticism first blossoms into a form

resembling that existing today:

Notwithstanding the satirical jokes of other provincialists, the Shetlanders continue to ‘take pride’ in calling themselves a distinct people, quite alien to Celt or Saxon, and bound to Scotland by few ties of kinship. Their habits, tastes, accent, physiognomy, are Scandinavian, and they have little sympathy with Celtic traits of character. Doubtless these marked differences were weakened at the time that Patrick Stuart and a horde of Scottish thieves infested Shetland, but the Norse element soon asserted its superiority again, and though the names of the intruders became common enough, yet the islanders never became Scotchmen, therefore the dialect only resembles the Scotch when they meet upon Scandinavian ground.

We might compare this with the statement made on the same subject by Eliza Edmondston

decades earlier:

The two most distinct races of men, from which the British nation has sprung, are well known to be the Gael, and the Sassenach or Teuton. In Wales, in Ireland, and in the North

and West of Scotland, we find obvious traces of the former, and of their language. But the Gael seems never to have inhabited Orkney and Shetland; which were perhaps first, and at all events, finally peopled by the genuine sons of the Northmen (pp. 14–15).

Whereas Saxby’s mother merely contrasts the Germanic peoples with the Celts, Saxby subtly

shifts the terms of the debate. In her writing, we hear for the first time in a descriptive work

on Shetland a blatantly anti-Scottish, anti-Celtic, and anti-English tone.

This sort of pro-Germanic national romanticism had, we may recall, its roots in England

and Scotland, yet Saxby severs the connection entirely: the English are mere Saxons, and the

Scots are thieves and/or Celts. Similarly, when introducing the book’s extensive section on

legends of the supernatural, Saxby writes:

Would that I were learned enough to make a proper use of the numberless legends, bits of song, idioms, words— all once so familiar. Fortunately I have a few of those ‘remains,’ which may serve as broken links that some one wiser than I can weave into a connecting chain between the modern Shetlanders and the Norsemen, whose blood is still the reddest drop of that mixed fluid which permeates British veins— or, as a Shetlander would express it, ‘Wir yatlin-blöd comes frae da Norne stock’ (‘Our reddest, readiest blood comes from the Norse ancestry’) (Edmondston and Saxby, p. 186).

We might, perhaps, consider the morsel of Shetland dialect that Saxby quotes here to be of

doubtful provenance. Regardless, as we shall see later, this idea of the “blood of the Vikings”

remains prevalent today.

In Home of a Naturalist, Saxby recounts the migratory Heather Ale legend (so well

analysed by Bo Almqvist (1991)), which tells of extermination of the Picts by the conquering

Vikings. She prefaces this legend with a description of how the Picts left their French

homeland and settled in Scotland and then Shetland, a narrative that is informed by two

absurd pieces of folk etymology in which Saxby clearly places no faith. Although this passage

is meant to be humorous, it introduces some novel ideas. Saxby writes of the Picts that:

They were very small, but strong and ingenious. They were very peaceable, kindly folk, but lazy. They built brochs, which were always

made so that one flat stone covered the top, and no one can tell how far down in the earth the lower rooms went; for the Picts, after finishing the tops of their habitations, continued to add vaults and cells and passages innumerable underneath the ground. They never provided more food than what was required for the day’s wants (Edmondston and Saxby, pp. 222–23).

None of the Shetland writers we have previously examined have said anything of the sort:

everyone but Tudor and Goudie who discusses the subject assumes that Picts were Germanic

proto-Vikings, and for their part, Tudor and Goudie are full of respect for them. It is evident

that Saxby has an off-island source for some of her knowledge. If nothing else, her

description of broch construction is not based on local scholarship.

So, where has Saxby received her ideas? Because previous writers on Shetland identity

have tended to favour examining the authors mentioned at the end of the last section, Saxby’s

Edinburgh-based intellectual connections have largely gone unexplored. This is a pity because

strong though circumstantial evidence suggests that one such connection was the historian and

anthropologist, David MacRitchie.

2.4: Descriptions of Trows, 1529–1888 Before we can understand the effect that David MacRitchie had on Jessie Saxby’s Shetland

anthropology and historiography, it is necessary to undertake an overview of writing about

Shetland’s folklore of the supernatural. This might appear to lead us rather far afield, but it is

a hitherto underappreciated fact that Shetland Norse romanticism and folklore of the

supernatural are intimately related. Additionally, as we shall see in Chapter 4 of this thesis,

Norse romanticism and historiography of folk belief have to come to play very real though

easily overlooked roles in Shetland’s economics and geopolitics.

This is not to say that Shetland supernatural folklore has been ignored by popular literature

and the scholarly community. To the contrary, A.G. Groat’s claim about Northern Isles

historiography can be narrowed down to folk belief as well: ‘There are probably few districts

of the same size in the world, about which more has been written’ (Groat, pp. 8–10). As the

Orkney and Shetland bodies of supernatural folklore involving fairies, which we will address

here, are so similar prior to the late-nineteenth century, we will draw on material from both

archipelagos.

Already in the first Early Modern descriptive work on Orkney or Shetland, Jo. Ben’s 1529

Description of the Orkney Islands, a relatively great deal of space is devoted to descriptions of

the supernatural. For example, Ben writes: ‘Shapinshay called (the Shipping Isle). The people

inhabiting this island are very ignorant: they worship fairies and other wicked beings’. Most

importantly for us, regarding the inhabitants of the island of Stronsay, Ben states, ‘They also

greatly believe in fairies (the Fairies), and say men dying suddenly afterwards live with them,

although I do not believe it. Trowis, under the name of a marine monster, very often cohabit

with women living here’.87

Note that, in context, the author does not doubt the existence of

fairies as such; he merely doubts that the dead go to live with them. This reference to trowis

predates by almost a century the earliest use of trow recorded by Oxford English Dictionary.

As far as the evidence permits, trow can be viewed as the Northern Isles equivalent of the

mainland British fairy, with all of the imprecision the latter word implies. The extensiveness

of the designation trow is highlighted already in Jo. Ben, where it refers to a marine spirit, and

in the early seventeenth-century Shetland and Orkney witch trials, one of which notes that, in

Northmavine, ‘Trowis ryse out of the kirkyeard of Hildiswick, and Holiecross Kirk of

Eschenes, and on the hill called Greinfaill’.88

It was a tendency of nineteenth-century folklorists to attempt stringent distinctions between

various names for supernatural beings, even when such differentiations were not supported by

their sources. For example, Thomas Keightley, one of the earliest comparative supernatural

folklorists, writes first about Scandinavian fairies and then proceeds to discuss ‘dwarfs or

trolls’ separately despite providing nearly typologically identical stories in both chapters.89

nineteenth-century Scandinavia, many primary sources label diminutive, ugly fairies as trolls

(Danish trolde) and human-sized fairies under a variety of names etymologically related to

O.N. alfar (Danish elvere, ellefolk, and elverfolk), yet there are still a host of names that could

refer to social fairies/trooping fairies of either sort (for example, names designating beings

that live in hills or mounds: Danish bjergfolk, højfolk, and højsknegte).

The late nineteenth-century Faroese linguist, Jakob Jakobsen (1864–1918), who compiled

a dictionary of Shetland dialect words with Old Norse roots, does not even give trow its own

listing although he does list troll. This might appear odd since trow is today limited in

geographical scope to Orkney and Shetland while troll has become widely known throughout

the English-speaking world. Jakobsen’s reason for making this distinction seems to be that

whereas placenames indicate that troll has had a very long history in Shetland, trow is a result

of Lowland Scots immigration carrying a Danelaw word to Shetland.90

Jakobsen is perhaps

incorrect. The OED lists no occurrence of troll prior to a 1616 Shetland witchcraft trial (in

this case, the word is trowis) and references troll in mainland Britain first in the nineteenth

century. Possibly on account of this, OED holds that the Northern Isles’ trow ‘survived from

the Norse dialect formerly spoken there’.91

Jakobsen has a hint of what may well be the truth, however, in his entry on the Shetland

word drow:

drow, sb., one of the “Good People”; drows, pl. gnomes; trolls. Parallel form to the syn. and more usual trow, s.b., poss. by blending with O.N. draugr (dead man, ghost), No. draug, m. In Ork. “drow, trow” is used to denote the devil. “trow” is L.Sc. (Jakobsen, I, p. 129).

Jakobsen, then, views drow, but not trow, as a distinctively Shetland word even though he is

uncertain about his etymology. He might have been more certain had he been aware of Jo.

Ben’s reference to sea trows. Like fairies, O.N. draugar (singular, draugr) is used to refer to

various sorts of land- or sea-based beings, not all of which are manifestly revenants. The

draugr was still commonly known in West Scandinavia in Jakobsen’s time (for example, it

appears in ‘The Fisherman and the Draug’ in Jonas Lie’s 1891 Trold collection), and even

today, a hardy tippler might be tempted by the Norwegian schnapps sold under the Draug

label.

As far as the evidence permits, it seems that the written association between draugr and

trow is first made by Sir Walter Scott in The Pirate: ‘Other [magicians] dealt with spirits of a

different and less odious class – the ancient dwarfs, called, in Zetland, Trows, or Drows, the

modern fairies, and so forth’.92

It is unclear whether Scott was actually given the drow

spelling during his short time in Shetland or whether this is just learned conjecture on his part.

Considering Scott’s interest in the Old Norse, the similarity between trow and draugr might

have been just too much to pass up. At any rate, Scott is not above making use of foreign

words: The Pirate also mentions pixies and nixes, two supernatural beings of popular belief in

Shetland that were known locally under different names.93

Further complicating matters is that the next such melding of trows and draugar appears in

Eliza Edmondston’s 1856 book:

Another of the universal superstitions of the Shetlanders, is that relating to the Drougs or Trows; in the present day more generally called “Fairy Folk.” But these are essentially a different race from the classical subjects of Oberon, who people the flower-bells,—drink from acorn cups,—and float on the moon-beams; and from the Irish fairies that dance round the daisies, and feast under the mushroom; and even from the useful and good-natured Scottish brownie’ (p. 21).

Edmondston may have received this idea from The Pirate, yet I am not convinced that

Edmondston – who, as this quote shows, was no expert on Scandinavian or British folk belief

– would have been able to make Scott’s hint explicit by changing the spelling from drow to

droug without the assistance of someone more knowledgeable, for example her antiquarian

husband, Laurence Edmondston. One piece of evidence in support of Eliza Edmondston’s

droug originating in Scott’s drow is that Jessie Saxby uses Scott’s term – and not that of her

mother – in Home of a Naturalist: ‘Having been always keenly interested in the Trows (or

Drows), of whom numerous stories are extant, I made friends with the husband of a witch,

hoping that he would be able to tell me something of their history’ (Edmondston and Saxby,

p. 189). This does not clarify, however, whether Scott has an actual source for his subtle

emendation.

Part of what trips up Jakobsen in his analysis of the word is what we noted above, that

nineteenth-century writers have a tendency to try too hard to differentiate among different

names for supernatural beings. This process had been underway in Scandinavia as well as

Britain for a number of decades prior to Jakobsen’s work, so Jakobsen, not being a specialist

in supernatural folklore, leaves his etymological interpretation at the mercy of the experts of

the day. Thus, Jakobsen identifies O.N. draugr as a ‘dead man, ghost’. This is correct up to a

point, for in the Scandinavian folklore of Jakobsen’s time, these beings are almost always

corporeal spirits of the deceased. The trouble is, Shetland was colonised by the Norse in the

Viking Age, not in the nineteenth century. While the draugr is often ghostly in Old Norse

literature, this is not always the case. As H.R. Ellis Davidson points out, not only do draugar,

giants, and hill-dwelling fairies often act in quite similar ways, they may sometimes even be

synonymous.94

Indeed, an alternate name for the ghostly draugr is haugbúi (hill-dweller),

which means the same as the generic Danish names for social fairies (bjergfolk, højfolk, and

højsknegte) mentioned earlier. This term even survived in Orkney, where the brownie-like

hogboy/hogboon (i.e., hill-lad, like the Danish højsknegt) was known.95

Thus, Scott’s

probable interpolation may have been both correct and based on false etymology.

It is not so strange that draugr and trow may once have been generalised names for

supernatural beings. After all, even if we ignore etymology, our primary sources on these

beings – whether from the Medieval, Early Modern, or Victorian periods – show consistent

associations between the fairies and the dead. In some cases, fairies merely steal people who

are wrongly believed to have died; in others, they actually take people after they have died;

and sometimes, the fairies themselves are believed to be the dead. Depending on one’s

interpretation, either the first or the middle of these two popular theories is illustrated in the

Jo. Ben statement we considered above: ‘They also greatly believe in fairies (the Fairies), and

say men dying suddenly afterwards live with them’ (Macfarlane, p. 315), and the latter belief

is evidenced in the Shetland witchcraft trial from which we have quoted (Black and Thomas,

p. 85). This analysis of the earliest recorded mentions of trows in the Northern Isles shows

that these sources do not give us as much information on the precise nature of Shetland folk

belief as is often assumed.

John Brand’s 1701 account of the Northern Isles also includes lengthy descriptions of the

supernatural. In line with Ben and with his times in general, the churchman Brand does not

disbelieve stories of trows, mermaids, and the like; he simply views the beings in question as

demonic. The purpose of Brand’s visit was to gauge the success of the Kirk in Orkney and

Shetland. Concerning Orkney, Brand writes that ‘Evil Spirits also called Fairies are frequently

seen in several of the Isles dancing and making merry, and sometimes seen in Armour’ (p.

96). As we shall see, this single, modest sentence came to be picked up by later authors with

points to prove.

From the late-nineteenth century onward, Shetland writers began stressing the uniqueness

of the islands’ folklore of supernatural beings. Thus, we saw above that Eliza Edmondston

sees trows as ‘essentially a different race’ from fairies elsewhere, highlighting that even the

Scottish brownie is absent from the islands’ folklore (p. 21). Perhaps this was true in the mid-

1800s, but it certainly was not true in Brand’s day. Brand (pp. 170–71) gives a detailed story

of the banishing of a Shetland brouny and further notes that:

Now I do not hear of any such appearances the Devil makes in these Isles, so great and many are the blessings which attend a Gospel dispensation: The Brounies, Fairies and other evil Spirits that haunted and were familiar in our Houses, were dismissed, and fled at the breaking up of our Reformation (if we may except but a few places not yet well

reformed from Popish Dregs) as the Heathen Oracles were silenced at the coming of our LORD, and the going forth of his Apostles […] And tho this restraint put upon the Devil was far latter in these Northern places then with us, to whom the Light of a Preached Gospel, did more early shine, yet now also do these Northern Isles enjoy the fruits of this restraint.

Brand (pp. 171–73) states that these demons have vanished from the land though he does

warrant that they sometimes appear in the sea around the islands. Folk belief, however, has a

way of perpetually receding.96

In light of the evidence of later belief in Shetland, we should

be wary of Brand’s proposal that no one in 1700 Shetland believed that fairies were still

encountered there.

Brand’s only mention of trows per se is the following:

They tell us that several such Creatures do appear to Fishers at Sea, particularly such as they call Sea-Trowes, great rolling Creatures, tumbling in the Waters, which if they come among their nets, they break them, and sometimes takes them away with them (p. 173).

These are clearly not social fairies and do not even match Brand’s descriptions of merfolk,

providing more evidence that trow could mean many things. Although Brand does on

occasion speak of supernatural beings he considers unique to Orkney and Shetland, he never

attributes them to the islands’ unique Scandinavian character, which makes sense since, as far

as Brand is concerned, the Devil is the same the world over.

One person who clearly disagrees with Brand’s analysis that belief in fairies had

disappeared from Shetland – and who is also sceptical about supernatural narratives – is the

laird at Busta House, Thomas Gifford. Indeed, Gifford uses Brand as a justification for

writing his own 1733 Historical Description. Gifford criticises Brand for professing:

to give “a particular view of the several islands thereto belonging, together with an account of what is most rare and remarkable therein.” But as he was an itinerant missionary preacher, he has inserted all the legendary stories so roundly believed by the common people, and converted every uncommon fish into an evil spirit (p. xiii). Another such doubter is the Reverend George Low, a skilled botanist who had moved to

Orkney from Forfarshire at the age of 21 and travelled around Shetland in 1774 for two and a

half months. In a 1773 letter, Low writes of the persistence of Orcadian belief in fairies, and

he later states his belief that ‘Witches and Fairies, and their histories, are still very frequent in

Schetland, but Brownies seem, within this century, to lose ground’. 97

His methodical

questioning of correspondents regarding elf-shot indicates that he views the local fairy beliefs

in the same light as mainland Scottish traditions.

George Barry’s 1805 History of the Orkney Islands makes little mention of social fairies.

His statements are limited to saying of the common Orcadians that they ‘put faith in all the

absurd and ridiculous tales, which are so often circulated, concerning witches, fairies, &c.;

and consequently subjects them to be imposed upon by all such as pretend to deal with

familiar spirits’ (p. 343). Here too, the fairies are labelled with the English generic.

Only in Arthur Edmondston’s 1809 book are Shetland fairies finally again called by their

indigenous name. Like Low, Arthur Edmondston (pp. 74–78) complains about the prevalence

of belief in elf-shot:

The fairies or trows have still a “local habitation and a name.” They occupy small stony hillocks or knows, and whenever they make an excursion abroad, are seen, mounted on bulrushes, riding in the air. If a person should happen to meet them, without having a Bible in his pocket, he is directed to draw a circle round him on the ground, and in God’s name forbid their nearer approach, after which they commonly disappear. They are said to be very mischievous, not only shooting cattle with their arrows, but even carrying human beings with them to the hills. Child-bed women are sometimes taken to nurse a prince; and although the appearance of the body remain at home, yet the immaterial part is removed. Such persons are observed to be very pale and absent; and it is generally some old woman who enjoys the faculty of bringing soul and body together.

Again, there is no hint that Edmondston differentiates between trows and Scottish social

fairies.

The first author to take the stance that Shetland folk belief is essentially different from that

of mainland Britain is Samuel Hibbert (pp. 189–90), who focuses on the Scandinavian

character of local belief. He compares Shetland’s Trol- placenames with those of Norway and

Iceland, using Olaus Magnus as a source and associating trolls with Old Norse gods. Hibbert

places trows in the context of the Eddic cosmogony in which the ‘Duergar or dwarfs’ form in

the body of the slain giant Ymir:

These little beings, which were of the most delicate figure, always dwelt in subterraneous caverns, or clefts of rocks. They were remarkable for their riches, their activity, and their malevolence.

It has been supposed, that this mythological account of the Duergar bears a remote allusion to real history, having an ultimate reference to the oppressed Fins, who, before the arrival of invaders under the conduct of Odin, were the prior possessors of Scandinavia. The followers of this hero saw a people, who knew how to manufacture the produce of

their mines better than they themselves, and, therefore, from a superstitious regard, transformed them into supernatural beings of an unfavourable character, dwelling in the interior of rocks, and surrounded with immense riches.

Hibbert cites Sir Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border here for an idea that

prefigures that of David MacRitchie, which Jessie Saxby would later apply to Shetland itself.

Hibbert (pp. 194–95) recounts, at significant length, ‘the details which I was enabled to

collect, relative to the Trows that inhabit the interior of the Shetland hills. In no country are

there more habitations remaining of unclean spirits than in Thule’. The extent to which he

delves into the local folk belief is unusual in Britain for his time, just a few years after the

publication of the Grimms’s Deutsche Sagen. Hibbert’s Description includes stories about

humans meeting trow children, the richness of trow homes inside of hills, the finding of trow

tools and implements, trows’ eating and drinking habits, elf-shot, stocks of stolen animals,

trows’ faculty at medicine, trows’ love of music, human musicians overhearing and learning

trow tunes, fairy rings, changelings of infants and mothers, relationships between witches and

trows, payment of witches for retrieval of stolen humans, trow visits to human homes, and

trows’ inability to abide saining. None of these stories are unique to trows; there are British

analogues for each of them.

Nevertheless, Hibbert does not believe that trows bear any relation to fairies and elves,

which he sees as later Eastern- and classically influenced corruptions of the Old Norse

original. For Hibbert (pp. 190–91), Shetland is a unique case:

In such an obscure and detached country as Shetland, few of these causes could have operated in changing the earliest traditions of the country. A few tales of chivalry might have been introduced; but the fables of classical antiquity, and the learned fictions of the poets of the sixteenth century, have never found growth on the distant soil of Thule. [...]

It does not appear that the popular belief in the personal appearance, habits, and influence of these land Trows has much varied, since, as objects of Pagan worship, they were enumerated by pious Catholics among the list of fallen angels; for the Shetlander still sains or blesses himself, as he passes near their haunts, in order to get rid of his fearful visitants.

Just as Shetland would come to be seen as a relic of Norse culture, uniquely untainted by

Celtic, Saxon, and Norman influences, Hibbert promotes the purity of the archipelago’s

folklore of the supernatural. The presence in Shetland of the ‘King Orfeo’ ballad

(Edmondston and Saxby, pp. 194–98) rather suggests otherwise, and as the research of Bo

Almqvist in particular has shown, Shetland was not isolated from classical influence even

during the Viking Age. Despite this, Hibbert’s supernatural narratives set the tone for later

contemplations on the subject, including those of Jessie Saxby, with whom Hibbert shares a

certain ironic sensibility. Certainly, it is intriguing that the 1845 New Statistical Account of

Scotland differentiates between trows and fairies: ‘A kind of spirits called “trows,” different

in their nature from fairies, have discharged a stone arrow at her’.98

It is also likely that Hibbert influenced Eliza Edmondston’s 1856 Sketches and Tales (pp.

16–19) though the latter’s Puritan streak prevents her from viewing Shetland folk belief as a

laudable Norse survival. Eliza Edmondston is much exercised by belief in ghosts, which she

sees – no doubt, correctly – as having a real influence on the lives of the common people in

the form of what we would call taboos. As to trow narratives, Edmondston (p. 22) states:

These are not [...] “old wives stories” to frighten or amuse children, such as are to be found in the traditionary lore of many country people besides the Shetlanders. With the latter they are the current absurdities of the day that is passing, and the knowes (or knolls) underneath which these “good people” congregate,— the solitary springs whence they fetch water,— and the especial evenings on which they busy themselves in mundane matters, are all heedfully noted, and at any other risk avoided.

Eliza Edmondston (p. 20) is, however, somewhat consoled that ‘The belief in apparitions is

indeed current in most communities, and perhaps, it is a safer, as well as a more natural thing,

than the denial of all faith in spiritual influences’. One can only imagine Edmondston’s

reaction had she known that her own daughter was to be responsible for the mass

popularisation of Shetland folk belief, both locally and abroad.

We thus return to Jessie Saxby’s 1888 Home of a Naturalist, the next book to devote

considerable space to describing Shetland folk belief. Unlike Brand, Hibbert, Low, and her

mother (the only previous writers to have given much attention to local folk belief), Saxby

grew up in Shetland, and by her own account, she nourished her childhood interest in the

supernatural on the tales of the common folk in spite of her family’s long-standing position of

local ascendancy. Indeed, Saxby (Edmondston & Saxby, p. 189) attributes her account of the

trows in Home of a Naturalist to ‘the husband of a witch [...]. He was employed in building a

boat at the time, I remember; and I used to seat myself for hours beside his simmering tar-

kettle plying him with questions which he answered readily enough’. Saxby’s trow writings

are nevertheless problematic: her privileged background in a remarkably accomplished

family, her childhood spent in part among the tale-telling crofters and fisherfolk, and her

abilities as a writer of both fiction and popular history make it difficult to judge just how

“traditional” her “traditional lore” really is.

Certainly, her description of trows in Home of a Naturalist is striking for its originality.

Although some of its details are common to fairy legends everywhere in Western Europe, its

worldview is utterly unique:

This interesting race of supernatural beings is closely allied to the Scandinavian Trolls, but has some very distinctive characteristics of its own. The Trow is not such a mischief-making sprite as the Troll, is more human-like in some respects, and his nature seems cast in a morbid, melancholy mould. We cease to wonder that it should be so when we learn that there are no female Trows. Fancy a world peopled by men alone! To be sure the Turk’s heaven is such, but he admits the Houris. Now the Trows do not have even pretty “puffs of gas” to enliven their Paradise. They only marry human wives, and as soon as the baby Trow is born the hapless young mother pines and dies. No Trow marries twice— in that respect they are far in advance of the race from whom they take their brides, so that their period of matrimonial felicity is very brief. It seems a wise arrangement that there should never be more than one son to inherit the questionable character of a Trow. Were it otherwise, men might fear that the race would become too numerous and powerful. On the other hand, to provide against its extinction, no Trow can die until his son is grown up (Edmondston and Saxby, pp. 189–90).

How is such a passage (which of followed by a story of rebellious trow who is determined not

to marry) to be interpreted? Unlike Brand, Low, and Hibbert, Saxby is consciously writing for

wide audiences both within and outside of Shetland, making pure fabrication a risky move.

Saxby also states that the above account comes primarily from a single individual, so it is

possible that her contributor simply had his own, unique take on local tradition. Nonetheless,

much of the interpretation in the above passage clearly belongs to Saxby and not ‘the old

boat-builder’.

We might, however, take the entire ‘old boat-builder’ scenario with a grain of salt. After

all, Saxby elsewhere attributes some of her knowledge of local folklore to her nurse, and her

mother, father, and brother were to varying extents interested in folk belief as well. Nor was

her life in mainland Scotland precisely cut off from Shetland ties: she was president of the

Edinburgh Orkney and Shetland Association, belonged to the Glasgow Orkney and Shetland

Literary Association, and helped found the Viking Club in London (B. J. Cohen, p. 369).

Also, as C. G. Brown (pp. 34–37) has noted, Saxby’s descriptions of the same topics and

narratives tend to evolve in complexity and detail throughout her lengthy literary career.

Since, for Saxby, fiction and folklore are always mixed, we can ponder whether she is later 1)

simply adding traditional details to topics because they have become of greater interest to her,

2) using scholarly texts to adapt her accounts into what she views as more complete forms, or

3) creating additional details in order to tell a better tale. The answer may be a combination of

all three.

Saxby’s 1888 description of trows is not merely eccentric though; it has an overriding

purpose. For example, Saxby’s (Edmondston and Saxby, p. 191) above-mentioned tale of a

trow who refuses to marry concludes with this trow marrying a witch:

Nothing further is known than that from this remarkable couple sprang a race differing from ordinary Trows, and soon becoming known by the name of Finis. [“Finis.” Certainly this word is the same as that which often appears at the end of a volume. A Finis being the apparition which appears before death, before the end.] Those beings appear before death, personating the individual who is to die. Sometimes they are seen by the person himself, sometimes by his friends, more often by “unchancie folk.” If we were acquainted with the moral government of Trowland we should doubtless discover some profound theory why the Finis should be the offspring of a Trow who feared death.

As she does with the Picts, Saxby engages in some flagrantly false etymology, mixed with a

chatty, knowing humour that invites the reader into contemplating the internal logic behind

what Saxby – and the reader – view as merely rustic tales. In this light, it is all too easy to

dismiss the whole segment as a joke. It is, however, more than that, for behind the humour is

an attempt to combine two separate elements of Shetland folk belief into a unified whole.

Saxby’s Finis is today typically spelled feyness in Shetland. Feyness is also the most

common Scots word for the phenomenon, which has attained a standardised English form in

wraith. The word is ultimately linked to fey, meaning ‘doomed’, which occurs in Old English

already in Beowulf.99

None of the other texts we have looked at so far make any mention of

this supernatural being or phenomenon, limiting their discussion of such matters to ghosts,

which are fundamentally different from the perspective of belief.100

So too is the feyness

usually thought to be fundamentally different from a fairy or trow.101

Regardless of how much

faith we put in Saxby’s accounts, it is vital to understand that she is consciously attempting to

unify and connect different elements of Shetland folklore.

2.5: Descriptions of Merfolk, Selkie-Folk, and Finns, 1701–1888

Besides Home of a Naturalist, none of the texts we have looked at thus far mention the

feyness, but there is also another possibly supernatural being that few of our sources mention:

the Finns. A number of our sources have, however, dealt with merfolk, which may just be

Finns under an English designation. Others have touched on belief in the selkie-folk, or seal

people.

The first Northern Isles text to mention Finns is James Wallace’s 1688 Description of the

Isles of Orkney (pp. 33–34):

Sometime about this Country are seen these Men which are called Finnmen; In the year 1682 one was seen sometime sailing, sometime Rowing up and down in his little Boat at the south end of the Isle of Eda, most of the people of the Isle flocked to see him, and when they adventured to put out a Boat with men to see if they could apprehend him, he presently fled away most swiftly : And in the Year 1684, another was seen from Westra, and for a while after they got few or no Fishes, for they have this Remark here, that these Finnmen drive away the fishes from the place to which they come. […] One of their Boats sent from Orkney to Edinburgh is to be seen in the Physitians hall with the Oar and the Dart he makes use of for killing Fish.

The subject is also taken up by Brand (pp. 76–77) less than a decade later:

There are frequently Fin-men seen here upon the Coasts, as one about a year ago on Stronsa, and another within these few Months on Westra, a Gentleman with many others in the Isle looking on him nigh to the shore, but when any endeavour to apprehend them, they flee away most swiftly; Which is very strange, that one Man sitting in his little Boat, should come some hundred of Leagues, from their own Coasts, as they reckon Finland to be from Orkney; It may be thought wonderfull how they live all that time, and are able to keep the Sea so long. His Boat is made of Seal skins, or some kind of leather, he also hath a Coat of Leather upon him, and he sitteth in the middle of his Boat, with a little Oar in his hand, Fishing with his Lines: And when in a storm he seeth the high surge of a wave approaching, he hath a way of sinking his Boat, till the wave pass over, least thereby he should be overturned. The Fishers here observe that these Finmen or Finland-men, by their coming drive away the Fishes from the Coasts. One of their Boats is kept as a Rarity in the Physicians Hall at Edinburgh.

We will not yet get into interpreting these texts at this stage though suffice it to say, there is

no indication here that either Wallace or Brand consider these Finns anything but human.

Later, when discussing Shetland, Brand (pp. 171–73) describes marine beings that he does

not consider to be human, including a figure ‘with its Head above the Water, [...] the Face of

an old Man, with a long Beard hanging down’, which had been sighted two and a half or three

years earlier. He also provides a more complex narrative, said to have occurred five years

earlier, concerning ‘a Creature like a Woman [...], it had the Face, Arms Breasts, Shoulders

&c. of a Woman, and long Hair hanging doun the Back, but the nether part from below the

Breasts, was beneath the Water’. Brand summarises thus:

That there are Sea-Creatures having the likeness of Men and Women seems to be generally acknowledged by all who have enquired thereunto, they having found it confirmed by the testimony of many in several Countreys, as their Histories do bear. Hence are accounts given of those Sea Monsters, the Meermen and Meermaids, which have not only been seen but apprehended and keept for some time. And hence probably the fiction of the Poets concerning the Sirenes, hath had its rise; these enchanting Songsters, translated Meermaids by our Lexicographers, whose snare Ulysses so happily escaped.

Brand more or less identifies these Shetland beings with mermaids and mermen, and he

continues with a passage we have noted before: ‘They tell us that several such Creatures do

appear to Fishers at Sea, particularly such as they call Sea-Trowes, great rolling Creatures,

tumbling in the Waters, which if they come among their nets, they break them, and sometimes

takes them away with them’ (p. 173). It is ambiguous whether Brand considers the sea-trowes

to be merfolk.

A lengthier description of merfolk/selkie-folk lore is offered by Hibbert, who engages in a

considerable amount of speculative supposition concerning how these beings (in which he

clearly does not believe) are able to breathe beneath and travel through the sea. Hibbert (pp.

262–64) follows this description by citing Brand:

On the authority of Brand, it appears, that in making their way through the ocean, there was much danger in their being entangled among the meshes spread out for taking herring; in which case they were certain to obtain a sound beating from the fishermen. It often happened, therefore, that they would contrive to break through the nets, or to the vexation of the Shetlanders, bear them away. [...]

These inhabitants of a submarine world were, in the later periods of Christianity, regarded as fallen angels, who were compelled to take refuge in the seas: They had, therefore, the name of Sea-Trows given to them, as belonging to the dominion of the Prince of Darkness. Brand appears to have confirmed this view, by assenting, to the opinion of the sailors, that it was the devil, who in the shape of great rolling creatures, broke their nets; adding, “It seems to be more than probable that evil spirits frequent both land and sea”.

Looking at Brand and Hibbert side by side, it is possible to see just how much the latter has

unified the former’s text. Hibbert achieves this by reading too much into his predecessor and

assuming that the vast difference between Brand’s merfolk and his sea-trows can be explained

by religious habits of the day. In Brand’s original, however, the sea-trows are never

unambiguously associated with merfolk, and both the human merfolk and the ‘great rolling’

sea-trows are deemed equally demonological. Hibbert’s innovation is necessary because he is

intent on bringing together the sometimes touching, sympathetic stories told of the selkie-folk

with those told of the merfolk.102

Brand is the explicit source of some of Hibbert’s folklore, and Hibbert himself is the

unnamed source of much of Eliza Edmondston’s folklore. What is less clear is from where the

German exiled revolutionary and academic Karl Blind (1826–1907) received his information

on Finns. Karl Blind’s folklore, anthropology, and linguistics writings show a strong

inclination towards pan-Teutonism, which was the source of his contact with his fairly strong

network of Shetland antiquarians, of whom Bronwen J. Cohen (pp. 425–427) emphasises

Arthur Laurenson. Blind, however, does not identify his sources, which is particularly

distressing since he is the first writer to go a step beyond Hibbert and combine not only

merfolk/selkie-folk/sea-trows but Finns as well. The conflation is complete: Finns are swift

rowers who chase after other boats; they are ‘deeply versed in magic spells’; and their ability

to manoeuvre in the sea is granted by a certain ‘wrappage’ that they can take on and off. Blind

goes so far as to explain the origin of Finn traditions:

Repeated investigations have gradually brought me to the conviction that the Finn or Seal stories contain a combination of the mermaid myth with a strong historical element—that the Finns are nothing else than a fabulous transmogrification of those Norse “sea-dogs” […]. The assertion of a “higher” origin of still living persons from Finns …. would thus explain itself as a wildly legendary remembrance of the descent from the blood of Germanic conquerors. The “skin” wherewith the Finns change themselves magically into sea-beings I hold to be their armour, or coat of mail. Perhaps the coat itself was often made of seal-skin, and then covered with metal rings, or scales.

Significantly Blind places these Finns in Shetland as well as Orkney. In 1883, John Tudor’s

(pp. 167–69) Orkneys and Shetland contains an account of the Finns that seems to be

primarily or solely informed by Blind’s article of the previous year.

Saxby, for her part, would have read the works of Wallace, Brand, Hibbert, Eliza

Edmondston, Blind, and Tudor and would have had the benefit of possessing more local

knowledge at the time of writing than any of these earlier authors. Despite this, and despite

the considerable space that she spends on trows, Saxby does not mention Finns and makes

little use of merfolk and selkie-folk in Home of a Naturalist. She does, however, comment

that ‘Mermaids are called sealkie-wives, and their seal-lovers are supposed to be fallen angels

in metempsychosis’ (Edmondston and Saxby, p. 228). It is noteworthy though that much of

the content on supernatural traditions in Home of a Naturalist is taken from Saxby’s ‘Folklore

from Unst, Shetland’ article published in 1880 in The Leisure Hour. As a result, Home of a

Naturalist could have been slightly out of date at the time of publication.

Chapter 3:

Picts, Vikings, Scots, and Fairies in Shetland Historiography after David MacRitchie

3.1: David MacRitchie’s Testimony of Tradition Earlier, in the writings of Hibbert, Tudor, Saxby, and Laurence Williamson, we were able to

mark the evolution of international philological scholarship, which progressively combined

linguistics, physical anthropology, and folklore to become a sort of universal human science.

When the nineteenth century began, racial attributes were viewed by most scholars as being

of little importance: biblically informed scholarly tradition had emphasised the essential unity

of the European peoples, and the still-emerging theories of Indo-Europeanism and Aryanism

provided a scientific basis for this understanding.104

The existence of Indo-Europeans/Aryans presupposed non-Indo-Europeans/non-Aryans,

often associated with the hypothesised “Turanian” peoples. Furthermore, the presence of the

Indo-Europeans in Europe suggested that they had conquered the continent’s previously

dominant race. As Arvidsson (p. 57) argues, this created a kind of foundation myth for the

various European nations:

The Indians and the Greeks and their enemies have already been discussed, but also the Indo-European Celts were said to have pushed away other people (Iberians, Basques, and Picts), the Etruscans were said to have been conquered by the Italian peoples, and Hurrites and Hattis were supposedly crushed by Hittites with peaked hats.

As nationalism began developing along cultural rather than politico-legal lines, the concept of

Aryanism was turned against itself, and competition mounted among scholars of various

nations to prove that their own folk group was the most pure inheritor of Aryan culture and, in

some cases, to prove that competing folk groups were not Aryan at all.

Sir William Jones affected the 1786 breakthrough scholarly recognition of the similarities

between Sanskrit and European languages, and ever since, ‘the hypothesis that somewhere,

sometimes, an Indo-European race has existed has always been anchored in linguistic

observations’ (Arvidsson, p. 17 and p. 41). In this sense, late-Victorian theories of Aryanism

were built upon a scholarly foundation that remains basically intact today. However, the

gradual conflation of race/physiology with ethnicity/culture and the fusion of philology with

racial anthropology went further than the evidence allows. As Colin Kidd (British Identities

before Nationalism, p. 61) has shown, the absolute everydayness of racism over the past

century and a half tends to blind us to the fact that racism is very much a Modern

phenomenon. Although there were a host of political, religious, and philosophical motivations

for certain seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British writers to champion the Saxons, the

Celts, the Norsemen, or whatever ethnic groups they pleased, these motivations were not

racial. Thomas Percy may have introduced the heroic Norseman to Britain’s reading public

already in 1763 with his Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, but Saxby’s concept of “Viking blood”

would have been absolutely foreign to the mindsets of the poet and his contemporaries. Nazi

philosophy was both the culmination and the death knell of the eighteenth- through twentieth-

century mainstream European tradition of Norse/Teutonic/Saxon-inspired politics, aesthetics,

and scholarship. Yet it was not a foregone conclusion. On a smaller scale, the Shetland

identity concept did not develop in isolation; indeed, it is impossible to understand its

development without first understanding its place in the international intellectual

crosscurrents.

It was during the mid-nineteenth century nationalistic bloom that David MacRitchie

(1861–1925), an educated accountant and Edinburgh native, underwent his intellectual

development. Nevertheless, even though MacRitchie’s scholarship is in some ways an

epitome of the philological project and even though it would come to play a frequently

underestimated role in justifying extreme racialist philosophies, it is itself curiously

unnationalistic and unracialistic. MacRitchie’s work uses the same source texts as do those of

his racialist contemporaries, yet instead of siding with the saga heroes, MacRitchie does

something unexpected: he sides with the little people.

MacRitchie’s first major scholarly work – the substantial, two-volume Ancient and Modern

Britons, A Retrospect – appeared in 1884, when he was 23 years old. Ancient and Modern

Britons is a somewhat hodgepodge collection of evidence in support of a single, iconoclastic

argument. Namely, the most British of the British were wild, dark-skinned peoples who once

ruled large expanses of the British Isles. These peoples, so the argument goes, declined in

power and comingled with more civilised, legalistic peoples. They became known as Gypsies

or by a variety of other names bespeaking their Moorish origin.

From a late nineteenth-century perspective, it would be difficult to see where MacRitchie

was going with this, and indeed, there is no payoff. MacRitchie simply puts forth his evidence

and refuses to draw practical conclusions. Part of what stopped Ancient and Modern Britons

from being a scholarly success might have been that MacRitchie’s thesis in this work is

predicated upon his contemporary, highly civilised Scots representing a racial and cultural

admixture of Norman and Anglo-Saxon stock on the one hand and Egyptian and otherwise

Moorish stock on the other. As MacRitchie sees it, the marauding, savage Gypsies of the

Early Modern period were simply social conservatives who, unlike many of their relatives and

neighbours, refused to get in line behind the march of civilisation. If anything, MacRitchie

rather admires the untamed tribes. Furthermore, although racial admixture is central to his

argument as a means of explaining both the relative darkness of British skin colour and the

absence of remaining dark-skinned races in Britain, he offers a value-free treatment of such

interbreeding. For MacRitchie, race does not appear to influence ethnicity.

In 1888, the year that Edmondston and Biot published Home of a Naturalist, MacRitchie

helped found the Gypsy Lore Society, of which he became president in 1907. It is therefore

slightly ironic that 1889 saw MacRitchie gain notoriety in the anthropological establishment

for a set of theories that were along the same lines as those he had advanced in Ancient and

Modern Britons but that were not entirely complementary with them and that had very little to

do with Gypsies or other travelling peoples. Between August 1889 and January 1890,

MacRitchie published a series of articles in the Archaeological Review that would come to

form the basis of his 1890 book, The Testimony of Tradition.

In 1893, MacRitchie wrote Fians, Fairies and Picts, basically a condensed version and

defence of Testimony of Tradition. Nor is it surprising that Testimony of Tradition needed

defending, for it had caused enormous controversy at the time of publication, controversy that

perhaps amplified its effect on the literature and historiography of the day. MacRitchie is

rarely mentioned by academics today. Such is the fate of scholars who have been proven

wrong, for why waste one’s time with poor scholarship? If one forgets MacRitchie though,

one also forgets the rationale behind an influential historiographic movement.

Although the scholarly tools used in Testimony of Tradition belong to “the new philology”,

the work’s central thesis is based on the theories of essentially pre-philological writers. As

MacRitchie himself says in Fians, Fairies and Picts, the theory he promotes had been

anticipated by Sir Walter Scott, Sven Nilsson, and J. F. Campbell. We have already seen that

Scott’s fleeting enquiry into in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border influenced Hibbert. Here is

what Scott actually writes on the subject in Minstrelsy:

Perhaps in this, and similar tales, we may recognize something of real history. That the Fins, or ancient natives of Scandinavia, were driven into the mountains, by the invasion of Odin and his Asiatics, is sufficiently probable; and there is reason to believe, that the aboriginal inhabitants understood, better than the intruders, how to manufacture the produce of their own mines. It is therefore possible, that, in process of time, the oppressed Fins may have been transformed into the supernatural duergar. A similar transformation has taken place among the vulgar in Scotland, regarding the Picts, or Pechs, to whom they ascribe various supernatural attributes.

Scott furthermore comments on the then-current beliefs held by the Icelanders, Lapps, and

Faroese concerning ‘subterranean people’. Already in Scott, we see the essentially flawed

character of the theory that would be made famous by MacRitchie: Scott envisions a sort of

folk memory stretching back thousands of years to the time when the Germanic peoples (and

the Lapps) entered Scandinavia. Regardless of whether such a folk memory could exist, Scott

makes no attempt to explain how it could result in contemporary Scandinavians or Lapps

believing in the contemporary existence of duergar, of trolls.106

MacRitchie next cites Sven Nilsson (1787–1883), who was one of the founders of modern

archaeology and of the concept of prehistory itself. One of Nilsson’s most influential

innovations was the use of foreign ethnographic material to theorise about the nature of

prehistoric Scandinavian society. Thus, following an evolutionary line that would later

become well-trodden (perhaps most influentially in the comparative religion work of James

Frazer), Nilsson compared the artefacts of Stone Age and Bronze Age Scandinavia on the one

hand and those of contemporary African and Australian tribal cultures on the other, thereby

deducing the types of society and religion that had existed in Scandinavia’s prehistory.107

Whatever the influence Scott and Nilsson may have had on MacRitchie’s thoughts,

MacRitchie attributes his initial inspiration to J. F. Campbell, one of the mid-nineteenth

century’s most prominent British folklorists.108

In the introduction to his 1860–62 Popular

Tales of the West Highlands, Campbell sets out his theory that ‘there once was a small race of

people in these islands, who are remembered as fairies, for the fairy belief is not confined to

the Highlanders of Scotland’. As evidence, he compares the fairies of Scottish tradition with

the Lapps of his own day: for example, both are a relatively small people, both live in ‘green

mounds’, both milk deer, both are skilled artisans, and both perform magic.109

Campbell also

comments on contemporary cases of elf-shot, which shows recognition of the problem we

noted above, that is, that the theory might explain past belief but that it cannot explain present

belief.

Nevertheless, Campbell (p. civ–cviii) argues that ‘all the nations of Europe have had some

such belief, and they cannot all have invented the same fancy’. He calls upon a large body

philological research on the Indo-Europeans to support his theory:

The Basques were found in Europe by the first Gael, and these were driven westwards by Kimri, and these again by Scythians, and these by Teutons, and all these still occupy their respective positions. The Basques and Lapps pushed aside; the Gael in Scotland and Ireland, driven far to the westwards; the Kimri driven westwards into Wales and Brittany; the Scyths lost or absorbed; and the Teutons occupying their old possessions, as Germans, Saxons, English, Scandinavians, and all their kindred tribes; and of all these the Basques and their relatives alone speak a language which cannot be traced to a common unknown origin, from which Sanscrit also came.

Despite all of this learned discussion, the theory hinges on the postulation that the Basques

and Lapps are descendents of a diminutive race that had populated all of Europe prior to

arrival of the Indo-Europeans. In this sense, the actual sequence of the waves of hypothesised

Indo-European invasions is inconsequential. Of course, Campbell’s classical authorities have

nothing direct to say about the ancestors of the contemporary Basques and Lapps. For this,

Campbell must rely on relatively contemporary ethnographies and linguistic studies. The

logic for Campbell’s theory is thus circular: 1) Campbell’s observations of the Lapps remind

him of European accounts of fairies, 2) he thus seeks evidence that all of Europe was once

been populated by people very much like the Lapps, and 3) the evidence for this is primarily

the contemporary survival of the non-Indo-European Basques and Lapps.

When MacRitchie takes up the cause, he does not argue against Campbell, yet he clearly

sees Campbell’s proof as too slim, in particular since MacRitchie’s project is so much grander

than that of his predecessor:110

MacRitchie attempts to explain fairy belief across Europe and

Asia as a means of explaining a wide range of other mysteries. Also, unlike Campbell,

MacRitchie feels that he can explain fairy experiences all the way up until the start of the

1700s, if not later. Campbell may have had access to the philology of his own time, but

MacRitchie’s work represents philology at its most expansive, taking in that uniquely late

nineteenth-century mix of archaeology, linguistics, and anthropology.

And it is this that made MacRitchie’s work so influential. MacRitchie may cite Scott,

Nilsson, and Campbell, but there were others who advocated a form of this theory as well.

Carole G. Silver – who, alongside Lizanne Henderson and Edward J. Cowan – is one of the

few recent researchers to recognise the importance of the theory in late-Victorian literature

and fairy scholarship, notes how Darwin-inspired Tylorism informed various euhemeristic

theories of fairy origins, set forth, among others, Alfred C. Haddon, George Laurence

Gomme, and John Stuart Stuart-Glennie.111

One euhemerist mentioned by Silver is Frederic

T. Hall, whose 1883 Pedigree of the Devil uses an extremely narrow range of sources and a

great deal of supposition to show that traditions of the supernatural were in part historical

memories. Thus, when writing about fairies, Hall depends almost entirely on Thomas

Keightley’s 1850 Fairy Mythology. The Fairy Mythology is, indeed, an excellent resource, but

even in the 1880s it was not, perhaps, a sufficient foundation on which to build a cross-

disciplinary theory. By the same token, Hall’s ethnology and physical anthropology is

primarily inferred. He holds that ‘the Lapps, the Finns, the Esthonians, the Etruscans, the

Basques, the Iberians [...] once overspread the whole continent and the British isles’ and that

‘the Celts, Gauls, and Scandinavians, and other Aryan races, surged over them in successive

waves’. As proof, Hall argues:

Now what are the characteristics of the Turanian race which fossil remains and recognizable history enable us to identify? They were all short, obese and swarthy; with

dark hair, crisply curled, and scanty beards, high cheek-bones, and obliquely set dark eyes: these physical characteristics are seen in the portraits of ancient Etruscans and the Latin records of them, and in the descriptions of the Scythians,— the roaming peoples of the whole Northern world. […] In modern times the Tartar tribes of Asia, the Nagas, the Lapps and Eskimos, have a greater resemblance to those ancient races than any others now extant. Again, wherever the dwellings of primeval man are traced, if they do not consist of caves and holes in the earth, they generally are found to be in a beehive form and partly underground; dwellings of this pattern are still used by the Lapps and Eskimos, and traces of prehistoric huts of this form are found very generally all over the world.

Whereas Scott and Campbell use logic alone to suggest that belief in some fairies might be

based on euhemerism, Hall uses logic and mid- to late nineteenth-century “common sense”

Indo-Europeanism to strenuously argue his case.

By today’s standards, and even by contemporary standards, MacRitchie’s evidence just

does not add up. However, unlike his euhemerist predecessors, he does, at least, offer

evidence. As we have seen, there was something about the theory that appealed to some

nineteenth-century thinkers, that appealed to them even when no real evidence could be

mustered in its defence. So, it may be that there was, in certain scholarly circles, a willingness

to give MacRitchie a chance even if Testimony of Tradition, when seen out of context, looks

like an unconvincing jumble of ideas. Some of MacRitchie’s supporters had been convinced

of something resembling MacRitchie’s thesis even before MacRitchie had started writing

about it; they had just needed evidence to endow it with an academic justification. This is

what MacRitchie provided. From here on, when we quote or cite MacRitchie, it will be from

Testimony of Tradition unless otherwise noted. 113

At the heart of the evidence that MacRitchie finds are the accounts of the Orkney Finns

that we saw earlier. MacRitchie (pp. 1–6) begins Testimony of Tradition by quoting Karl

Blind and then ‘flatly denying’ some of Blind’s theories with quotes from Wallace and Brand.

It is probably fair enough to deny Blind his credit, for as the passage we quoted above shows,

Blind’s argument for connecting Finns with armoured Vikings is singularly unevidenced.

MacRitchie, on the other hand, amasses huge quantities of evidence. The trouble is, his

evidence is only meaningful if one first makes a number of questionable assumptions.

For example, MacRitchie argues that the Orkney Finns are the same as Scandinavian Finns

and Lapps. What proof is there for this, besides the name of the people as given by the

Orcadian informants of Wallace and Brand? Unlike Campbell’s Highland fairies, the primary

sources do not say that the Orkney Finns were small and lived underground. MacRitchie’s

(pp. 7–8) proof is along lines that would not work in today’s better-informed anthropological

climate:

It is quite evident that “the Finns of the Shetlandic story” formed a branch of the “Ugrian race of the Finns”; and that some of them “came ow’r fra Norraway” [...]. The description of their skin-covered canoes is of itself quite sufficient to show that those “Finns” of Orkney and Shetland were of Eskimo races. So that those “sea-skins,” without which the captive Finn could not make their escape, were simply their canoes. And the exaggerated stories of the speed with which the Finns could cross from Shetland to Bergen have their foundation in the fact that those little skiffs can be propelled through the water at such a rate that the hunted Finn was enabled to “flee away most swiftly” from the clumsier boats of his pursuers.

It may be that the Finns described by Wallace and Brand were, in fact, men in kayaks. It does

seem that a number of kayakers reached Scotland during the Little Ice Age.114

The issue here

is that MacRitchie views the North American Eskimos (Inuit) as close relatives of the

Scandinavian Lapps/Finns (Sámi). This incorrect conclusion is vital because it is only by

assuming that these two groups are related that MacRitchie is able to posit that the

Scandinavian Lapps used kayaks.

MacRitchie, as it turns out, struggles to find additional evidence that Scandinavians used

kayaks. He comes up with nothing more than a single vague saga reference to boats made

using skins. For MacRitchie and many of his contemporaries, however, the apparent racial

and cultural similarities between Eskimos and Lapps could be taken as a starting point for

analysis, hence MacRitchie’s satisfaction with the weak evidence for European kayak use that

he is able to muster, amounting to little more than ancient and Early Modern references to

people using either small boats or boats made with skins. So, MacRitchie’s (pp. 18–22)

argument that ‘It is impossible to ascertain a time when skin-boats were not used in Europe’ is

probably correct. Nevertheless, his leap in linking these skin-boats with kayaks is premised

solely on the link between the Eskimos and the Lapps/Finns.

This is not, however, MacRitchie’s only fundamental assumption that fails to live up to

today’s scholarly standards. Although MacRitchie disagrees with many of Karl Blind’s

assertions, he is willing to borrow from Blind when it suits his thesis. Suspiciously,

MacRitchie, in these cases, does not distinguish between the quality and type of testimony

offered by Blind on the one hand and Wallace and Brand on the other. Thus, when arguing

that the Irish fianna (termed Feens by MacRitchie) were a diminutive race, MacRitchie (p.

56) states that ‘This is precisely the most striking characteristic of the kayak-using Finns of

Shetlandic tradition’. This conclusion is derived at very indirectly for, as we have noted,

Wallace and Brand do not see Finns as small or supernatural, and Blind says nothing about

them being short. MacRitchie achieves his reasoning by sleight of hand:

The Finns of Shetland folk-lore are, says Mr. Karl Blind, “reckoned among the Trows.” The king of the Feens was hailed in the country of the big men as a Troich. And these are simply two forms of the same word. Troich or droich, among Gaelic-speaking people, is softened into trow or drow among the English-speaking Shetlanders. In both cases it signifies “dwarf”.

Thus, even though none of MacRitchie’s sources (up to this point) say that either Finns or

trows are diminutive, and even though it is only through highly selective quotation that he is

able to state that the fianna are diminutive, he etymologically links these three races.

MacRitchie (p. 35) is well aware though that this etymology is tenuous, for in his 1893 Fians,

Fairies and Picts, he is forced to reconcile his argument with the fact that the fianna ‘are also

spoke of as “giants”’.

In any event, MacRitchie has used an off-hand remark by Blind to bridge the gap between

trows and Wallace’s and Brand’s Finns. This has serious implications, for MacRitchie (p. 14)

writes:

Now Dr. Blind, in suggesting that the “skins” of the Finns may have been (as in one respect they actually were) their outward garments, “made of seal-skins, and then covered with metal rings or scales”—in assuming this, Dr. Blind is quite in agreement with a statement made by Brand in 1700; which is to this effect, that “supernatural” beings were, at the date of his visit, “frequently seen in several of the Isles (the Orkneys) dancing and making merry and sometimes seen in Armour”.

This apparently inconsequential argument is, in fact, instrumental to MacRitchie’s thesis. It is

based on Brand’s statement that ‘Evil Spirits also called Fairies are frequently seen in several

of the Isles dancing and making merry, and sometimes seen in Armour’ (Brand, p. 96). Blind

provides a means of overcoming Brand’s own opinions regarding the various natures of Finns

and fairies. The result of this series of topical juxtapositions is that MacRitchie places himself

in a position from which he can speak of trows, fairies, fianna, and Finns interchangeably.

Over the course of Testimony of Tradition, MacRitchie pulls together further strands,

including the Scottish Picts, who MacRitchie, following the language of oral tradition, calls

Pechts/Pechs. MacRitchie is right, of course, in connecting Picts with Pechts, the former

being a historical people and the latter being either fairies, Scotland’s indigenous inhabitants,

or something in between. Indeed, one of the great appeals of MacRitchie’s thesis is that, in

some parts of Scotland, fairies are called Pechs. As MacRitchie points out, in Lowland

Scotland and the Northern Isles, sites that popular tradition associates with Picts/Pechs tend

also to be associated with fairies. MacRitchie (p. 58) first mentions this with reference to

Shetland:

“The only tradition which I heard current on the subject of the former inhabitants of the country,” says a writer [Rev. J. Russell.] on Shetland, “was, that the remains of old dwellings were Pechts’ houses, and that those who lived in them were little men.” And, in reporting to the Anthropological Society of London the result of an archaeological tour in Shetland, Dr. James Hunt remarks of such “old dwellings”—“These remains are called ‘Pight’ or Picts’ houses.’ Mr. Umfray [a local archaeologist] surmises that they were originally ‘pights’ or dwarf’s houses.’ Dwarfs, in this locality, are still called pechts”.

MacRitchie goes on to cite many more examples of popular tradition attributing pre-Norse or

pre-Scots structures to the Picts and describing these structures’ builders and/or inhabitants as

either diminutive humans or actual fairies. The Pict-fairy connection is not just in

MacRitchie’s imagination.

The connection is, unfortunately, of difficult causality. As MacRitchie remarks throughout

his book, chambered mounds, brochs, round-houses, and even castles are often associated

with fairies throughout Northern Europe and Eurasia, not just in places in which fairies are

occasionally called Picts. The question is whether a people related to the Picts truly lived

throughout this zone and gave rise to traditions of fairies as MacRitchie would have it or

whether traditions of fairies existed throughout this zone and accrued historical elements

relating to the various regions’ actual early inhabitants.

Much of MacRitchie’s argument is based on archaeology, and he notes that the most

cursory inspection of the buildings attributed to the Picts reveals the diminutiveness of their

builders. ‘This is a point so manifest that it need not be emphasized to those who have

stooped, squeezed, and crept along the chambers and passages of a “Pictish broch”’ (p. 61).

This same point – that the dimensions of Pictish buildings appear far too small for people of

normal height – is, as we shall see, still present in Shetland today.

In MacRitchie’s time, archaeological knowledge concerning Britain’s prehistoric ruins was

as yet woefully incomplete. This allows MacRitchie to speak of many souterrains and

chambered mounds as subterranean houses whereas general scholarly opinion today sees the

former as storage places or larders and the latter as burial mounds. MacRitchie’s most

impressive examples – what he views as subterranean royal residences – are Newgrange in

County Meath, Ireland and Maeshowe in Orkney, the former of which is definitely a tomb

and the latter of which remains an archaeological mystery though not so mysterious that

archaeologists today are tempted to see it as a prehistoric house.115

MacRitchie’s scholarship has a place within Tyloristic anthropology, and his earlier

Ancient and Modern Britons gives an account of a doomed Gypsy/Pictish rearguard action

against progress. By the time MacRitchie writes Testimony of Tradition though, he is

anything but a cultural evolutionist. His dwarfs may no longer exist as such, but their fall,

however it came to pass, was by no means inevitable, and MacRitchie never faults them with

servility. Again making use of his conflation of Brand’s Finns and armour-wearing fairies,

MacRitchie (p. 23) suggests ‘that those straggling “Finn-men” of the year 1700 were really

the representatives of a decayed caste of conquerors. The fact that they are remembered as

wearing armour places them before us as a distinctly military race’. Indeed, his hypothesised

dwarfs are in many ways superior to the tribes that rule present-day Britain. He takes at face

value popular tradition’s ascription of many remarkable structures to the Picts: sometimes, as

in the cases of hill-forts and Maeshowe, both tradition and MacRitchie are broadly correct; in

other cases, as in Hadrian’s Wall and Medieval Scottish castles, we may suspect that both

tradition and MacRitchie have gotten it wrong. MacRitchie (p. 70) envisions the once-kingly

Picts reduced to servitude, yet for him, this servitude is a species of pragmatism: when the

Picts ‘realized that they were a conquered remnant, with no hope of ultimately recovering

their lost power, they may have continued to live, if merely as serfs, not only to the twelfth

century, but for several centuries longer’.

So, much of monumental Britain was constructed by the Picts. MacRitchie (pp. 73–74)

attempts to prove this theory – which is, itself, based on popular tradition – by turning to

popular tradition about Picts, fairies, and giants:

Whatever the method employed by the builders of this stronghold [White Caterthun, Angus.], the description just given will show the reader, what he cannot fail to be impressed with on a study of the Pechts, that these people and their buildings belonged to what is known as the “Cyclopean” type, and that they—the people—represented a race now quite extinct, in its purity, but which must undoubtedly have been remarkable for a prodigious strength of body, a strength that may well be spoken of as “superhuman,” if it is to be compared with that of any existing race of men. It is this point that must always be borne in mind when one considers the traditions regarding the buildings of the Pechts, and this it is that justifies the very parts of those traditions which would otherwise appear utterly wild and incredible.

With this, MacRitchie’s thesis goes beyond a mere renaming of various tribes living in pre-

historic, Medieval, and Early Modern Britain. It becomes something grander, a vast, brash re-

evaluation of Europe’s and Eurasia’s pre-history.

For MacRitchie does not stop in Scotland and Ireland. How could he? His Picts and Finns

are, after all, Norwegian immigrants, who came from the Mongoloid stronghold of the Bergen

area and had previously been the dominant population in the Eastern Baltic (p. 35). Thus it is

that MacRitchie travels to the East, tracing the circumpolar history of his hirsute, diminutive

originators of fairy belief. He eventually ends up in Japan, where the Aino/Ainu people –

though, in his mind, long-since a mixed race – represent the purest living descendents of this

once-mighty array of tribes. The Ainos exhibit the primitiveness, hairiness, short-stature, and

proclivity for reindeer-herding that characterise MacRitchie’s fairies (pp. 166–70).

We saw before that one of the principal faults of previous versions (for example, those of

Scott and Campbell) of this euhemeristic theory of fairy origins is that the Sámi, Inuit, and so

on themselves possess traditions concerning what we might call “fairies”. MacRitchie takes

on this challenge with his usual ingenuity. He is aware that although the Lapps, Eskimos, and

Ainos share traits with the fairies of Scottish and Irish tradition, these races could not, in their

present-day form, have been tradition’s direct inspiration. The Lapps and Eskimos may be

small, but they are not dwarfs, and they are not hirsute. Nor are the small and hirsute Ainos

dwarfish and superhumanly strong. Taking perhaps inspiration from his own Ancient and

Modern Britons, MacRitchie views these as racially mixed peoples that diverged from the

once-universal parent race/s. MacRitchie (pp. 174–75) enlists Olaus Magnus’s cartography

for this argument:

Whatever may have been the ethnical position of the tenth-century “Skræling” of America, this sixteenth-century map of North Europe certainly signifies that the “pigmies,” “Screlings,” or “Scric-Finns” of the extreme north of Scandinavia were neither “Finns” nor “Lapps,” but a race that ultimately yielded place to these. There are similar indications in the extreme north of Asia. The Chukches of Siberia undoubtedly connect the Lapp in the west with the Eskimo in the east. But the Chukches have traditions of a race called Onkilon, i.e., “sea-folk,” whom the Chukches, moving northward, displaced or annihilated. [...] In these now-extinct “Onkilon,” then, we have a race of people who, like the Finns and the sea-trows of Shetland, were famed as “sea-folk,” and who at the same time were underground-people or mound-dwellers.

In this way, MacRitchie ties together the various strands of his work. The kayaks, the

reindeer-herding, the skis, the dwarfism, the hairiness, and the incredible strength were all

attributes of a race that is now extinct in its pure form but that had seeded descendents-cum-

conquerors across the Arctic, Ireland, and northern Britain. By the end of Testimony of

Tradition, MacRitchie is able to equate or draw strong connections between, among others,

Lapps, Finns, Scric-Finns, Skrælings, Tshuds, Eskimos, merfolk, selkie-folk, Hebridean

pirates, trows, giants, dwarfs, social fairies, brownies, witches, Druids, Tuatha De Danann,

Cruithné, fianna, Picts, Ainos, Chukches/Chukchi, Onkilon/Yupik, and Santa Claus.

In the very introduction to Testimony of Tradition, MacRitchie (pp. v-vi) anticipates

renewed attacks on his theory, which had already elicited some scorn as a result of his journal

articles. He pleads, however, for a fair hearing:

The theory which I have here endeavoured to set forth has the peculiar advantage of possessing a tangible test of its worth. […] If the result of future archaeological excavations should be to confirm tradition […], the question then will be one, not of interpreting tradition so that it may square with current beliefs, but of modifying or altering these beliefs, where they are distinctly in disagreement with tradition.

In the end, MacRitchieism did not pass this ‘tangible test of its worth’. Advances in

archaeology saw to that. But they did not see to it immediately, and though Testimony of

Tradition had its detractors from the start, there were also many scholars who were willing to

give the theory a chance to prove itself.

3.2: ‘That Monument of Misguided Industry’: Reactions to MacRitchie

In the fall of 1890, the Journal of American Folklore published a review of Testimony of

Tradition by Charles G. Leland. Leland’s fairly lengthy review is extremely sympathetic.

Though he does not come out in support of all of the particulars of MacRitchie’s theory,

Leland deems the book to ‘be of exceptional interest to every folk-lorist’ and regards it as

common knowledge that diminutive races ‘existed in many countries, whence they were

gradually driven by more powerful and taller invaders’.116

Leland is not, in any case, a

reviewer who one would expect to challenge MacRitchie too severely: although Leland was a

folklorist of some repute in the United States, in 1888, he also became the first president of

the Gypsy Lore Society, of which MacRitchie was then secretary.117

Interestingly, as we shall

see later, Leland ended up helping to integrate MacRitchieism into the scholarship of

witchcraft.

In light of this, Leland’s apology for MacRitchie seems a bit disingenuous:

More than one writer has expressed decided dissent from the author’s theory. This brings us to the question, whether the theory or hypothesis accord by which a collection is formed or around which it is gathered, invariably determines the value of the work. There have been in the course of the last few years, especially in the department of folk-lore, instances in which the labor of years, guided by genius, carried out in suffering, privation, and at ruinous expense, has been calmly pooh-poohed and set aside by some closet critic because he dissented from the theory by aid of which the invaluable facts were gathered and brought together. One man may carry his trout home in a guinea basket and another in an old sixpenny bag; but what should we think of him who should judge the value of the fish by the receptacle (pp. 319–20)?

Leland did, after all, believe that MacRitchie’s ‘scaffolding’ was not only convenient but also

correct. Furthermore, his argument that MacRitchie’s theory is just a framework upon which

to compile information is not borne out by Testimony of Tradition itself. Leland’s defence

makes more sense in context. This review appeared in the same issue of the Journal of

American Folklore as did William Wells Newell’s review of James Frazer’s The Golden

Bough. Newell takes a similar line regarding Frazer as Leland does with MacRitchie, namely

that the book is not to be judged by its conclusions alone. However, anyone who has read

both Testimony of Tradition and The Golden Bough will know just how different these two

works are: whereas MacRitchie’s slim volume uses various types of evidence to construct a

vast theory, Frazer’s massive creation uses primarily ethnographic evidence ostensibly to

answer a very minor pair of questions (‘What was the meaning of the strange rite [of Diana

worship at Nemi], and what was the Golden Bough?’).118

It is possible that MacRitchie

benefited from the Frazer-influenced intellectual climate that somewhat justified and used

novel methods of evaluating scholarship that drew questionable conclusions.

MacRitchie’s stature was also likely boosted by his participation in the 1891 and 1893

Folk-Lore Congresses, held in London and Chicago respectively, and organised and attended

by such disciplinary luminaries as Alfred Nutt, Joseph Jacobs, George Laurence Gomme,

Andrew Lang, Francis James Child, E.B. Tylor, James Frazer, and Edwin Sidney Hartland.

Not all of these personages had favourable views of MacRitchie’s work. For example, Nutt’s

appraisal is decidedly mixed. Although he admits that MacRitchie succeeds in proving ‘that

the historical elements in the fairy belief are more numerous and potent than is held by the

great majority of students’, he also states:

MacRitchie attempts to prove far too much; moreover, he indulges in etymological guesswork, such as that the Feinne (the warrior companions of Finn mac Cumhail) were of Finnish race, and that the Gaelic word for fairy, Sidhe (pronounced “Shee”), has some possible connection with the Ishuds, a race of Northern Europe and Asia, ethnologically akin to the Lapps. […] His arguments respecting the Feinne are based upon a false appreciation of the Fenian documents; indeed, his whole treatment of sources seems to me as unscientific as his etymological theorising.

Edwin Sidney Hartland, who could claim almost unparalleled expertise in international

fairy folklore, was an immediate critic of MacRitchie. Sidney Hartland spends three of the

concluding pages of his influential The Science of Fairy Tales (1890) pouring scorn over

MacRitchie’s theory. Choosing to ‘leave it to Celtic scholars to deal with Mr. MacRitchie’s

remarkable etymologies and with his historical arguments’, Sidney Hartland instead focuses

on how MacRitchie’s theory is ‘founded on too narrow an induction’:

The myths of nations all over the world follow one general law and display common characteristics. I am not astonished to find the Shetland tale of marriage with a seal-woman reproduced on the Gold Coast and among the Dyaks of Borneo. But Mr. MacRitchie ought to be very much astonished; for he can hardly show that the historical Finns were known in these out-of-the-way places. It seems to me natural to find that in Scotland and Ireland fairies dwelt in barrows, and in Annam and Arabia in hills and rocks; and that both in this country and in the far East they inveigled unhappy mortals into their dwellings and kept them for generations—nay, for centuries. That the Shoshone of California should dread

their infants being changed by the Ninumbees, or dwarfs, in the same way as the Celts of the British Islands, and the Teutons too, dreaded their infants being changed, does not seem at all incredible to me. That to eat the food of the dead in New Zealand prevents a living man from returning to the land of the living, just as Persephone was retained in Hades by partaking of the pomegranate, and just as the food of fairies hinders the Manx or the Hebrew adventurer from rejoining his friends on the surface of the earth, is in no way perplexing to me. But all these things, and they might be multiplied indefinitely, must be very perplexing to Mr. MacRitchie, if he be not prepared to prove that Annamites and Arabs, Hebrews and Shoshone, New Zealanders and classical Greeks alike, were acquainted with the Picts and the Finns, and alike celebrated them in their traditions.

The truth Mr. MacRitchie does not reckon with is, that no theory will explain the nature and origin of the fairy superstitions which does not also explain the nature and origin of every other supernatural being worshipped or dreaded by uncivilized mankind throughout the world.

This criticism goes to the very core of the problem with this theory of fairy origins, whether

advanced by Scott, Campbell, MacRitchie, or anyone else: the testimony of tradition is

undone by tradition itself.121

Sidney Hartland’s argument against MacRitchieism is so damning because it shows the

shallowness of MacRitchie’s universalism. Philologists could question MacRitchie’s

etymologies, historians could question his history, and physical anthropologists could

question his racial theories, yet this would just amount to picking at threads of the overall

argument. Sidney Hartland’s comparative folklore allows him to combat MacRitchie head-on.

It is a corollary to the much more kindly stated criticism that Douglas Hyde (qtd. in Evans-

Wentz, pp. 25–26) would level against W.Y. Evans-Wentz’s theory of fairy reality in 1910:

Viewing the Irish spirit-world as a whole, we find that it contains, even on Mr. Wentz’s showing, quite a number of different orders of beings, of varying shapes, appearances, size, and functions. Are we to believe that all those beings equally exist, and, on the principle that there can be no smoke without a fire, are we to hold that there would be no popular conception of the banshee, the leprechaun, or the Maighdean-mhara (sea-maiden, mermaid), and consequently no tales told about them, if such beings did not exist, and from time to time allow themselves to be seen like the wood-martin and the kingfisher? […] My object in mentioning these things is to show that if we concede the real objective existence of, let us say, the apparently well-authenticated banshee (Bean-sidhe, “woman fairy”), where are we to stop? For any number of beings, more or less well authenticated, come crowding on her heels, so many indeed that they would point to a far more extensive world of different shapes than is usually suspected […]. Of course, there is nothing inherently impossible in all these things existing any more than in one of them existing, but they all seem to me to rest upon the same kind of testimony, stronger in the case of some, less strong in the case of others, and it is as well to point out this clearly.

Evans-Wentz though could simply reply that negative evidence is no proof of non-existence.

MacRitchie (pp. v-vi) does not permit this; he invites the archaeological testing of his theory.

One could credit him on this count were it not for the fact that he would continue to write

articles in support of the theory over the decades following the publication of Testimony of

Tradition.

Nutt and Sidney Hartland were not alone in criticising Testimony of Tradition. A reviewer

in an 1893 issue of Science also gives MacRitchieism short shrift, noting that its fundamentals

are all assumptions. The reviewer concludes that: ‘Seriously, the very slender basis for the

whole theory is the syllable Fin, the same that occurs in “Fenian,” “Fingla,” etc., and which

has evidently started the author in pursuit of this Mongolian ignis fatuus’.122

Indeed,

MacRitchie had a penchant for acquiring completely dismissive reviews like the one above.

Even in 1919, Tom Peete Cross, while reviewing a biography of Joseph Ritson, is inspired to

digress that:

One of Ritson’s chief services […] is his contention, in opposition to Pinkerton, that the Picts were not Germanic. It is to be noted, however, that the tradition of Pinkerton is still influential in that monument of misguided industry, David MacRitchie’s Testimony of Tradition.

Despite reviews of this manner, there were others who looked upon MacRitchie’s work more

kindly. For example, D.G. Brinton, writing in Science a few weeks prior to the above-

mentioned review, cites one of MacRitchie’s articles, ‘The Underground Life’, as ‘an

excellent description of […] subterranean dwellings’.124

Joseph Jacobs, a Jewish scholar and folktale researcher, was one of the highest-profile of

MacRitchie’s early supporters. His ideas on diffusion were also to play a major role in – or at

least prefigure – later folklore theory.125

Jacobs was not a strong advocate of survivalism of

any sort. For example (and there are many examples), in his review of The Golden Bough, he

criticises Frazer for ignoring diffusionism, and in a paper simply entitled ‘The Folk’, he takes

on the entirety of Tyloristic universalism/independent invention.126

MacRitchieism might

have held particular appeal to a diffusionist, for how much easier is it to explain diffusion if

not only legends and folktales migrate but if the stimuli inspiring these traditions (in this case,

real-life dwarfs) migrate as well?

In his generally positive review of Sidney Hartland’s Science of Fairy Tales, Jacobs writes:

Mr. Hartland dismisses rather cavalierly Mr. MacRitchie’s “realistic” theory of the origin of fairies, rather too cavalierly, I think. His chief argument against it is, that where you find stories of fairies, you ought to find traces of Finns. To that there is a twofold answer. First, the stories may have been brought from places where there had been Finns. Secondly, in nearly all places where such stories are told the present inhabitants have been preceded by a shorter race, whom they have exterminated. Tradition about these autochthones might give rise to fairy tales in Mr. Hartland’s sense of the word.

Needless to say, Jacobs’s comment that dwarfs were nearly universal in prehistory was not a

scholarly consensus in 1891. Rather, like Frederic T. Hall’s statement that ‘dwarfs and trolls

must be identified with primeval races of low stature; who covered a large area of the

habitable globe’ (Silver, p. 47), it is an attempt to prove a point by wishful thinking.

Moreover, as we shall discuss below, Testimony of Tradition does not actually argue that the

dwarfish race was a precursor to the Aryans in Britain: rather, the Finns immigrated to

communities already populated by Aryans.

Jacobs makes almost immediate use of MacRitchie’s theory by considering it in his

analysis of the ‘Childe Rowland’ folktale, first in his English Fairy Tales and then in a

Folklore article on this story. ‘Childe Rowland’ concerns how the King of Elfland kidnaps a

woman and brings her to ‘a round green hill surrounded with rings (terraces) from the bottom

to the top’ and how her brother retrieves her. Jacobs notes that narratives about fairies – as

opposed to folk tales/fairy tales as such – generally concern non-magical events (kidnapping,

disappearing into hills, helping with farmwork, requesting a midwife, intermarriage with

humans, etc.) that ‘bear no such à priori marks of impossibility’. Citing MacRitchie, Jacobs

argues that the existence of ‘a race of men in Northern Europe, very short and hairy, that

dwelt in underground chambers artificially concealed by green hillocks’ and that was

‘conquered and nearly exterminated by Aryan invaders’ could explain much of fairy tradition.

Specifically, ‘the Dark Tower of the King of Elfland in “Childe Rowland” has a remarkable

resemblance to the dwellings of the “good folk” which recent excavations have revealed’,

particularly Maeshowe in Orkney, as described by MacRitchie.128

The support of someone of such good standing as Jacobs may have been a pre-requisite for

long-term scholarly appraisal of MacRitchie’s work, at least as far as folklorists were

concerned. Jacobs was not quite alone here either, for MacRitchie also received substantial

theoretical backing from John Rhŷs, who lent his support in his 1900 presidential address to

the Anthropological Section of the British Association.129

In the mid-1890s, Elizabeth Andrews began a MacRitchie-inspired analysis of Ulster

folklore. Coming into the debate at such a relatively late date, she seems unaware that some of

her “independent” sources are almost certainly influenced by MacRitchie so that the latter can

hardly be used as support for the former; it is, rather, the other way around.130

Andrews takes

a doctrinaire MacRitchieist approach to Irish folklore, which is relatively straightforward

since in Testimony of Tradition, MacRitchie had already taken a doctrinaire MacRitchieist

approach to the same material. Andrews’s Ulster Folklore was not published until 1913. Its

review by Longworth Dames in Man is appreciative though it stops short of unambiguously

following Andrews into MacRitchieist territory:

The subject of the relation between the beliefs in fairies and small-sized races, and possible late survivals of prehistoric races, has already been dealt with by Mr. D. MacRitchie in various publications, and in Dr. C. A. Windle’s edition of Tyson’s Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients, and Dr. Kollmann has found a Neolithic necropolis of pygmies near Schaffhausen, in Switzerland, where similar beliefs as to small people are prevalent. […] There is certainly something to be said in favour of this theory, but the absence of actual remains of pygmy races in the British Isles is a negative argument against it. Nevertheless, the Swiss discoveries show that such races did exist in Western Europe, and time may bring to light similar remains in our own country.

We have dealt with Andrews’s book here because, despite its late publication, it is based on

1890s folklore research. It is this point in the 1890s to which we shall come back later, when

we return to our analysis of the development of folklore theories in Shetland. Indeed, by the

time Ulster Folklore was published, the MacRitchieist theory was no longer part of

mainstream folklore research, despite the best efforts of MacRitchie himself, who published a

range of supporting articles on the subject.132

However, a separate strand of MacRitchie-inspired research and literary output was also

gearing up in the 1890s, and this has been admirably discussed by Carole G. Silver (pp. 47–50

and pp. 138–46). MacRitchie was sympathetic to his dwarfish Ugrian races, crediting them

with pride, wisdom, and extraordinary strength. Both Ancient and Modern Britons and

Testimony of Tradition show that MacRitchie was not, initially at least, a racial evolutionist.

MacRitchie sees savagery as necessarily succumbing to civilisation, but he views neither

savagery nor civilisation as racially determined. Similarly, although Testimony of Tradition

argues that there was a final tendency for Ugrian dwarfs to suffer defeat from superior Aryan

power, it also argues for an earlier tendency for Aryans to be ruled by Ugrian dwarfs. Thus,

when Finns first come to Scotland and Ireland, they conquer these lands’ Aryan inhabitants.

Even at a later period, these Finns act as equals to and intermarry with the Norse. This ruling

caste of Scotland and Ireland is eventually conquered by a series of invaders from the south,

yet there is no indication that their race leaves them peculiarly open to conquest. It is true that

MacRitchie views his contemporary Lapps, Finns, Eskimos, and Ainus as primitive peoples.

However, MacRitchie (pp. 164–65) also states that:

But this characteristic [hairiness] of the dwarfs of Scottish tradition and of the “Picts” of history does not tend to show that such people were identical with the modern Lapps. Nor, indeed, is this to be looked for. A race which was in its prime two thousand years ago may have many points in common with one or another of the modern races (presumably its own descendants, in some measure); but absolute identity of type can hardly be expected, if one considers the crossing, re-crossing, and in some cases almost the extermination of the various races of Europe during that period.

Again, ethnicity is not linked with race. MacRitchie’s contemporary Lapps are not savages

because of their physiology; they are savages because their ancestors were conquered and

expelled into inhospitable wildernesses. MacRitchie’s euhemerism does not lend itself to

strategic Aryanism, to racialism as a philosophy.

In not linking cultural evolution with racial evolution, Frazer, MacRitchie, and other

survivalists were somewhat behind the times. The field of philology had moved from arguing

for similarities between peoples to, in the late-nineteenth century, more often arguing for

dissimilarities between particular groups of peoples. MacRitchie was not a racialist, but his

theory was latched onto by people who were.

Part of the impetus for this was, as Longworth Dames (p. 114) notes in his review of Ulster

Folklore, the ‘Neolithic necropolis of pygmies near Schaffhausen’. As it turns out, the

significance of this find was much overstated. J. Kollmann, who writes about the site in 1896,

records the finding of ‘skeletal remains of normal-sized persons of the usual European type’

as well as ‘portions of skeletons of small human beings, which, considering all accounts we

possess about pygmies of other continents, must be regarded as pygmies of the neolithic

period of Europe’.133

The labelling of these latter remains as those of pygmies is dependent on

prior, extra-European racial anthropology. Kollmann is furthermore not quite thinking along

racialist lines:

The remains of these two very different types were found lying side by side […] and showed no perceptible difference in the manner of their burial. From this we may conclude that the people lived together in peaceful harmony, notwithstanding their great difference of race.

In other words, as in MacRitchie, racial difference does not equate to ethnic difference.

Additionally, Kollmann (pp. 118–20) is working with a very small sample (three or four

partial skeletons), which undermines Schaffhausen’s status as ‘a pygmy necropolis’:

According to Messrs. Sarasin, the medium stature of the Veddas of Ceylon is 1,575 mm., while the average stature of the three European pygmies is 1,425 mm., so that they are shorter even than the Veddas by 100 to 150 mm., or more.

Although these results of the comparison of measurements exclude every possibility of error, we had still another opportunity of proving the existence of pygmies at Schweizersbild. M. Mantegazza very kindly granted me permission to examine the skeleton of an Andaman islander in the Anthropological Museum of Florence, the Andamanese being one of the varieties of pygmies. […] If therefore this Andaman islander, with a femoral length of more than 400 mm. has a stature of only 1,500 mm., the pygmies, with a femoral length of less than 400 mm., must surely have been of very low stature.

These are, indeed, small skeletons, and the existence of diminutive Andaman islanders is not

in doubt. Even though Kollmann makes unwarranted conclusions as a result of his discovery,

these conclusions are not necessarily helpful to euhemeristic theorists. For example,

Kollmann (pp. 121–22) reports on the continued existence of pygmies ‘in Sicily and Sardinia,

where, in several districts, they form 14 per cent. of the population’ and indeed in Italy as a

whole and probably Russia as well:

As regards the appearance of these living pygmies in Sicily, they seem to have the looks of miniature Europeans. […] The point I particularly wish to impress is that to the normally tall varieties of man in Europe must be added smaller types which have their own special place in the anthropological system. These latter are not simply diminutive examples of the tall races, but represent a distinct species of mankind, which is found in several localities dispersed over the globe. We are led to believe that these smaller varieties have been the predecessors of the now predominant types of full-sized humanity.

Silver credits the Schaffhausen discovery with providing MacRitchie’s supporters the

additional proof necessary to carry on their intellectual programme (pp. 49–50). If her

analysis is correct, it – like the excavations of Maeshowe and other chambered tombs in

Britain – shows how easily archaeological discoveries could be twisted to fit anthropological

purposes. MacRitchie’s dwarfs are not savages, and Kollmann’s are no more savage than their

taller neighbours. Unlike MacRitchie’s fairies, the remains at Schaffhausen and the ‘living

pygmies in Sicily and Sardinia’ show no signs of physical irregularity aside from their small

size: these are mere ‘miniature Europeans’, otherwise physiologically identical with their

taller neighbours.

Regardless, the Schaffhausen discovery was pounced upon by a series of writers who are

not held in especially high esteem today. Viewing the Schaffhausen discovery as

corroborating evidence for MacRitchieism in the context of the races of pygmies that

European explorers had encountered over the previous two decades (for example, George

Schweinfurth’s Akka people and E.H. Man’s Andaman islanders), writers such as John Stuart

Stuart-Glennie and R. G. Haliburton began constructing a racialised history of Europe’s

population and conquest. Haliburton’s Akka had migrated in part to prehistoric Europe, and

Haliburton held that their savage physiology could ‘only be racial and the results of heredity’

(Silver, pp. 45–46, p. 50, and p. 138). Considering MacRitchie’s continued adherence to a

theory that stressed fairies’ dwarfish Mongoloid (and kayak-using) identity rather than any

possible pygmy Negroid identity, it is difficult see why he aided Haliburton in his research as

he did. Haliburton’s and MacRitchie’s common interest may have resulted from the

increasingly confused definitional situation that characterised the death throes of philology

and the re-emergence of physical anthropology and comparative linguistics per se. The

continued existence of pygmy savages was used as proof of polygenesis and to suggest that,

prior to the rise of modern man, pygmies had inhabited all of Europe (Silver, p. 137). As

Silver (pp. 138–39) describes it:

In the later stages of his research, Haliburton sent David MacRitchie to the Pyrenees in

search of the Spanish branch of the Moroccan Akka dwarfs. In the dwarfs of the Val de Ribas in Spain, Haliburton argued, one could find other “survivals” of the Turanian race and living evidence of the fact that the species had spread all over Europe. They, too, had negroid traits: copper-colored or yellow skins and wild reddish hair; they walked inclined forward like the apes; their ancient-looking faces were marked by slanted, Tartar eyes. And their bestiality was demonstrated by their large mouths with “remarkably long and strong” incisors and by “their lips…always wet with saliva” (Haliburton, Race of Pygmies, p. 79). [...] Many seemed to have at least half-believed the threat implicit in the theory — that the Turanians had not been “killed off to allow the survival of the fittest” but were still among the living.

Even assuming that the gradual coalescing of the concepts of Negroidism and Mongolism and

that the emerging evidence behind polygenesis offered MacRitchie an excuse for involving

himself with the racialists, it is difficult to see how his distinctly non-evolutionary take on

euhemerism could have justified it. MacRitchie had, however incorrectly, looked at fairy

traditions and tried to find the closest ethnological match for them. By contrast, the racialist

proponents of the pygmy theory found their barbaric pygmies and then applied them to

tradition.

It is not that traditional fairies in Spain or elsewhere in non-northern Europe display more

“Negroid” attributes than do traditional fairies in Northern Europe. Nevertheless, as Silver

shows, a strand of British popular culture began racialising fairies or, taking inspiration from

MacRitchie and other scholars, depicting barbaric dwarfs living like traditional fairies. Arthur

Machen and William Morris both make use of this concept multiple times, and John Buchan

provides a wholly rationalistic take on the idea of murderous, rapacious dwarfs still living in

Britain (Silver, pp. 144–145). None of these authors are much read today, yet Morris’s

euhemerist 1889 Roots of the Mountains is the most obvious literary precursor to the Lord of

the Rings trilogy, written by another Old Northern scholar, J. R. R. Tolkien. Vitally, whereas

MacRitchie sees civilisation conquer savagery in part through intermarriage, Morris’s novel –

its publication coinciding with MacRitchie’s Archaeological Review articles – warns of the

dangers of miscegenation. Take, for example, the scene in Roots of the Mountain in which

heroic Folk-might and Face-of-god discuss how the vicious, bestial Dusky Men have enslaved

a portion of the noble Dalesmen:

“Tell me again,” said Face-of-god, “is there no mixed folk between these Dusky Men and

the Dalesmen, since they have no women of their own, but lie with the women of the Dale? Moreover, do not the poor folk of the Dale beget and bear children, so that there are thralls born of thralls?”

“Wisely thou asketh this,” said Folk-might, “but there-of shall I tell thee, that when a Dusky Carle mingles with a woman of the Dale, the child which she beareth shall oftenest favour his race and not hers; or else shall it be witless, a fool natural. But as for the children of these poor thralls; yea, the masters cause them to breed if so their masterships will, and when the children are born, they keep them or slay them as they will, as they would with whelps or calves. To be short, year by year these vile wretches grow fiercer and more beastly, and their thralls more hapless and down-trodden.”

In Roots of the Mountains, Morris puts (non-pygmy) racial monsters to subtle use to forward

his socialist ideals (Wawn, p. 278).

Eventually, the dwarf/pygmy theory – in all its forms – would taper out of genuinely

scientific discussion. There were a number of reasons for this, one of which was noted already

in 1890s, that archaeology had failed to turn up substantial remains of pygmies in Europe.

Nor did archaeology help MacRitchie’s personal foci, as it became increasingly evident that

Britain’s chambered tombs were not, in fact, houses. The experiences of World War II and its

prelude also caused a more general questioning in Britain as to the usefulness of philology-

inspired racial classifications, making MacRitchieist theory, like Morris’s Dusky Men, a

literary and scholarly taboo.

More subtly, MacRitchie’s theory was being undermined by a parallel academic

movement. Although Testimony of Tradition was initially embraced by the diffusionist

Jacobs, MacRitchieism came to be used by one of the most prominent of the next generation

of Frazer-inspired scholars, Margaret Murray. By the time Murray had turned from

Egyptology to witchcraft traditions, Frazer and the universalists had passed their peak of

literary popularity. Murray is often connected with Frazer due to her use of Frazer’s concepts

of imitative magic and the sacrificial god, yet this association is not entirely warranted, for

Murray’s overarching thesis does not mesh with Frazer’s basic universalism and

evolutionism. Although Murray never names MacRitchie in her two most influential books,

The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) and The God of the Witches (1933), his ideas are

nonetheless evident in her work. In Witch-Cult, Murray takes a strict MacRitchieist approach,

suggesting that witches and fairies were one and the same:

It is now a commonplace of anthropology that the tales of fairies and elves preserve the tradition of a dwarf race which once inhabited Northern and Western Europe. Successive invasions drove them to the less fertile parts of each country which they inhabited, some betook themselves to the inhospitable north or the equally inhospitable mountains; some, however, remained in the open heaths and moors, living as mound-dwellers, venturing out chiefly at night and coming in contact with the ruling races only on rare occasions. As the conqueror always regards the religion of the conquered as superior to his own in the arts of evil magic, the dwarf race obtained the reputation of wizards and magicians, and their god was identified by the conquerors with the Principle of Evil. The identification of the witches with the dwarf or fairy race would give us a clear insight into much of the civilization of the early European peoples, especially as regards their religious ideas.

Twelve years later, in God of the Witches, Murray elaborates concerning fairies, noting parallels between fairies and ‘the wild tribes of India’ and ‘the people of the Asiatic steppes’:

Like the people of the steppe the fairies appear to have lived chiefly on the milk of their herds, with an occasional orgy of a meat feast. In this they differed from the agriculturalists who inhabited the most fertile parts of the country. The immense difference in physique caused by the introduction of grain into the regular diet of mankind is hardly yet realised except by the few who have studied the subject. It is not improbable that the small stature of the fairy, the stunted size of the changelings, the starved condition of the “mortal” captive among the fairies, may have been due to diet.

Typically, Murray states all of this as generally-acknowledged scholarly opinion, and her goal

is always – whether regarding fairies or witches – to de-supernaturalise her subject matter.137

This is particularly clear in her description of houses in Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain:

‘These houses were circular in plan, and were sunk into the earth to the depth of two or three

feet […]. Such houses were built in groups; and when overgrown with grass, bracken and

small shrubs would appear like mounds or small hills’. Murray (God of the Witches, pp. 39–

40) then proceeds to describe the houses of the fairies:

A hut of the kind described above is called a “fairy house,” and as the two principal inhabitants wore crowns it must be the palace of the fairy king and queen. The hut is circular, is partly sunk below the surface of the ground and is roofed with turf on which shrubs are growing. It is one of a group of similar huts, which from the outside have the appearance of little hills or mounds, which is perhaps what John Walsh meant when he said that he consulted the fairies on hills. The inhabitants are smaller than the man who is speaking to them, but they are not dwarfs or midgets. This then is clear evidence of the belief in elves and fairies at […] 1555, and is proof not only of the human nature of the fairies and of their close resemblance to the Neolithic people but also of the survival of the Neolithic and Bronze-age folk and their civilisation as late as the sixteenth century.

Unlike MacRitchie, who sees the Lapps/Picts/Feens as both conquerors and the conquered,

Murray (God of the Witches, p. 40) simply presents the latter. The fairies are nearly

exterminated by the ‘Kelts’ of the Iron Age:

Those folk who live[d] in the wild parts escaped the general massacre and learned that their best defence was to strike terror into the hearts of their savage neighbours. […] It was from our ancestors of the Iron-age that the traditional fear of the fairies was derived, the terror of the cunning and implacable enemy which is found in all records of fairies until Shakespeare dispersed it.

MacRitchie was not strictly necessary for Murray’s manipulative research aimed at

rationalising witches; he just provided a convenient means of rationalising fairies.

As Jacqueline Simpson notes, it was Murray’s ironic fate that her rationalisation of

witchcraft was used as the basis for Gerald Gardner’s Wicca movement. In a sense, Wicca

brought MacRitchie’s legacy full-circle, joining his earliest defender to his last significant

one: Gardner’s work harked back not just to Murray but also to Charles G. Leland, now most

famous for his Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, a text of uncertain authenticity.138

Murray might have begun her career as an Egyptologist, but we would do well to remember

that Leland and MacRitchie began theirs by studying Gypsies/Egyptians.

God of the Witches was written in 1933. Though one hesitates to call it an academic work,

it has academic pretensions and was viewed as academic by the general public. In Murray’s

use of MacRitchie, she became virtually the last academic writer of any significance to accept

the core of MacRitchie’s thesis. An example of the utter lack of support commanded by the

theory is that, when J. A. MacCulloch considers the theory in a 1932 Folklore article, the

most recent supporter of the pygmy theory he cites is J. Nüesch, writing in 1904.139

Finally, we must note John M. MacAulay’s 1998 Seal-Folk and Ocean Paddlers.

MacAulay has rediscovered MacRitchie and set about re-proving the heart of the theory

presented in Testimony of Tradition, using both historical sources known to MacRitchie and

some new ones as well. Regardless, the argument, though more limited, is substantially the

same: there is identity between the Scandinavian Finns, the Northern Isles Finns, the seal-

folk, and the Irish fianna. MacAulay has little to say about Picts and chambered mounds; his

investigation focuses on maritime fairy traditions. Nor does he follow MacRitchie across the

continent, all the way over to Japan; MacAulay confines himself to the North Atlantic. We

would not cover MacAulay’s book here were it not for the fact that, despite its many flaws, its

presence in a variety of public and university libraries internationally suggests that it might

exert some continuing influence.

Reading Seal-Folk and Ocean Paddlers actually gives one an appreciation for

MacRitchie’s work. For all of MacRitchie’s presumptuousness, he used his evidence

consistently, and he sets out his logic – albeit flawed logic – clearly. This is not true of

MacAulay, who, rather in the manner of Murray, takes some sources at face value and

discards others arbitrarily:

Every maritime nation has its very own typical Mermaid story, and all of them rightly are subject, to a greater or lesser degree, of artistic or poetic embellishment. The difference in this account of the traditions of Seal-folk or Finn-folk in Scottish island folklore is that no attempt is made to enrich the factual content of individual sightings, nor is there any speculation as to the nature of the hidden parts, i.e. what remains unseen under the surface of the water.

In other words, the traditions that suit MacAulay’s argument (seal-folk and Finn traditions)

are valuable, and those that do not (merfolk traditions) are not valuable. Unfortunately, the

only distinction one can make between these valuable and non-valuable traditions is that, seen

in light of MacAulay’s theory, the latter are embellished whereas the former are not. The

argument is entirely circular.

It is, of course, the international nature of supernatural folklore that makes MacRitchie’s

original argument so laughably expansive and Santa Claus-inclusive to begin with, and as

Sidney Hartland points out, even that is not enough since there are still the rest of the world’s

traditions to consider. By limiting his argument to the North Atlantic, MacAulay makes his

theory less absurd but only at the expense of MacRitchie’s vestigial academic validity. In the

introduction to his book, MacAulay (pp. viii-ix) writes that MacRitchie’s work ‘has been

largely misunderstood, and even openly scorned. It now forms the backbone of my attempt to

continue this task of shedding light on the maritime mystery of the “seal-folk”’. MacAulay

does not, however, take the time to confront the many criticisms that were levelled against

MacRitchie. The result is that, despite its smaller scope, Seal-Folk and Ocean Paddlers is no

more convincing than is Testimony of Tradition.

In the final analysis, despite its veneer of academic thoroughness, MacRitchie’s work was

naïve and over-reaching, attributes that made it vulnerable to exploitation by frauds, strident

Aryanists (who would evolve into today’s white supremacists), textual manipulators, and

amateurish theorists.

3.3: MacRitchieism in Shetland

We will now pick up the strands of folk belief scholarship in Shetland where we left them in

order to analyse MacRitchie’s theory of the origins of fairy belief.

The last work from Shetland that we considered was Jessie Saxby’s 1888 Home of a

Naturalist. We had seen that, until this point, Shetland writers had been keeping more or less

up to date with developments in British anthropology. Considering the islands’ geographical

isolation, how had Shetlanders achieved this? The answer seems partially to lie in

Edinburgh’s Shetland community. In 1888, for example, among the prominent Shetlanders

living in Edinburgh were Saxby, Gilbert Goudie, and J. J. Haldane Burgess, the latter of

whom would later play a significant role in the development of Shetland’s Norse identity as a

result of his involvement in Up-Helly-Aa. Goudie and Saxby, for their parts, were close

acquaintances and shared similar antiquarian interests. They were both activists for greater

Shetland (and Irish) autonomy, with Goudie writing a letter to The Scotsman in 1886 in

support of Shetland Home Rule (B. J. Cohen, pp. 349–67 and p. 385). Goudie (qtd. in B. J.

Cohen, p. 438) was also a racial romantic, as is clear from the excerpt below from one of his

1890 Shetland News articles:

The Celts usually made it their principal endeavour to propagate the race and squat down on the land, and then if anything went wrong they looked to other people to supply their wants. The beauty of Orkney and Shetland men was that they looked upon life in a different light. It had been their custom when they found there was no more room for them at home to go out into the world like the patriarchs of old, not knowing whither they went.

This dynamic Norseman versus lethargic Celt idea was a popular line to take, and Goudie

would have heard it used in Edinburgh by many Lowland Scots themselves. As we saw

above, one of Saxby’s innovations was to affect a break between Shetland and mainland

Scottish and English Norse/Anglo-Saxon romanticism. This is exemplified in her statement

that Shetlanders are ‘quite alien to Celt or Saxon’, thereby not only pushing away the English

but also imputing Anglo-Saxon – rather than Norse – ancestry to the Lowland Scots

(Edmondston and Saxby, p. 181).

In 1898, Saxby left Edinburgh and returned to Unst. Although I have found no evidence

proving that Saxby knew MacRitchie personally, considering the intimacy of the Edinburgh

antiquarian community and their mutual interests, I think it is very likely that they were

acquainted with one another. Certainly, MacRitchie cites Saxby in Testimony of Tradition,

and Saxby could not have helped at least hearing about MacRitchie’s work.

Regardless, the earliest evidence of MacRitchieism that I have found in a book about

Shetland is 1899’s Shetland Folk-Lore, written by John Spence (1839–1918). Spence quotes a

letter from his recently departed friend Robert Jamieson (1827–1899) on the history of

Shetland:

“The conclusion I have come to is that Shetland was inhabited by three successive and distinct races before the arrival of the Norsemen, and that the last of them, the Finns, built the brochs.

“The popular opinion is that the brochs were built by the Picts, a small people. Such could not have been the case. But the Finns were compelled to leave after the Northmen arrived. Before leaving they dismantled their castles, so that the Northmen could not live in them.

“The mound-dwellers took possession of them, and came in contact with the early Udallers. In time the Finn owners were forgotten, and the mound-dwellers, or Pechts, became associated in the public mind with the brochs.” [...]

“Unless old men and women in several parishes wilfully lied, or were more liable to be deceived than we are, the mound-dwellers existed in Shetland up to the beginning of the present century” (Robert Jamieson, qtd. in Spence, pp. 55–56).

It is likely that Robert Jamieson received at least the essence of this theory from MacRitchie

himself. Robert Jamieson – a regular columnist with The Scotsman – was the schoolmaster in

Sandness, and he exerted a pedagogical influence that extended down into mainland Scotland.

Although Robert Jamieson’s above chronology differs from that of MacRitchie by

differentiating between the Finns and the Picts/mound-dwellers, his implicit identification of

Picts with trows is significant. Additionally, in 14 March 1893, MacRitchie sent a letter to an

unidentified Shetlander. The letter is a reply to a previous letter from its recipient, who seems

to have supported MacRitchie’s views and to have only recently read Testimony of Tradition.

Based on the date and content of the extant letter, it is probable that Robert Jamieson was its

recipient.141

We should also note that MacRitchie visited Shetland sometime in the mid- to

late 1880s, prior to writing Testimony of Tradition (MacRitchie, pp. 58–59). Thus, although

the letter described above might be our earliest incontrovertible proof of MacRitchie

influencing thought within Shetland, it seems very likely that his reputation at least to some

extent preceded his book’s arrival to the islands.

We can compare Robert Jamieson’s views with those of John Spence (pp. 17–18) himself,

who leavens Pinkerton with local lore:

It is reasonable to suppose that the earlier migrations of the human race have been from east to west—hence we may infer that the people called the Picts were Finnish adventurers from the Scandinavian peninsula, who migrated or were driven westward about the beginning of or shortly before the Christian era. And as Shetland is the nearest land to Norway, they probably colonised these islands first, and in time proceeded westward by way of the Orkneys to the mainland of Scotland. In support of this view it may be mentioned that there are a few place-names in which the Finns appear to be commemorated, e.g., Finnigirt and Finnie, in the Island of Fetlar; and Finnister in Nesting, etc. It is worthy of note that these places are associated in the public mind with trolls, or at least something uncanny.

Spence shows signs of moving beyond Pinkerton. Despite his view that some of Robert

Jamieson’s ideas are ‘extraordinary’, Spence writes of the Picts and Norsemen that: ‘After the

din of war had ceased, the new settlers would probably get glimpses in the early morning or

grey moonlight of the earth house dwellers still surviving in their midst, clinging to their old

haunts with the tenacious love of home and offspring that characterises the human race’. This

too may show exposure to MacRitchieism though Spence sees neither the Picts nor the Finns

as conquerors. He hints at an association with trows but goes no further than that. Elsewhere,

Spence displays at most a very cursory knowledge of the theory. His interest in trows is not,

apparently, very significant, though he mentions them often enough in passing and tells some

stories. Never does Spence theorise about trows, however, and it is noteworthy that, unlike

MacRitchie, he is well aware that ‘fairy knowes’ are usually burial mounds, not prehistoric

habitations. This renders somewhat confusing his earlier references to mound-dwellers

(Spence, p. 42 and p. 79).

We saw above that Saxby’s 1888 Home of a Naturalist does not advance a MacRitchieist

trow theory. There are definite signs though that her florid brand of Viking romanticism made

a significant impact on later writers of books about Shetland. A measure of this can be taken

from the 1906 The Story of Shetland, a descriptive book by the Uyeasound, Unst writer W.

Fordyce Clark (1865–1948). Clark writes in Saxby’s style and, just as importantly, writes a

book apparently aimed at outsiders yet filled with unambiguously local sentiment:

The people retain many of the characteristics of that resourceful and dauntless race which colonised the isles toward the close of the ninth century. Many of the old Norse customs still survive: and the local dialect contains numerous Norse words and phrases. Shetlanders still have a kindly feeling towards Norway, and look back with unfeigned regret upon the time when the isles were under the wing of the “mother-country.” For in those days each man was his own landlord; and the evils of the feudal system were as yet unknown.

If Shetlanders still object to being called “Scotch,” it is scarcely to be wondered at. For Scotland has much to answer for in connection with her treatment of her northern dependency; and the wounds which were inflicted during the dark centuries of neglect and oppression which followed upon acquisition of the isles, are even yet not fully healed.

On the topic of the islands’ early settlement, Clark is informed by a mix of scholarship. He

mentions the theory that Shetland was ‘first colonised by a Finnish race’, noting however that

the only ‘support of the former theory are certain vague traditions that linger in the islands,

and the occurrence of a few place-names such as “Finnister,” “Finniegarth,” etc., which are

supposed to point to a Finnish occupation’. Lest this lead us to believe that he is immune to

flights of anthropological fancy, Clark (Story of Shetland, pp. 26–29) goes on to say that

Scotland’s (and later, Shetland’s) earliest known inhabitants were short, dark, dolichocephalic

Iberians. Furthermore, these Iberians resemble nothing so much as ‘the traditionary Finns of

Shetland [...]; and this would almost justify the conclusion that they were one and the same

people’. In the Bronze Age, the Iberians were conquered by ‘the Celtic Aryans’ and fled into

the wilds of Wales and Scotland. ‘It is only natural to suppose that the fugitives would take

refuge in the outlying isles; and it seems equally reasonable to conjecture that the brochs were

erected by those Iberians as the ultimate strongholds against the Celtic invaders’.

Clark seems to have trouble deciding whether to follow Pinkerton or Ritson, and he very

nearly justifies taking a middle line (non-Aryan Finns) that would have pleased neither of

them. Despite Clark’s romanticisation of the Vikings, he is not hostile to these swarthy

Iberians/Finns, who he believes to be generally identifiable with the Picts. Like Tudor, Clark

(Story of Shetland, pp. 32–33) respects them:

They were an intelligent, wary, and resourceful people, very far removed from a condition of mere barbarism. It is to be regretted that more is not known of this mysterious race who for a time flourished on those northern shores, and at the dawn of history melted away before the tide of a higher and more robust civilisation. They have, however, left behind them in those unique towers, memorials which have withstood the ravages of time in a

fashion that is little short of marvellous— memorials which link us with their primeval builders across the yawning gulf of the centuries.

Clark is eager to claim the brochs as part of Shetland’s cultural inheritance and is likewise

enthusiastic about the men who first brought Christianity to the Northern Isles. Nevertheless,

Clark (Story of Shetland, pp. 34–36) prefers the Vikings, saying of the Norsemen’s arrival

that ‘Thus was ushered in a new order of things; and henceforth those surf-beaten isles of the

northern sea were to be associated with a higher and more robust civilisation, whose healthful

influence was in process of time to permeate both hemispheres’.

In 1914, Ernest W. Hardy, native of North Lancashire and Uyeasound resident, wrote Land

o’ the Simmer Dim, a descriptive book on Shetland similar to Saxby’s and Clark’s in both

format and temperament. Citing Skene, Hardy identifies the ferocious, dark, diminutive, and

immensely strong Picts with ‘the Dananns and Fians of Gaelic tradition’ and suggests that

‘they were the mysterious Finns that play so prominent a part in the Shetlandic legends’. He

sees these pre-Celtic Picts as related to the Iberians and as known ‘in Shetland for their tiny

boats’.143

Some of Hardy’s ideas may have come from Clark, his fellow Uyeasound resident.

Close though their texts may be, there are differences: whereas Clark, like Laurence

Williamson, is glad for Pictish heritage, Hardy’s Picts are somewhat neutral – if ferocious –

figures. This is unlike Saxby’s 1888 Picts, who are ‘very small, but strong and ingenious.

They were very peaceable, kindly folk, but lazy’ (Edmondston and Saxby, p. 222).

As the nineteenth century became the twentieth, and as Shetland’s Norse character became

more and more widely accepted within the community, Shetland publications paid increasing

attention to folklore of the supernatural. This contrasts with mainland British trends, where

both academic and amateur research into folk belief fell slowly out of fashion after the turn of

the century. The first unambiguous appearance that I have found of MacRitchieism in

Shetland-based writing comes in 1920, with John Nicolson’s Some Folk-Tales and Legends of

Shetland. John Nicolson (1876–1951) has a great interest in folklore of the supernatural, and

this book contains many stories about trows. One of his tales is the following:

The tiny water mills peculiar to Shetland were generally situated in some very secluded

spot, and as corn grinding was usually done during the night time, it followed that people frequently encountered the Trows when at the mill. The story was told of a certain Jan Teit, that whenever he was engaged grinding corn, a Trow would perch on the rood of the mill and cry through the “lum,” “Jan Teit, peek-a-mill, Jan Teit, peek-a-mill.” Jan’s response to which was always the same, “Ill helt, ill helt.” This tale is of interest because of the support that it gives to the euhemeristic theory that the Picts, or Pechts, and the Trows were one and the same, and that the popular conception of Trows as supernatural beings was simply imagination working on a basis of reality. Most of those rudely-constructed and quaint little buildings, with their low doors through which one was compelled to crawl, were evidently very old. They were once quite common, but are now rapidly disappearing. Jan Teit was probably an incomer, and may have been making use of a mill constructed by the Pechts, and its rightful owner, resenting the intrusion, endeavouring through the medium of a language, which he knew but indifferently, to say, “Jan Teit, you are using the Pecht’s mill.”

John Nicolson’s analysis is so patently absurd that, in view of our current knowledge that

MacRitchie was absolutely incorrect, it seems unintentionally humorous. The trouble is, by

1920, it was already known that MacRitchie had been incorrect. It just was not known in

Shetland. It is clear that John Nicolson has actually read some work promoting MacRitchie’s

theory. His describing the theory as ‘euhemerist’ certainly shows a striving toward

scholarship. Whatever it was that John Nicolson read though was not written very recently.

Shetland’s scholarly links with mainland Britain declined sharply in the early-twentieth

century, and this is evident in the books written by Shetlanders. For one thing, most Shetland

authors cease citing their sources. Hardy is an exception, but his 1914 mention of Skene is a

bit old fashioned as anthropology had moved on significantly since Skene’s 1892 death, and

Hardy’s sources for ancient history are, as often as not, classical. What was acceptable for

Hibbert to do in 1822 is no longer acceptable in 1914; by Hardy’s time, a serious scholar

would not be taking Claudian at face value concerning the Saxon settlement of the Northern

Isles.145

This break with off-island scholarship was due to a number of factors. For example,

Jakob Jakobsen ended his Shetland fieldwork in 1895; Saxby returned to Unst in 1898; Robert

Jamieson died in 1899; and Gilbert Goudie died in 1918, having gradually slowed his literary

output. Many of Shetland’s links with Edinburgh were broken.

One early twentieth-century folklore writer who refers to recent scholarship is J. A. Teit,

the remarkable Shetland emigrant to British Columbia. In 1918, Teit wrote an article for

Journal of American Folklore that is significant for being the only case I have found of a

Shetlander so much as mentioning MacRitchie in a publication. In the event, Teit cites

MacRitchie’s 1912 ‘The Kayak in North-Western Europe’ for the idea that Finns might have

used kayaks.146

It is unclear what impact Teit’s writings had back in his homeland, for despite

John Nicolson and Teit, the MacRitchieist approach did not catch on immediately in Shetland.

For instance, when Clark writes The Shetland Sketch Book in 1930, he shows no awareness of

the theory.147

Although Saxby was not the first writer to introduce MacRitchieism to Shetland, it was

certainly her work that made MacRitchieism a staple of Shetland folklore writing. Following

her return to Unst at the age of 56, Saxby wrote but few books. This might have helped make

her 1932 Shetland Traditional Lore, published when she was 90 years old, all the more

influential. Vitally, this book finds Saxby for the first time binding Shetland’s supernatural

folklore to the Viking narrative that she had helped create four decades earlier. One might

assume that she accomplishes this by taking a Karl Blind-style approach and portraying Finns

as triumphant Vikings. Saxby, however, has a cannier solution, one that is in line with her

literary attempts to free Shetland from British dominion.

Saxby is an expert at playing on readers’ sentiments:

During a long lifetime I have been gathering such traditions and folk-lore as still exist in Shetland. But even the few I have collected are disappearing from the lips and lives of our people. Board schools and closer connection with Britain have largely helped in this, and I regret to say the folk have been led to think that their dialect, not being used by gentlefolks, must therefore be vulgar and better dropped. Naturally, customs and traditions follow the dialect.

But in spite of that, down in their hearts lies a tender affection for the old home-phrases, usages, traditions, and I have found that these are cherished by Shetlanders who are scattered over the earth, forming an important part of British Colonial life. Numbers of them write to me begging that I should preserve these for them in book-form. So I have taken a chief part of our Traditional Lore for that purpose.

I could not follow any systematic arrangement, and I am not a scholarly person to sift and clear up fragments of our Lore until all the mystical charm of the subject has blown away. My compatriots will take what I give them kindly, and ask for no dry, though learned, explanations of what has lived in their souls since childhood with the passionate love of Home so characteristic of all Shetlanders.

Saxby is overly modest. She is perfectly capable of being ‘scholarly’ when it suits her, but

in this case, it does not suit her. Of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century

Shetland authors, it is really only Haldane Burgess who receives respect as an artist today,

but say what one will of Saxby’s populism and career as a writer of popular fiction, her

work contains narrative subtleties and succeeds, at least on a literary level, in sculpting for

Shetland an independent identity. Saxby’s apology for not being systematic is an attack on

the British mainland: though exposure to Britain is destroying Shetland culture, there is still

a chance to save it, a chance that, by implication, has been wasted on the mainland, where

scientific folkloristics has deadened living tradition.

Indeed, Shetland Traditional Lore is full of such subtle digs. At one point, Saxby (p. 40)

tells a legend concerning how ‘the great Saxon King Arthur’ instructed a ‘Laird of Fetlar’

to build the Brough Lodge manor house. She tells this story for its own sake, yet her

specifying that Arthur is a Saxon (surely the opposite of popular opinion) fits into her

overarching aim of turning Highlanders into hapless Celts and the rest of the British

population into overbearing but cowardly Anglo-Saxons. If this interpretation sounds

unlikely, consider Saxby’s (p. 60) rather gratuitous anti-Britishness in her analysis of a

charm against nightmare:

There is more than one version of that incantation, but I give the one with which I am most familiar. It seems more mysterious and characteristic of the Norland poetic fancy than others in which an “Arthur, Knight” figures with “drawn sword and candle-light.” That is evidently a later version applying to some titled church-blessed hero.

“We nidder swird, nor faerd, nor licht” seems more like the way the old Northmen went forth to fight the powers of darkness and evil, armed with their own God-like power alone.

Saxby is disparaging of Christianity elsewhere as well. Evidently, despite her literary

association with Boy’s Own-type fiction, her Viking romanticism is not receptive to the

entirety of the Baring-Gould project (Wawn, pp. 295–302).

An obvious problem for Saxby, if she was to utilise MacRitchieism (and as the text

below shows, it is likely that she has read MacRitchie, not just heard about his ideas), is

that Testimony of Tradition attempts to explain most, if not all, of Northern European and

northern Asian fairy folklore. Saxby, meanwhile, attempts to prove Shetlanders’ superiority

and uniqueness. In Shetland Traditional Lore, Saxby’s (pp. 88–90) adaptation of

MacRitchie’s thesis is positively ingenious:

We have the tradition of two races who inhabited our Isles before either Kelt or Viking; one of these was the “peerie Hill-men” akin to Finns or “Yaks” (Esquimaux). That race probably became the thralls of the fighting Kelts and masterful Sea-kings. Many words of ours relating to menial duties which cannot be traced to Keltic or Norse sources doubtless had their origin with the “peerie Hill-men.” From them comes without doubt our tradition of Trows. How did they find their way to our Isles? Were they fishing in their tiny canoes; or were they flying from enemies and found the sea their refuge? Wind and wave would carry them far from Norway or Denmark, and so they would drift aimlessly until cast upon our shores. The sea provided their food from the flesh and skins of seals, and from fish, and their clothing from the long, dry, sort grass which they knew how to plait into rough cloth. The thickets of low-growing shrubs and dry seaweed gave them firing; in knows and sheltered daals they dug out sleeping quarters.

We have legends of Pechs or Picts. The Shetlanders spoke with dread of the fighting Picts, but there was contempt, even pity, in allusion to the “puir peerie Pechen.” They were said to carry burdens, to be ingenious and clever in working with metals. When you passed a Trow knowe you could hear the “klinkin” of the Pechs’ tools upon silver or gold. They dug out homes like rabbit-warrens. These were so constructed that one large stone covered the opening, and we don’t know how far in the earth those rooms and passages went. Some have been discovered, but very little investigation followed discovery, and the places were turned topsy-turvy, turfs and stones carried away for building purposes, till nothing of the original structure was left.

Pechen were never spoken of as masters. They sneaked about the hillsides. They seemed willing to work for the “Mukle Maisters,” but were malicious and dishonest servants, resenting the power of a stronger race.

They seem to have lingered some time as thralls.

Saxby then proceeds to retell a shortened version (compared with that in Home of a

Naturalist) of the heather ale story (p. 90). After doing this, Saxby (pp. 91–92) continues her

narrative of conquest:

The Mukle Men were said to be Finns. I have heard them spoken of as Denschmen. Karl Blind tells that Finn is an old Germanic word and was applied to all Northmen. This is confirmed by an old rhyme story of ours which began: “A Finn cam ower frae Noroway.” Scholars say that the Finns were a prehistoric race, Mongoloid or Turanian. In our legendary lore the Picts and Finns were often opposed to each other; both fierce and overbearing, both endowed with enormous strength, both striving for the mastery of our Isles. I was told that the Irish were known to the Scandinavians as Finns in prehistoric times.

May this not point to the quarrels between Danes and Norwegians— the Gael and the Gall, as they were termed by the Irish, “the dark and the fair foreigners?” The Finns were endowed with supernatural powers, and were sometimes talked of as allied to the Trows in this respect.

I think we may say that our Isles were inhabited all along by people from North lands. First the peerie Hill-men, Lapps and Eskimo. Then the Mukle Maisters, Finns and Picts (shall we call them different tribes of Kelts?). Next came the Vikings, rebels from Scandinavia, robbers and conquering heroes. Lastly the Scots, who won our Isles by fraud and violence. However, boast as we do of our Viking ancestors, we cannot call the Britons worse than ourselves, for the Mukle Men seem to have been eradicated by a treachery as great as was perpetrated by late-comers.

This narrative is somewhat confusing, but a careful reading shows that it possesses an internal

logic. At the start, Saxby writes that ‘We have the tradition of two races who inhabited our

Isles before either Kelt or Viking; one of these was the “peerie Hill-men” akin to Finns or

“Yaks” (Esquimaux)’. Although Saxby speaks in terms of races, she seems to be thinking

more of waves of conquest. Thus, the Lappish peerie Hill-men came first. They were

followed by the ‘Mukle Maisters, Finns and Picts’. Saxby more or less identifies the Mukle

Maisters with the Finns. The Picts, meanwhile, are closely related to the peerie Hill-men, for

both are small, live underground, and are the origin of trow traditions. It may be that Saxby is

thinking that the peerie Hill-men who remained behind in Scandinavia at the time of the first

migration developed into the Picts, for the Picts are clearly a more advanced people. All of

these groups come from Scandinavia, and all are Celts, apparently preceding the Dalriadic

Scots. They are also ‘Mongoloid or Turanian’, the inference being that the Celts proper can be

classed this way as well.

So, Shetland’s narrative of conquest runs thus:

1) The diminutive hill men (Lapps/Eskimos) arrive in canoes/kayaks and eke out a

living while dwelling in simple caves dug into the sides of mounds and hills.

2) The Picts arrive, bringing a more advanced material culture with them, with the result

that they live in complex subterranean ‘homes like rabbit-warrens’.

3) The Finns arrive, conquering and enslaving the various mound-dwellers, who take on

the aspect of trows to them.

4) The Vikings – ‘robbers and conquering heroes’ – defeat and ‘eradicate’ the Finns.

5) The Scots take over Shetland ‘by fraud and violence’. Even though these,

historically, were Lowland Scots, Saxby seems happy to label them as Celtic. She has

said earlier that Hill-men and Finns lived in Shetland prior to ‘Kelt or Viking’.

Admittedly, this racial anthropology is a bit dicey, for later it seems that Saxby (p. 93) would

turn even the Vikings into Turanians: ‘One is inclined to believe the theory that those Picts

were just tribes of the same stock as the Vikinger, differing only as the lapse of time and

estrangement for centuries would change any people’. However, if Saxby is using MacRitchie

as her source, it is little wonder that she has difficulty with her racial classifications.

Saxby has made some major alterations to MacRitchie’s theory; significantly, she never

even hints that this story is not limited to Shetland. Not even Orkney gets a mention, much

less Ireland, the Hebrides, and the Scottish Highlands. Besides this though, Saxby sticks

remarkably close to MacRitchie’s fundamental argument, even to the extent that there seem to

be multiple races that tradition turns into fairies successively. In MacRitchie’s Testimony of

Tradition (p. 90), the Lapps are the Norsemen’s fairies while the Lapps themselves possess

fairies in the form of the Tshud:

Mr. Ralston states that “the traditions relating to the constant struggle maintained between the Lapp aborigines and their foreign enemies” forms an important portion of the collection. “The first nine stories all refer to the foes known as Tsjuderne, the Tsjuder—the Chudic Finns of the Baltic and other coasts. When these dreaded enemies appeared, the Lapps would take refuge in their underground retreats”. Despite her earlier comparison of the Vikings’ anti-Finnish actions with those of the Scots

against the Norse, this concession does not seem entirely in earnest, for immediately

afterwards, Saxby (pp. 93–94) writes:

When Shetland came under Scottish rule much of the Scandinavian character became coloured, of course, by the new influences, although the folk hated their oppressors. The Scots, who forced their religion, their mode of life, and their laws upon our Isles, did not change the character of our people, but later, grasping lairds and tyrannical clergy changed a conservative people into determined Liberals.

In this connection we must remember that under Norse rule every family owned the land they lived upon, and every man was “as good as his neighbour if he behaved himself.”

No wonder they resented the wholesale seizure of their land which they passionately loved. No wonder they resented the insolent airs of authority and superior rank affected by the illegitimate scions of Scottish nobility who swarmed over their Isles, grasping everything from the helpless natives!

Saxby (p. 95) works hard to legitimise Shetland’s Norse links: ‘for three hundred years Norse

kings ruled in Scotland, and for a longer period Scotland paid tribute as a dependent state to

Norway— which we look on as our Mother country’.

The overall effect of Shetland Traditional Lore is to differentiate Shetland by means of

creating a unified narrative for the islands. Saxby takes the “us versus them” philosophy

expounded by some previous Shetland romantics and extends it to the realm of

supernatural tradition. Just as the Norse are superior to the Scots, Saxby (p. 130) sees trows

as superior to English, Scottish, and Irish fairies: ‘Our Shetland fairies are very unlike

Shakespeare’s dainty little creatures and Lover’s Irish “good people”’. Furthermore, Saxby

(pp. 141–42) thrills at the idea that:

Dainty little fairies of greenswards and woodlands, of moonlight dance, and gossamer wing never seem to have visited our Isles: frightened no doubt by the rude winds, the cold snow, and the uncertain climate; also the over-bearing, masterful character of all the native supernatural beings.

One of Saxby’s great innovations, then, was to make Shetland’s supernatural legends a part

of the islands’ Viking narrative. We saw earlier that the brochs and other impressive pre-

Viking structures impeded the building of a unified Shetland narrative: if the Vikings

exterminated the Picts, then it was difficult for Shetlanders to claim Pictish heritage while

also claiming Viking heritage. MacRitchieism, with some alteration, provided a way out by

literally dehumanising the broch builders. Furthermore, by limiting MacRitchie’s theory to

Shetland, Saxby transforms trows into something more than just a local variety of Scottish

fairy (à la George Low and Arthur Edmondston) or even Norwegian troll (à la Hibbert).

She makes them the sole property of Shetland (ignoring Orkney), thereby heightening

Shetlanders’ claims to cultural distinctiveness.

Shetland Traditional Lore became – and still is – the one book that someone researching

Shetland folklore cannot ignore, both because of its genuinely valuable contents and

because of the influence it exercised over later writing and thought. Saxby died in 1940.

Her writing has not remained popular, at least not compared with the continued relative

popularity of her later contemporaries, J. J. Haldane Burgess and Vagaland. Nor has it

received the scholarly attention that its import deserves.

3.4: Shetland Folk Belief Writing after Saxby

The influence of Shetland Traditional Lore is apparent already a year after its publication,

in Peter A. Jamieson’s 1933 The Viking Isles. Peter A. Jamieson (1898–1976), a neighbour

of John Nicolson, imitates Saxby’s style when he speaks of the invasion of Shetland after

1468 [sic] by ‘hordes of “broken men,” rapacious adventurers, and unscrupulous ministers’

who ‘fled from Scotland, finding refuge among the odallers of the north’.149

He also dwells

on the Norse-derived handsomeness of today’s Shetlanders. Nevertheless, Jamieson (pp.

32–33) comments that:

A sprinkling of short, dark-haired individuals is thought to be either of Irish, or Lappish stock. Many old Shetland legends tell of Finns from “Norrowaa awa fram,” coming to the islands in skin canoes. The traditionary Finns, or Lapps, are thought to have been bondmen and women of the Vikings. They have given rise to a number of Shetland place-names, as “Finnigarth” (the garth, or farm of the Finns); “Finnhool” (the Finn’s hill); “Finnister” (the setter, or croft, of the Finns); “Finnbaak” (the Finn slope); Finnishon (the loch, or water, of Finns).

We might note that Peter A. Jamieson’s brother, Willie Jamieson, was in possession of the

copy of MacRitchie’s Testimony of Tradition that now resides in the Shetland Archives.

A little later in The Viking Isles, Peter A. Jamieson (p. 38) gets right to the point about

nationality:

Shetlanders, if asked their nationality, reply that they are “from Shetland.” The Isles-folk have a strong aversion to being styled as “Scots,” holding that their Islands are a distinctive group. That Shetland, in fact, is a self-contained “nation,” with a history, tradition, folk, speech, culture, customs, different from the Scottish mainland. Different, even, from the other Viking group, the Orkneys. The Shetlanders are proud of the fact that their ancestors came from Norway in the longships “dragon-prowed”.

Intriguingly, Peter A. Jamieson (pp. 43–45) offers a taste of practical cultural links with the

Nordic world, speaking of Nordic visitors to Shetland and the possibility of ‘a Shetland-

Faeroe-Iceland Alliance for the economic and cultural advancement of the three Viking

colonies’. Today, Peter A. Jamieson (pp. 137–48) is remembered in part for his imaginative

and myth-making description of Up-Helly-Aa, which seems to have convinced many

readers in mainland Britain that the festival represented a Viking survival.

In 1937, John Nicolson was again publishing a book, Restin’ Chair Yarns, with

significant supernatural content. We saw earlier that his 1920 book contains approval for

some form of MacRitchieism though the precise nature of this theory is never explicated.

He goes into more detail in Restin’ Chair Yarns, and as William Grant puts it in his

foreword to this book, ‘Mr Nicolson shows the historic basis on which the belief in the

Trows or Fairies rests’.150

Unusually for a Shetland writer of his time, John Nicolson

(Restin’ Chair Yarns, pp. 2–3) recognises that trows are comparable with fairies elsewhere,

and more so than his contemporaries, he provides something of a universal pygmy theory

primer:

That there must have been some reason underlying this almost universal belief seems obvious. So far, however, the only attempt at any explanation is found in what is known as the Euhemeristic Theory that the popular conception of those small people as super-natural beings, was simply imagination working on a basis of reality, the idea advanced by this school of realists being that at one period in the world’s history, two distinct races lived on the earth at the same time. One race consisted of subterranean dwellers, whose activities were confined to the night time. People living an almost entirely underground existence must have differed very much as regards vision. To such folks the sunlight would have been blinding. The result was that the two races lived a sort of “Box and Cox” existence, and stories that have come down to us through the ages of strange little people who were seen at night time only, may simply be chronicles of the underground dwellers seen following the ordinary activities of life.

John Nicolson is not following precisely either MacRitchie or Saxby in 1937, and he has

polygenesis – or at least theories founded on polygenesis – in mind. As Jacobs had hinted

decades earlier, such an extreme conception of polygenesis perhaps circumvents Sidney

Hartland’s criticism that one would not expect to find Picts in Polynesia.151

Nicolson is not,

however, able to sustain such universalism. Opting for what Sidney Hartland calls ‘too

narrow an induction’ (Science of Fairy Tales, p. 350), Nicolson (Restin’ Chair Yarns, pp.

72–73) explains Finns and selkie-folk in the following way:

It was an article of belief at one time that the Finns came over to Shetland taking the form of seals. In this connection it has been contended that such tales as were told had foundation in fact. As in the case of the “trows,” the Euhemeristic Theory applied. It was the outcome of imagination working on a basis of reality.

Those Finn folk were known to be exceptionally expert at handling their skin-boats. That they ventured far from their own shores is well known. […]

It is quite conceivable that those venturesome Finn-folk could easily have been mistaken for amphibious animals. It is equally conceivable that if one of them came to land, and the boat was stolen by the superstitious natives, the unfortunate owner would have been rendered a prisoner until such time as the “skin” could be recovered.

Possibly, John Nicolson sees his more detailed writing on the subject as a corrective

against the more muscularly romantic Saxbyean narrative (which, as we shall see, had

recently entered the world of Shetland literary fiction). It is worth stressing again that, by

this point in time, not a single anthropologist or folklorist of international note was

forwarding this form of euhemerism.152

Despite this (or rather, in ignorance of this)

Nicolson never gave up on MacRitchieism, writing about it again in 1947, in the first

volume of the influential Shetland Folk Book.153

If Nicolson was unwilling to follow Saxby’s quest for Shetland distinction, others were. In

1936, William Moffatt (1884–1964) wrote Rough Island Story, a mixture of fictional stories

and accompanying descriptive passages. One of the stories, ‘In the Morning of Time’,

concerns MacRitchieist Picts, coloured by Saxby. Moffatt’s mound-dwelling Picts are racial

inventions: small, strong, long-armed, hirsute, and dark-skinned.154

Archaeologists had not, of

course, discovered remains of a particularly short race within Britain, and even if they had, it

would not have been possible to speculate as to their complexion or the quantity of their hair,

but no matter. Helpfully, Moffatt provides an appendix to ‘In the Morning of Time’, and in it,

he sets forth the idea that Celtic Picts initially ‘lived in earth dwellings or weems

underground’, as evidenced by ‘recent excavations at Jarlshof in Dunrossness’ (Rough Island

Story, p. 293). As for the Picts’ fate, he explains that some writers believe that the Vikings

killed many of the Picts and made slaves of the remainder whereas other writers believe that

‘the indigenous people were almost wiped out’. As Moffatt (Rough Island Story, pp. 294–95)

puts it, the justification for this latter theory is:

The fact that in the minds of Shetlanders the Picts have been for long identified with Trows (Trolls, Spirits)— that, in fact, their actual historicity is implicitly doubted, and they have taken on the character of spiritual beings of some dark nether world. Something admittedly drastic must have happened to wipe out a whole people, as an actual fact, from the minds of succeeding generations, and to sink them into the quicksands of legend, myth and Trows (or ghosts).

Moffatt seems to believe that both of these theories are correct. Indeed, although he

presents these theories as mutually exclusive alternatives, there is no reason why this has to

be the case.

In fact, Moffatt would combine these two theories in his 1939 novel Twilight over

Shetland which concerns the interactions of Vikings, Pictish slaves, and free Picts/trows.

This is a formally challenging work, comprised of multiple narrative layers. The novel’s

protagonist in present-day Shetland learns that:

Quite large numbers of free Picts remained for many years, and that what the Udallers took to be Trows were in fact refugee Picts who had become nocturnal in their habits and had reverted to inhabiting underground weems— in short, that Trows and Picts were one and the same thing. Fear of the Norse made them hide in remote weems and shun the light of day. The “trowie knowes” were simply the mounds above their subterranean dwellings, and the frequent allegation that people walking in the hills on dark nights heard music played by Trows under trowie knows was true, save that the music was Pictish, not Trowie. In these unsuspected retreats a dispossessed and conquered people lamented with plaintive music the days of their freedom. Little, dark Trows were frequently seen in the hills at night, sometimes being actually met face to face, and on rare occasions being engaged in conversation by the bolder and less superstitious spirits. These little people were certainly so met, but they were Picts whose activities and wanderings abroad were confined to the night-time. Sometimes a Udaller, on entering his byre in the morning, found that all his cows had already been milked, and he blamed the Trows, while the real culprits were Picts in need of milk. Sheep, peats, fish in process of being cured, and many other things would mysteriously disappear, and the Trows were blamed instead of the Picts.

The book’s truth, then, is that of MacRitchie via Saxby. Later in the novel, Moffatt

(Twilight Over Shetland, p. 266) states the MacRitchieist position quite succinctly:

So persistent and effective were these raids [by the Picts on Viking settlements] that a time came when people were inclined to ascribe these visitations to spiritual beings or Trows, as they were later called. The Picts, in fact, were to become a legend, a myth, a story that is told— so complete had been their disappearance from view long before they actually ceased to exist. It was during that twilight hour of a dying race that the hidden people became ghostly or spiritual beings in the minds of the new race who suffered from a cause they could not see.

Although Moffatt’s fiction has been largely – and from a literary perspective, possibly

justifiably – forgotten today, there are hints of its influence in the works of A. T. Cluness

(1890–1966), and writer whose own influence on Shetland literature was considerable.

Cluness wrote a succession of staple books about Shetland history and culture, “staple” in the

sense that they attempt to be all-encompassing, one-stop sources for information on the

islands. Cluness concludes his discussion of supernatural folklore in his 1951 The Shetland

Isles with a lengthy analysis of MacRitchieism, with strong hints of Moffatt. Cluness

‘descries dimly through the mists and darkness of the unrecorded past, the tragedy of the

eviction and disappearance from the light of day of a race inferior in stature and arms, before

a race equipped with tools of iron’:

Some, driven by starvation to procure food, might try to propitiate the conqueror by furtively performing work for him at night. Hence the brownie tales. [...] Mothers, driven to desperation by ailing children, must at times have tried to steal milk from the cows at night, and to warm and tend their infants before the fire. And the trows “could not disappear so long as one looked at them.” Neither does a scared rabbit sitting in the grass, so long as one merely looks. And how the inferior race must have hated and dreaded iron! It was the magic thing against which their weapons had been of no avail.

And the frequent tales of the trows being male or nearly all male seem to hint at the continuance of the tragedy in some places for a time. The rigours of such an existence would thin the ranks of the women – stories of the abduction of young girls may be significant – until finally the last males died in their desolate hiding-places— outcast and lonely, but still free.

Cluness, however, knows too much about the historical Picts to believe that this race

‘conquered and finally exterminated by the Norsemen’ could be identical to the trows. As

Cluness (Shetland Isles, p. 112) rightly comments, the Picts who fought Agricola and later

defeated the Northumbrians at the Battle of Dunnichen, ‘having a strong well-organized state

extending from the Forth to Shetland’ are hard to reconcile with the diminutiveness, lack of

weaponry, and fear of iron attributed to the trows. Unfortunately, having ruled out the Picts,

Cluness opts for the Finns, suggesting that Early Modern ‘seal-poachers’ came from the

Baltic in their kayaks and were mistaken for selkie-folk. Cluness’ master stroke is to, by

means of a very MacRitchie-like sleight of hand, change the topic from Early Modern

kayakers to Shetland’s Finn- placenames. Perhaps, Cluness (Shetland Isles, pp. 112–14)

ponders, the Lapps kayaked to Shetland in ancient times:

The Picts when they arrived found some of them in the isles and it need not be assumed that the little people were all exterminated. Judging by the equanimity with which the Picts regarded later the gradual settlement of south-west Scotland by the Scots, they were fairly tolerant. It is possible that when the Norsemen settled in the islands they found remnants of two races. And even if all the little folk had perished before they came, children from their Pictish mothers or from slaves would hear stories of a little race of people who hid in obscure places and dreaded iron.

We are, then, meant to attribute subterranean trow stories to the early days of Pictish

settlement and selkie-folk stories to the Early Modern seal-poaching era.

Again, it is striking how willing local historians were to set out theories as fact or near-fact

on the basis of so little evidence and, in some cases, no scholarly precedents. Also striking is

how some of these historians change their definitively stated histories over time without

comment, a transition of opinion on which some of the archival material not available to us in

this investigation could perhaps shed some light. Saxby changes her story, and Cluness does

so as well, just four years after the publication of his Shetland Isles. A fictional short story,

‘Trouble with Trolls’, in Cluness’s 1955 Told Round the Peat Fire relates the tale of fugitive

Picts living subterranean lives for generations after the Viking settlement. On account of their

furtive actions, the Norsemen believe the Picts to be trolls. Something in the intervening years

had convinced Cluness that the Picts were the origin of trow belief after all. Here, Cluness

goes further than even he went in The Shetland Isles, where the trow activity is persecuted

against the Picts themselves. In the epilogue to ‘Trouble with Trolls’, Cluness uses Brand’s

testimony concerning fairies and brownies to positively state that actual Picts/trows were still

around underground in the mid-seventeenth Century. In fact, he very nearly suggests that the

Picts remained in Shetland far into the modern era, ‘for many generations’ after 1700.157

is Cluness the only author of short stories to write in the spirit of Moffatt: in 1963, The New

Shetlander published a short story by Samuel S.S. Polson along these same lines.158

Cluness is somewhat less voluble in the 1967 Shetland Book, which was influential

precisely because it was commissioned by the Education Committee of the County Council as

‘a book which dealt specifically with Shetland and which at the same time could conveniently

be used as […] a text book in Shetland schools’.159

Although Cluness (Shetland Book, p. 114)

is officially just the editor of this volume, the statements on supernatural traditions are clearly

Was there ever any tiny element of truth in tales of trows and their queer ways? Perhaps. It seems possible at any rate that ages ago a race of small people was overcome by a race of bigger, stronger people armed with weapons of iron, and had to hide in caves and underground shelters, emerging only at night to pilfer what they could. The memory of such a time would persist in the folk tales of the conquerors, and, as you know, tales often change considerably in the retelling.

Cluness (Shetland Book, p. 114) also mentions his pet theory of Finns as ‘foreign seal

hunters’.

We theorised earlier that there may have been two separate strands of entry for

MacRitchieism into Shetland: 1) An embryonic version of the theory was acquired by Robert

Jamieson, Sandness schoolmaster, and appeared in John Spence’s 1899 Shetland Folk-Lore,

and 2) a full-fledged version of the theory was brought to Shetland by the return and writings

of Jessie Saxby, who met with it in Edinburgh. The fact that it was John Nicolson who, in

1920, first mentions the theory in somewhat scientific terms is, in this sense, irrelevant. Saxby

did little writing after returning to Unst in 1898, so we should not expect to see her knowledge

of MacRitchie evidenced in books at an earlier date. A fuller picture might be acquired with

recourse to archival sources.

We have viewed the possibility of Robert Jamieson’s contact with MacRitchie as a rather

academic question since the former does not seem to have exerted much popular influence on

folk belief historiography within Shetland, at least not compared with Saxby. However, an

interesting – if again, not necessarily influential – case can be seen in the writing of Robert

Jamieson’s son, the surgeon James P. S. Jamieson (1880–1963), who emigrated from

Shetland in 1907, moving permanently to New Zealand in 1908.160

As a digression in his

story of the trow-friendly South Mainlander, Sigurd o’ Gord, which appeared in the Shetland

News in 1962–1963, James P. S. Jamieson (qtd. in Da Book o Trows, p. 65) writes:

Rather confused with the Trows were the “Pecghts”. Who were they? They were generally taken to mean the Picts. One doubts this. There is the greatest confusion among archaeologists about the Picts. According to some they were a Teutonic race. Others have them Gallic; others Breton; others Cymric, or of Irish origin. Again, another view is that they were the very early Cruithnig, barrow-dwelling people of Scotland and its islands. This last supposition looks nearest the truth. I believe that those we spoke of as “Pecghts” were those very early barrow-dwellers, who conceivably may have developed into the Broch-builders under the leadership of a pre-historic genius.

In the eastern part of Sandness there were to be detected on knowes the outline of ancient barrow-dwellings. James Sinclair of the Mires dug out two or three of these. He found in them some dozens of stone implements which I saw and handled. They were chip-formed. None were polished and there was no pottery. That is to say, the barrows were inhabited by a paleolithic people. One surmises that those were out [sic] “Pecgths”. They would be regarded by invaders as the Dutch regarded Bushmen at the Cape, whom they shot ruthlessly as animal vermin as they shot predatory baboons….

James P. S. Jamieson’s take on the state of mainstream archaeological debate is somewhat out

of date. It may be that his form of MacRitchieism, which in some ways is firmly rooted in late

nineteenth-century archaeology, represents a fusion of familial influence with the Saxbyean

account (which, in adapted forms, had already seen two decades worth of recycling in the

Shetland and Shetland expatriate press).

Be that as it may, there is no reason to believe that James P. S. Jamieson had any profound

impact on theories of Shetland folk belief. The Saxbyean foundations were strong, and later

writers do not show signs of having picked up Jamieson’s complex musings on the various

ancient races of the British Isles. For example, James R. Nicolson also took on the topic of

local legend and folklore, but he basically follows A. T. Cluness’s writings of a few decades

earlier. James R. Nicolson does not attempt to interpret trow and Finn traditions in his 1978

Traditional Life in Shetland, but he does take the plunge in his 1981 Shetland Folklore.

Musing over the origins of the trows, James R. Nicolson reports that some writers hold:

that these stories have their origins in the remnants of the pre-Norse inhabitants of these islands. Driven from their homes by the superior technological skills of the Norsemen, they chose to live in little frequented parts of the hills, making their homes in caves and even in the burial chambers left by a still earlier race of men. In these remote parts they clung to their own ways, and when the nights grew dark they would slip down from the hills to steal from the better-off residents of the valleys, taking whatever they could find and when possible filling their pails with warm milk from the byres.

Regarding the Finns, he James R. Nicolson (Shetland Folklore, p. 89) muses:

A possible clue to the real identity of Finns and seal people may be found in historians’ accounts which indicate that men from a foreign country were in the habit of visiting Orkney and Shetland in kayaks – boats covered in sealskin. […] With their bodies concealed inside their seal-skin vessels and with their short paddles dipping into the water, they would certainly have appeared more like seals swimming than men rowing. And what about the coat that the sealwoman’s daughter found hidden in the outhouse? Could it possibly have been her kayak in which she had travelled to Shetland?

It has also been suggested that the Finns were Lappish thralls taken to Orkney and Shetland by Norwegian settlers, and this would certainly explain the obvious familiarity with the race in many parts of Shetland. Andrew T. Cluness quotes a tale from northern Sweden which asserts that the Lapps came from Denmark in little one-man canoes. If this is correct it would help to confirm the belief that the Lapps and the kayak-men were of the same race.

This differentiation between the origins of trow traditions and Finn traditions is not pure

MacRitchieism, but the result is the same: the folk belief is naturalised in a way that runs

counter to all archaeological evidence of the day.

Strikingly, MacRitchieism has not played anywhere near as strong a role in Orkney. The

Orcadian folklorist Ernest Marwick (p. 13) devotes but one not-entirely favourable sentence

to the theory in his 1975 Folklore of Orkney and Shetland, and although Walter Traill

Dennison, the nineteenth-century Orcadian antiquarian, to some extent associates Picts with

trows (Henderson and Cowan, p. 21), he also argues implicitly against the forms of

euhemerism laid out by Blind and MacRitchie.162

Looking over the contents of this chapter, we can see that, since the 1932 publication of

Shetland Traditional Lore, some version of Saxby’s MacRitchie-inspired narrative of

conquest has been present in nearly every Shetland-written book concerning Shetland

supernatural folklore. Many major Shetland folklore writers during this period came out as

supporters of the theory in its fundamentals, and I have not been able to find a single

published rejection of the theory from within Shetland, either implicit or explicit. Even

though MacRitchieism has played almost no role in folklore writing outside of Shetland since

the early 1900s, it has become the accepted position in the islands.

3.5: Recent Supernatural Scholarship and Petta- and Finn- Placenames

Why has MacRitchieism survived in Shetland? Why have no writers gotten up to date on their

folk belief scholarship and figured out the problem? For one thing, full-fledged

MacRitchieism only came to Shetland writing in 1932, that is, after most of the academic

community in mainland Britain had forgotten about the controversy over Testimony of

Tradition that had taken place more than 40 years earlier. Thus, rebuttals to the theory were

not ‘in the news’ at the time. It is clear from the passages quoted in the previous section that

the various Shetland amateur folklorists were borrowing from one another, sometimes adding

their own touches here and there but rarely venturing outside the archipelago to get a second

opinion.

The trouble is not that Shetland has lacked genuinely scholarly folk belief researchers over

the past six decades. Indeed, for a community of its size, Shetland is very well endowed with

academics interested in cultural history. These academics have simply tended not to be

interested in folklore of the supernatural, with a very recent exception being Andrew

Jennings, who moved to Shetland from Edinburgh in 2007. The current and previous

generation of Shetland academics had its wellspring in The New Shetlander magazine,

founded in 1947. Its first editor was Peter A. Jamieson, whose book The Viking Isles we have

already considered. From its inception, The New Shetlander has been influenced, more or less

openly, by the socialist and progressive ideals of many of its contributors, ideals that seemed

even more prescient with the coming of North Sea oil to Shetland. Among its contributors

have been prominent writers-cum-historians like Laurence Graham, Vagaland, Brian Smith,

and Jonathan Wills. These latter two are passionate anti-romantics, and both have an impact

on Shetland academic dialogue today that goes beyond the extent of their actual writings. In

particular, Brian Smith – the Shetland Archivist and a man with an almost incredible

knowledge of local history – has flexed considerable influence as a facilitator for visiting

academics to Shetland. Smith took on this role with me, as he has done with countless others,

including Anthony P. Cohen, Bronwen J. Cohen, Callum G. Brown, and Thomas Simchak.

The position regarding supernatural folklore held by a portion of The New Shetlander

writers is perhaps best illustrated by the 1952 opinion piece, ‘No Trows by request!’ that

Laurence Graham placed in the magazine of which he would later become editor. This article

practically pleads with the publication’s readership and writership to stop thinking about

trows:

Our hypothetical Shetland writer will never achieve greatness if he remains rooted in his cultural past; that is to say if he fails to widen his terms of reference and develop in every way the pioneer work of his predecessors. Culture cannot be a stagnant thing, the two conceptions are entirely incompatible.. It is a growth, rooted certainly in the past, but being moulded continually by the present. The Shetland writer must have done with embroidering old hackneyed themes. All that superstitious nonsense, bred from the scared imaginings of devil-haunted minds, which some misguided people dignify with the name of Folk-lore, must be abolished from the Shetland Literary scene. A large notice should be stuck up immediately by the friends of Shetland Culture to the effect that “All Trows, Nyuggles, bookies, witches, and other undesirable characters caught trespassing on these grounds will be prosecuted.” That, at least, might help to divert this flow of antiquarian hentilags to its proper channels— the Shetland Folk-book and the curious ears of credulous tourists. The Shetland Psyche is no longer perturbed by hill-folk and other aald vaerdies; it is much more concerned with the price of hosiery, subsidies, island piers, and the whole tremendous problem of economic survival, and surely any local literature to be truly alive in its own time must take these things into account. For instance, if our young writers feel tempted to write on the Lang Kames, let them not treat it as the hypothetical habitat of long extinct bookies, but as a forest of the future clad with Californian Pines,, or perhaps a concentration camp for displaced sheep-barons. Let our poets remember they are living in the twentieth century, not in the days of lang beds, buddies, and spurin-bottles, delightful enough though these things may be.

Graham may have been right: there may have been more important things for Shetlanders to

be thinking about in 1952. But one of the results of this has been that Shetland folklore

writing is still stuck in 1898, the year that Jessie Saxby moved back home to Unst.

For example, 2007 saw the publication of Da Book o Trows, edited by the Shetland

Folklore Development Group, which compiles trow-related writing from a number of the

sources already cited, such as Samuel Hibbert, John Spence, Saxby, John Nicolson, and James

P. S. Jamieson. However, with the exception of short biographies of the authors quoted, the

book is devoid of commentary, meaning that their views are presented with no analysis as to

the varying historic and folkloric values of the works in question.

The only published rejection of MacRitchieism explicitly as regards Shetland that I have

found is by the distinguished Scottish folklore researcher Alan Bruford. In an essay on

Northern Isles supernatural traditions, part of the excellent 1991 fairylore volume The Good

People, Bruford writes the following:

I have to include the term used by one Shetlander who told me many stories about trows, but hardly ever called them trows, the late James Laurenson of Fetlar. He always referred to them as “Picts.” Obviously he was convinced by one of the widespread theories about the origins of fairy beliefs, the euhemerizing idea that they reflect the actual survival of members of a conquered race in the wilderness on the fringes of their conquerors’ settlements. This explains why the fairies are smaller, fear iron (which they had not yet developed), live in hillocks (round turf-roofed houses sunk in the ground) and so on. Some notable folklorists like J.F. Campbell of Islay – who compared turf-roofed huts he had seen in Lapland – have been proponents of this theory. In fact the mounds associated with the trows in Orkney are generally chamber tombs or brochs abandoned long before the Norsemen arrived. The Picts certainly had iron and there is no evidence that they were smaller than Scots or Norsemen, though popular imagination has long since stereotyped them as little dark haired “Iberian” people as opposed to the tall blond Wagnerian Vikings. The Pict = trow equation was used for instance by the late Andrew Cluness, whose Told Round the Peat Fire is a collection of stories published in 1955, mixing retold folktale with historical fiction. […] Jamesie Laurenson, an antiquary as well as a tradition-bearer, had made the same identification years earlier and would make confident statements like “that Picts, they used to steal boats,” or even claim the words of a diddled tune, “Dow treadle daddle…,” as “proper Pickish.”

It is reassuring to find someone arguing against this form of euhemerism. However, on the

basis of what we have seen so far, we should be cautious about the causality of the naming

conventions Bruford records. After all, as MacRitchie (p. 61) himself quite correctly states,

Picts are confused with trows and fairies in tradition. That is to say, there is no reason to

assume that Jeemsie Laurenson, who died in 1983, speaks of trows as Picts because he ‘was

convinced by […] the euhemerizing idea’; he may well have been convinced by the

euhemerising idea, but that does not mean that it resulted in his calling trows Picts.

The issue of to what extent Picts really were associated with trows in the pre-MacRitchie

era is still something of a fraught question. The Old Norse form of Pict is Peti, which is what

appears not only in Historia Norwegie but also in such Shetland placenames as Pettasmog,

Pettaster, Pettigarth, Pettafirth, Pettadale, and Pettawater. The Pict-trow association, at least in

its current linguistic usage, is an import from Lowland Scotland. OED suggests that

‘Identification of the Picts as supernatural beings was possibly strengthened (in later use) by

association with PIXIE’. Pixie/pigsy/piskie is a southwestern English generic name for fairies

that found widespread literary use for Draytonesque fairies in the eighteenth and nineteenth

Centuries.165

This is not to say that pech bears no relation to Pict, but it should be borne in

mind that pixie itself may be part of the mass of fairy-related words associated with puck,

which seem to have been introduced to England with the Anglo-Saxons.166

Furthermore, the

presence of puck-type words in all of the Medieval Scandinavian languages strongly suggests

that this form was reinforced in many parts of Britain and introduced to other parts with the

various Norse settlements four or five centuries later.

However this may be, it has become something of a trope among local students of

placenames to mention that trow stories are linked with places also associated with the

Picts.167

John Spence (p. 43) writes that Pettawater was associated with trows, but he does not

suggest any causal relationship. It is, however, precisely MacRitchie’s mistake to assume that

coincidence necessitates causality. Those Petta- placenames that actually coincide with

prehistoric remains might reasonably be expected to have accrued trow traditions since

mounds, fortifications, etc. throughout Europe have tended to be seen as homes of

supernatural beings. I would suggest, in fact, that the Pict-trow placename association is

actually an offshoot of theories about Finn- placenames.

The Finn- placenames mentioned in this thesis so far have been

Finnigirt/Finnigarth/Finnigart, Funzie/Finnie, Finnister, Finnhool, Finnbaak, and Finnishon,

and they have all been brought up by Shetland authors as proof that a people known as Finns

once lived in Shetland. To this, Spence (pp. 17–18) adds that ‘It is worthy of note that these

places are associated in the public mind with trolls, or at least something uncanny’. This

squares with the MacRitchieist idea that Finns were Lappish immigrants who were mistaken

for supernatural beings. It also supports, however, a different explanation, one requiring no

recourse to kayakers.

As MacRitchie (p. 16) himself takes pains to show, Finns have long had supernatural

associations. Already in the late-eleventh century, Adam of Bremen describes the Skritefingi

of the far north as savage recluses who are exceptionally skilled at magic,168

and the shamanic

traditions of the Medieval and Early Modern Sámi and Finno-Urgic peoples contributed to

their reputations as magicians. The twelfth-century Historia Norwegie (Ekrem and

Mortensen, Historia Norwegie, pp. 61–63) itself, a text with an Orcadian legacy, provides a

detailed description of a shamanistic trance. We can further note that the author of Historia

Norwegie used Adam of Bremen’s work as a model, something which is evident in Historia

Norwegie’s treatment of the Sámi and Greenlanders (Ekrem and Mortensen, pp. 17–18 and p.

177). The Northern Isles’ Norse settlers came from a cultural milieu in which the Sámi were

seen as prone to magical activities, and this idea would have been reinforced by Shetland’s

frequent contact and trade with Norway well into the Modern period. Additionally,

MacRitchie is no doubt correct that some of the settlers would have been Sámi or part-Sámi

themselves: although the Sámi and the Scandinavians remained culturally distinct in the

Middle Ages, there was considerable cultural, material, and military exchange between these

two peoples. As Thomas A. DuBois notes, Egils Saga in particular gives a measure of their

extensive interactions.169

Direct contact with Norway is not even a necessity. In 1555, Olaus Magnus accuses the

Finns of making ‘short magic darts of lead, about the length of a finger, and launch them over

any distance they like against folk they seek vengeance on. These [...] die within three days in

agonizing pain’.170

In other words, like Scottish witches of the same period, Finns are accused

of killing people with elf-shot. Olaus Magnus’s Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus

became hugely popular in Early Modern Europe, both in the original Latin and in translation

in Italian, French, Dutch, and English.171

This infusion of Scandinavian traditions among the

learned would have complemented vernacular traditions in mainland Britain. In fact,

associations between the Sámi and witchcraft were so strong in Early Modern Britain that we

find Finn becoming synonymous with witch, demon, or Devil even in places where we –

though perhaps not MacRitchie – would scarcely expect to find historical Sámi. For example,

in Raveley, Huntingdonshire in 1662, a certain John Leech is said to have been cruelly set

upon by a pair of flying demons called Finnes.172

Seen in this light, some of Shetland’s Finn- placenames have interesting parallels in

England. For instance, one of the types of pre-Norse agricultural partitions found across the

Northern Isles is called a picka/pickie dyke and is popularly attributed to the Picts.173

Fetlar’s

lengthy Finnigirt (Finn’s Dyke) is an example of this type, but its name suggests an attribution

to the Finns. If we accept that Finn once meant witch, demon, or Devil in Shetland, as it did

elsewhere in Britain, then Finnigirt should come as no surprise, for England possesses a

number of prehistoric dykes known as Grim’s Ditch (for example, in Berkshire,

Buckinghamshire, and Hertfordshire) in which Grim seems to function as a noa-word (taboo

word replacement) for Devil. In the cases of the Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire Grim’s

Ditches, construction of the dykes is sometimes popularly attributed to a local witch or

magician. There is also a Grimsbury Castle (Berkshire), Grimspound and Grim’s Grave

(Devon), and Grime’s Graves (Norfolk) (Westwood and Simpson, pp. 20–21 and pp. 42–43).

Grim is not merely a legendary builder though. O.N. Grímr (Hooded) is both a giant name

and a name for Odin, and there is, intriguingly, a Wansdyke (Woden’s/Odin’s Dyke) in

Wiltshire.174

As we have seen, Medieval and Early Modern differentiation between dwarfs,

elves/social fairies, draugar, trolls, giants, and demons ranges from uncertain to nonexistent.

Indeed, grim acts a sort of supernatural generic, being used in regional Scandinavian names

for the water-horse (Norwegian fossegrim) and the church guardian spirit (Danish/Swedish

kirkegrim/m), the latter of which is known in England as the church grim (Briggs,

Encyclopedia, pp. 205–06).

The same is true of Finn. An interpolation in the O.N. ‘Völuspá’ lists Finn as the name of a

dwarf (not signifying diminutiveness in O.N.).175

In Early Modern Denmark, Sweden, and

Norway, Finn/Fin/Find appears as a giant/fairy/demon name in tales concerning supernatural

builders (in many cases, the Devil himself) with secret names.176

Fin is also the name of a

demon in ‘Harpkin’, a Scottish rhyme that seems to have an analogous plot to ‘The Fause

Knight upon the Road’ (Child 3).177

Whether oral tradition named such demons Finn because of contemporary ideas

concerning the Sámi, we cannot say. It is nevertheless clear that, by an early date, finn is

being used like grim as well as two of Britain’s other dual Anglo-Saxon and Norse imports,

pouke/puck and nyk/nøk/nick (Shetland njuggle): it could be a specific type of fairy, a generic

supernatural designation, or a noa-word. Little wonder then that many Shetland Finn-

placenames are associated with something uncanny. The mystery of Shetland’s Finn-

placenames seems even less mysterious when one considers that Grim and Finn were

common Viking Age given-names and name-elements for humans (for example, Thorgrim,

Thorfinn, Grimhild, Finnbogi, Steingrim, and Bergfinn). So, while Finnigirt may be the

etymological equivalent of Grim’s Dyke, Finnister (Finn’s Homestead) in Nesting is most

probably equivalent to the altogether mundane Grimsetter (Grim’s Homestead) in Bressay.

This is not to deny the existence of Shetland traditions concerning the Sámi, only to say that,

lacking considerable contextualisation, it is difficult to parse Finn- placenames and

references.

This means, for example, that when James Wallace speaks of Finnmen, he might simply be

repeating a generic local term for a witch rather than referring to the Sámi of Norway. There

is a further – and perhaps more likely – possibility that Wallace calls these people Finnmen

not because this is a local name but because this is what he calls Greenlanders. Although

MacRitchie explains it away (pp. 6–7), it is certainly noteworthy that Wallace is aware of his

Finnmen’s provenance. Wallace writes:

These Finnmen seem to be some of these people that dwell about the Fretum Davis [Davis Strait.], a full account of whom may be seen in the natural & moral History of the Antilles, Chap. 18. One of their Boats sent from Orkney to Edinburgh is to be seen in the Physitians hall with the Oar and the Dart he makes use of for killing Fish (p. 34).

Chapter 18 of the book Wallace references (Charles de Rochefort’s 1658 Histoire naturelle et

morale des Iles Antilles de l’Amerique) does, indeed, concern the Inuit. This reference seems

not have been followed up by many earlier researchers into the Orkney Finnmen traditions,

which is a pity since it confirms that Wallace is not quite so ignorant as one might expect: de

Rochefort provides not only a description of the people of West Greenland but also a number

of plates depicting them, of which the illustrations of the kayak and its accompanying skin

jacket are relatively accurate.178

This may be a sign that either others in Orkney at the time

had firm knowledge of the Finnmen’s origins, or that Wallace received an extremely detailed

description of the Finnmen’s watercraft, detailed enough to identify them with Inuit kayaks. It

is possible that this knowledge is linked with the removal of the kayak to Edinburgh. In any

event, although it is easy to imagine late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Orkney and

Shetland as places far removed from international cultural and scientific crosscurrents,

Wallace’s knowledge is yet another reminder that one cannot simply assume ignorance

among Orcadians and Shetlanders as support for a theory.

As we saw above, Brand (pp. 76–77) places the Finns in Finland, by which we must

assume he means northern Norway, which is farther than ‘some hundred of Leagues’ from

Orkney but not nearly as far as is Greenland. Brand, however, has read Wallace, and the

similarities between Wallace’s and Brand’s accounts are such that we must admit the

possibility that the latter is naming the Finns on the strength of the former and that his

mention of ‘Finland’ as the homeland of the Finnmen is a mere supposition on the basis of

their name. This casts into doubt any link whatsoever made by common Orcadians (much less

Shetlanders) between visiting kayakers and the Finns of tradition. If we exclude the

testimonies of Wallace and Brand, there is virtually nothing to hint that the kayakers

influenced Northern Isles folklore about Finns, at least not prior to the research of Karl Blind

and David MacRitchie. More to the point, since many Northern Isles seamen would have

heard Finn traditions in Scandinavia and would have had first-hand experience with the Sámi

and their boats, it almost beggars belief that they would mistake Inuit kayakers for Sámi.

The kayakers thus seem to be a red herring. Nothing in the Northern Isles’ Finn traditions,

such as they have been preserved, are inexplicable without the kayakers. Due to Blind and

MacRitchie, local historians like John Nicolson, A. T. Cluness, and James R. Nicolson have

viewed the Finns’ aquatic activities with Norwegian kayakers in mind. However, since,

contrary to MacRitchie, the Sámi never used kayaks, and since neither Wallace nor Brand ask

us to see the Finnmen as witches or supernatural beings, we would perhaps be wise to

interpret Shetland Finn traditions in light of those in Norway. Crucially, like witches and

magicians the world over, the Finns of Scandinavian tradition are known for travelling long

distances in magically short periods of time and for shamanistically changing into animal

form.179

These elements, as well as a description of magical fishing techniques, are present in

the aforementioned Historie Norwegie passage (Ekrem and Mortensen, Historia Norwegie,

pp. 61–63).

This discussion simply leads us to conclude that our knowledge of Shetland traditions

concerning Finns is still quite vague, with the kayakers not necessarily factoring into belief

and with the word Finn being of variable meaning. Additional research, such as that currently

being undertaken by Andrew Jennings, is necessary concerning Northern Isles folklore of

Finns and how, precisely, this relates to traditions of witches and of selkie-folk. Such

research, however, would do well to avoid getting hung up on the issue of Early Modern

kayakers and, in some cases, may want to take a wide view of the meaning of Finn.

Henderson and Cowan (p. 21), writing in the wider context of Scottish folk belief, though

with reference to the Northern Isles, recognise the uncertain relationship between euhemerist

tradition and scholarship:

Folk traditions were not entirely devoid of the Pictish association, as is indicated by stories about the ‘pechts’ and the numerous ‘Picts’ houses’ marked on nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey maps to denote archaeological remains of indeterminate origin, yet it is difficult to establish how far back in time the identification of Picts with supernatural entities can really be traced and whether or not this was a ‘learned’ imposition upon folk ideas or vice versa.

It is unlikely that the precise causality of MacRitchie’s theory will ever be determined. As the

theory’s history in Shetland displays, it is not always possible to distinguish scholarship from

tradition, and quite often, we find that tradition is a repository for scholarship. In light of this,

when we now consider to what extent MacRitchieism influences Shetland culture and identity

today, it will not be in the sense that MacRitchieism brought the concept of tiny Picts to

Shetland; it will be in the sense that MacRitchieism kept this concept in Shetland. It is the

preservation of this concept that, as we shall see, has had such a significant impact on local

economic and cultural development.

Chapter 4:

Present-Day Conceptions of Picts, Vikings, Scots, and Fairies

4.1: The Interrelated Concepts of Picts, Vikings, and Fairies in Fetlar

Chapter 3 of this thesis showed the extent to which MacRitchieism has become embedded in

the Shetland historical narrative. Chapter 4, which is based primarily on my own fieldwork,

will show how this narrative is used and verbalised in Shetland today and how it ties in with

many Shetlanders’ conceptions of and concerns for their island home.

However it may have been in the past, rarely in my own fieldwork did I hear Pict or Pecht

used synonymously with trow. Still, an indication of the long-standing association of trows

with Picts can be garnered from a conversation I had in Fetlar with people who had been close

friends of the Jeemsie Laurenson, the antiquarian who Bruford mentioned in Section 3.5 of

this thesis. One evening, while I was in Fetlar, my friends Jane and Kenny Ritchie took me to

visit two of Jane’s aunts, Annie May Robertson and Helen Jamieson. Robertson and Jamieson

were 90 and 85 years old respectively, making them the island’s most elderly residents. It is

with regret that I must note that Jamieson passed away on 6 February 2009.

Neither Robertson nor Jamieson were comfortable with my microphone, and the

combination of this natural reticence with their at times soft voices and the unevenly helpful

attempts of the Ritchies to assist me, sometimes by engaging in simultaneous parallel

conversations, makes for a somewhat confusing interview transcript. In my excerpt from it

below, I have at times had to interweave two simultaneous transcripts. However, what came

out of the interview was quite fascinating.

About 14 minutes into my recording, Kenny Ritchie steers the conversation to the topic of

the Vikings:

Kenny Ritchie: Colin—. Isn’t Colin [Stewart] a descendent of the Vikings? Helen Jamieson: We’re supposed tae all be descended frae them. Jane Ritchie: Yes, we are, aren’t we? Annie May Robertson: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Think so. Adam Grydehøj: Oh. All descended from the Vikings. […] Is it something which you

thought about when you were young? The Vikings, the history? Annie May Robertson: Well. We just heard about it. We didn’t mind anything much

about—. Then, there was Pictish brochs. You know what a Pictish broch is? Adam Grydehøj: Aye. But I mean, I’m not so sure what they’re like here. What were they?

What were the Picts like? Annie May Robertson: Well, you know yun big humpy bit out past Jane’s house [St.

Rognvald’s, Aith.] there?

Adam Grydehøj: Aye. Yeah. Annie May Robertson: Well, that was a, a Pictish broch. Adam Grydehøj: Is that the hill that looks like it’s kind of, uh, kind of eaten into? Jane Ritchie: Well, it’s, it’s—. Yes, I think it is. I think you’re right, yeah. That’s the one.

Yeah, that’s the one. Annie May Robertson: Well. Many years ago, we heard the story from wir grandparents,

that, uh, they went intae, some of them, went intae this little place that was low. And, uh, ashes was still on the hearth.

Adam Grydehøj: Of—. It was inside? Annie May Robertson: It was, they were inside it. Adam Grydehøj: Of? Ashes still on the hearth? Helen Jamieson: They would’ve been haevin fires on, you see, when, uh, uh, they stayed

in the little houses. Adam Grydehøj: Aye. And how long ago would this have been? Helen Jamieson: No, no, no, no. Before our time quite a bit. Annie May Robertson: Long time ago, no. Jane Ritchie: This was probably like, Annie’s sayin, a passed doon story. Helen Jamieson: Passed down, yes. Jane Ritchie: Passed down. When she was growing up, she heard this story. Adam Grydehøj: Oh, I see. But how long ago were the Picts there? Annie May Robertson: Don’t know that. Jane Ritchie: Oh, no. A few hundred years. It’s a passed on story, likely. Just passed on

about it, wasn’t it? Annie May Robertson: Yeah. […] Adam Grydehøj: Did you ever hear what sort of people they were? Helen Jamieson: Picts! Annie May Robertson: They were small. Helen Jamieson: Eh? Annie May Robertson: They were very small. [Measuring out with her hands.] Adam Grydehøj: Like a meter tall? Annie May Robertson: Very, very small. Like this. Adam Grydehøj: Two foot? Kenny Ritchie: Kinda pygmy size, or—? Annie May Robertson: Uh-hmm. Kenny Ritchie: Size of pygmy? Annie May Robertson: Well, I don’t really know. But they were supposed tae be very

small. Jane Ritchie: That’s right, yeah. Adam Grydehøj: They have small houses. Is that—? Jane Ritchie: That’s right. Yes, they do. Annie May Robertson: Have you been tae Orkney? Adam Grydehøj: Ah, yeah. I lived there for a few months. Annie May Robertson: Then, you’ve been to Skara Brae. Adam Grydehøj: Oh, yeah. Was that the Picts? Annie May Robertson: No. But it was some sort of [incomprehensible], of folk. Adam Grydehøj: Oh, yeah. I remember it. A beautiful place. […] Helen Jamieson: When they went in, then, then they could still know of the fire’s was

been on. Like, maybe, at the end of the hoose there. And the ashes was all there, where they’d been on the fire.

Kenny Ritchie: This is in a Pictish hoose? Helen Jamieson: Yeah. Kenny Ritchie: Right. Annie May Robertson: At the Heug? Helen Jamieson: Yes. Away oot da Heug.

Annie May Robertson: Just where you’re lookin oot on yun bank. Kenny Ritchie: Yeah. Adam Grydehøj: I’m, I’m, I’m, actually very interested in hearing more about the Picts.

What did you hear about them? Jane Ritchie: What he’s researchin is all aboot the Picts. Annie May Robertson: Oh, yes, the Picts. Jane Ritchie: Stories about the— Adam Grydehøj: The Picts. Jane Ritchie: Aa that sort o thing. Annie May Robertson: Sorry, but we don’t really know that much. Jane Ritchie: No, I ken. I said that, yeah. Adam Grydehøj: But is there anything that you heard about them, other than that they were

small? Annie May Robertson: The Picts lived there. And they were very small. Adam Grydehøj: A small people. Kenny Ritchie: Was, was there still a roof on the place back then? Helen Jamieson: Oh, yes. […] Apparently. There were roofs on the hooses then when,

when Martha Johnson went, um, John Petrie and them. Have you haerd about that, Annie?

Annie May Robertson: Yes. I’ve heard aboot it. Helen Jamieson: Eh? Yes. That’s right. Kenny Ritchie: But… How long ago is that when they were there then? Annie May Robertson: Well, our grandmother was Martha Johnson, but she was dead

before we’re born. Helen Jamieson: We dunna mind her. Annie May Robertson: So then, it was [incomprehensible] that told the story. You see? Jane Ritchie: That’s right, yeah. […] Kenny Ritchie: But anyway, yeah, that… So, would’ve our hoose been built after…? Helen Jamieson: What? Kenny Ritchie: Our hoose would’ve been built long after. I mean, it would’ve been long

before our hoose was there, yeah. Helen Jamieson: Oh, that [hoose], that was built for a minister. Kenny Ritchie: Yeah. Jane Ritchie: Yeah, McArthur.

Robertson and Jamieson have been told that their grandparents and some friends entered a

now-vanished broch, which they call ‘the Heug’, that used to stand close by the present site of

the Ritchies’ house, St. Rognvald’s, in Aith, Fetlar. We can, in fact, confirm the outlines of

this ‘passed doon’ story and date the event to 1868.181

Neither Robertson nor Jamieson have marked antiquarian interests though they are

interested in the history of their own family and community. As is clear from another portion

of our conversation, while they loved Jeemsie Laurenson as a friend, they placed no special

value on his knowledge; he was a tradition bearer, but the traditions he bore were, to some

extent, their own traditions as well. The knowledge that Robertson and Jamieson have of the

Picts is local knowledge, received in their own youth. While there is nothing to gainsay their

parents having read Shetland Traditional Lore, merely reading Shetland Traditional Lore

would not suggest that the broch-builders could conceivably have been two-feet tall.

Additionally, it seems as though neither Robertson nor Jamieson give much thought to the

subject trows. Following a discussion about ghosts, I try to bring up the topic of trows:

Adam Grydehøj: Would, would the ghosts be different than the trows? Jane Ritchie: Ghosts, yes. The ghosts, yeah. Adam Grydehøj: Aye. Annie May Robertson: Hmm? Jane Ritchie: The ghosts, he’s asking, is the ghosts different from the trows? They are. Annie May Robertson: [Laughing.] Oh, yes, yes. I would think so. Helen Jamieson: [Completely incomprehensible sentence.] Kenny Ritchie: Same thing? Helen Jamieson: Is it no? Kenny Ritchie: Well, I don’t know. Adam Grydehøj: Well, what, what were the trows? Were they also dead people? Annie May Robertson: I, I don’t think that trows ever existed. [Laughing.] Helen Jamieson: No, no. A ghost is just a ghost. Adam Grydehøj: OK. Helen Jamieson: A trow is a— Adam Grydehøj: It’s a fantasy… Helen Jamieson: Ah… No, I wouldn’t pay any attention to the trows. It’s the ghosts, yeah.

The ghosts is something past, you know. Something that, that comes at you. Then, Kenny Ritchie, who knows from our earlier conversation that I am interested in

associations between trows and Picts, engages in some prompting:

Kenny Ritchie: The trows… The trows, were they no mistaken for the Picts? Helen Jamieson: What? Kenny Ritchie: Did they no think the trows came frae the Picts? Helen Jamieson: The Picts? I don’t think so. Kenny Ritchie: No? Helen Jamieson: Is du no believin aboot the Picts? It’s true. Kenny Ritchie: Yeah… Jane Ritchie: No, it’s the trows. He’s been askin us stories about the trows. But I was

sayin tae Adam that we really never haerd anything much here about the trows. Annie May Robertson: No, no. Jane Ritchie: Did we, ’Elen? Am I right in sayin that? Helen Jamieson: No, no, we didna. No. Jane Ritchie: We didn’t seem tae hae that sort o feeling toward trows. Annie May Robertson: Nah. Jane Ritchie: And, and they’re, they’re sayin the same as me, Adam. And that they didna

have any— Adam Grydehøj: That, that there weren’t folk who— Jane Ritchie: It wasna the sort o thing that was spoken about or, or thought about, I would

say. Helen Jamieson: I know. Kenny Ritchie: But you would’ve spoken about the Picts. Helen Jamieson: Oh, the Picts, the Picts was the fokk that lived in yun peerie hooses oot

Jane Ritchie: That’s right. And we would’ve spoken about ghosts. […Everyone speaking at once, mainly incomprehensible.] Jane Ritchie: Isn’t that right, Annie? We never had trows here. Annie May Robertson: No. No. Jane Ritchie: Never really. Didn’t we no? Helen Jamieson: No. Annie May Robertson: No. Jane Ritchie: I said that tae him. In my generation, I don’t mind nothin being said about

trows. Annie May Robertson: No. Jane Ritchie: He was askin about these things. But I mind about the Picts, and also ghosts

being spoken, but never really the trows. Would I be right in sayin—? I mean, I felt I was right in sayin that.

Helen Jamieson: That’s right, yeah. No, no, of course. Adam Grydehøj: So, so, so there weren’t people who believed in the trows back then? Helen Jamieson: Eh? Adam Grydehøj: So, people didn’t believe in the trows? Annie May Robertson: Nah, they don’t believe in trows. [Laughing.] Adam Grydehøj: And they didn’t back then either? Jane Ritchie: Well, it appears tae be that. It appears tae be they didna. Helen Jamieson: Don’t think so. Jane Ritchie: I think I was right there, Adam. Adam Grydehøj: Well, when did they stop believing in that? Annie May Robertson: [Laughing.] I don’t know. Jane Ritchie: I think it’s just certain fokk have believed in them. Adam Grydehøj: OK. Jane Ritchie: That doesna— Adam Grydehøj: It wasn’t widespread. Jane Ritchie: That’s, that’s what I think we’re trying to tell you. I think so.

Even though Robertson and Jamieson view Picts as pygmies, they seem never before to have

considered them in relation to trows. In fact, Jamieson finds Kenny Ritchie’s prompt so

startling that she assumes that he is, by extension, doubting the historicity of the Picts.

As the above excerpts show, both Robertson and Jamieson deny that there was ever, in

their time at least, belief in trows in Fetlar. During my fieldwork in Shetland, I found it

difficult to engage many of my older contributors in discussions about past belief in trows,

which contrasts to my research on similar subjects in 2005–06 in Ærø, Denmark, where I did

not note any particular association between a contributor’s age and his or her willingness to

speak about past folk belief. This is intriguing since, in Ærø, belief in fairies seems to have

died out almost completely during the 1800s, yet there is strong evidence for trow belief

having lingered on into the twentieth century to a significant extent in Shetland. Additionally,

while it is only possible to find a handful of believers in traditional fairies (i.e., not flower-

fairies) in today’s Ærø, it is common knowledge that some Shetlanders are still believers.

So, why do many of my older Shetland contributors deny past belief? In some cases, there

may be a sort of embarrassment. Robertson and Jamieson do not seem to fit this case. Even

though they have, of course, heard of the concept, they say nothing whatsoever about trows,

going only as far as to say what they are not, ghosts and Picts. Their firm expressions of

disbelief cannot precisely be taken at face value either. For example, Robertson, Jamieson,

and Jane Ritchie all concur that it is said that Fetlar School is haunted. Robertson states, ‘I

don’t know if there was any truth in it or not’, yet she proceeds to tell the story of a personal

experience she had with strange noises at the school. Her account is characteristic of the

‘scene setting’ and ‘internal dialectic’ described by Gillian Bennett in her study of first-person

supernatural narratives.182

Later in the conversation, Jamieson also tells a story of noises in

the school, this time based on the experiences of her father and family friends. At the close of

her narrative, she says:

Helen Jamieson: And that, that’s true. Me faither was there. Jane Ritchie: Yeah. Yeah. So, this, again, is another, an earlier time, at the school. Up at

the school yonder. Helen Jamieson: Oh, it was up at the school, yes. Jane Ritchie: So, it’s, it’s another story at the school. Adam Grydehøj: And no one ever had any idea who the ghost might’ve been? Helen Jamieson: No, no, no. Annie May Robertson: Eh? Adam Grydehøj: No one knew who the ghost might have been? Helen Jamieson: Oh, no. No… And there was no ghost. Not at all. No. Adam Grydehøj: No. Helen Jamieson: No. Imagined it.

On the basis of all that Robertson and Jamieson say, I have little doubt that both believe in

ghosts. Nevertheless, Jamieson expressly denies that ghosts exist, and Robertson does not

contradict her. This makes analysis of their statements about trows problematic, especially

since – despite their denials – it is evident from other sources that some people in the Fetlar of

their youth were believers. I do not mean to suggest that Robertson and Jamieson themselves

believe in trows, but their avoidance of the issue points to at least some residual taboo against

speaking about trows, a taboo that is not present in regard to ghosts.

The point of this apparent digression is that, if Robertson and Jamieson have been

informed about trows and Picts from printed sources or even second-hand academic theories,

their statements on the subjects do not show it. Their Pictish physiology is traditional, not the

result of accepting any euhemerising theory.

It is, therefore, interesting to consider the ideas of Jane and Kenny Ritchie for comparison.

At the time of our conversation, Jane was aged 60, and Kenny was one year older. A native of

Fetlar, Jane met Kenny while she was working in Edinburgh. They moved to Fetlar together

in 1973. As a youth, Jane had spent a good deal of time with Jeemsie Laurenson, who told her

stories. Kenny, for his part, had to learn about Shetland tradition from scratch upon moving to

the islands. Although neither of them are academically inclined, the simplest – and most

obvious – way of learning about local history is to just read some books, and it seems as

though it was in this context that Kenny gained much of his knowledge about trows and Picts.

It will be noted that, in this conversation, shortly after I first met Jane and Kenny, Jane in

particular is knappin, that is, speaking the standardised English that Shetlanders traditionally

use with visitors:

Adam Grydehøj: What can you tell me about the Picts? Jane Ritchie: No, not a lot. Kenny Ritchie: Just read a few stories about it. Robbie the Pict going around Shetland,

putting nice, little [incomprehensible] all over the place. I don’t know much about Picts. […]

Adam Grydehøj: [To Kenny Ritchie:] What have you heard about the Picts? Kenny Ritchie: Not very much. I can’t really think anything of them at all, to tell you the

truth. Adam Grydehøj: OK. But I mean, you’ve— Kenny Ritchie: I’ve read books of them, in the past, about the Picts, but my mind canna

think back. Adam Grydehøj: Have you heard any stories about what happened when the Vikings

came, to the Picts? Kenny Ritchie: No. I did read a book about it one time, but it was in Scotland. It wasna in

here. Adam Grydehøj: OK. Do you know what the Picts looked like? Kenny Ritchie: No. […] Jane Ritchie: I think it’s loads o—. You’re never sure, would you, what you think? Kenny Ritchie: They did, they did usetae say they looked a bit like trolls or something like

that. […] Jane Ritchie: Again, I would’ve heard as I grow up dat they were laek the peerie fokk. Kenny Ritchie: Yeah, well, that—. I think I read somewhere that they were supposed tae,

that people usetae think that trolls were Picts. Would that be the way of it? I can’t remember. Nah, I think I just read one time a long time ago about it. It was a book about folklore, and that they thought that the trolls…

Adam Grydehøj: Could it have been Jessie Saxby?

Kenny Ritchie: No. I don’t think it was her. [Pause.] She did write about that, yeah. That’s right enough.

Adam Grydehøj: Would you have the feeling from this that the Picts were a small people? Kenny Ritchie: Yeah. Well, obviously, that’s what, you would think that. Yeah. I’ve

never— I usetae like history and that, but mostly Scottish history. I’ve never gone, read far enough back. But I have read that, that, that some people thought that trolls were descendents of Picts. Or that a few of them survived.

Adam Grydehøj: Where do they live? In this idea. Kenny Ritchie: No, I can’t remember them. They appeared to live underground, or in

another plane or whatever, you know what I mean. Walk out of this one into their one, this sort of thing. Or they may come and grab you, abduct you into their one. That’s maybe where the abductions come from.

My friendship with the Ritchies came about when Jane contacted me after reading an article I

had written for Shetland Life magazine. Jane has had many supernatural experiences and

because of this she is surprised to realise that she has never given much thought to trows:

Adam Grydehøj: How would you look at trows in the old belief? Jane Ritchie: I’ve never really been awful interested in them or talked about them. I’ll be

absolutely honest. It’s probably why I’m no very knowledgeable. I’m bein honest. I’ve heard about it all my life, but it’s no been—. You might think that funny wi everything I’ve tellt you, but it was just something I grew up with. I never, I never had that interest to read in more about, to go in further intae it.

Adam Grydehøj: And you wouldn’t connect it at all with your experiences? Jane Ritchie: I guess they’re all sort of connected all together, yeah. And I think it’s awful

interesting what you said earlier, about the, the UFOs. Because I’ve had a tremendous interest in that all my life. And I think I may have been lucky enough to have seen one wi me mam one night, two o’clock in the morning.

Adam Grydehøj: Really? What was it like? Jane Ritchie: Well, it was the most amazing thing I ever saw in the sky. I really don’t

know what it was. We’d been at my Auntie Nini’s. You heard about my Auntie Nini’s previous. She stayed up in Houbie. There’s a complete new house there. A person’s going to retire there, to the house she was originally frae, on the stee, you know, on the steading. And we, used to spend loads of time at Auntie Nini’s, and Auntie Nini loved us to go and play cards. Playin cards was big thing when I grew up here. […] Well, it was there that I saw the thing in the sky. We were going home at two in the morning, and to the right, there was this huge, huge ball of fire. It was about the size, half a full moon. It was right low into our atmosphere. And the thing that caught me eye aboot it was it was movin so, so slowly. It was rollin slowly. Whereas usually meteorites an things go zoom, a shootin star, anything, you ken, you see it and then it’s—. This thing was movin slowly.

Adam Grydehøj: [Describing Jane’s hand gestures.] Moving around in circles. Jane Ritchie: Yeah. And there were tentacles coming from it. Kenny Ritchie: Was it something like St Elmo’s Fire? Jane Ritchie: Well, it coulda been. But this is what we saw. And it took—. We stood and

watched it, and it just rolled and rolled and rolled and rolled and rolled until it was oot o sight. And it was big enough—

Adam Grydehøj: Below the horizon? Jane Ritchie: Yeah. It was below the horizon. It almost seemed on the road. […] An old

wife here was one time, in the park here, doon below where the church is, is caaed the Keen. And was supposedly chased by one one time.

Adam Grydehøj: Chased by one?

Jane Ritchie: Well, she reckoned she was being chased by one. A big, rolling ball of flame. And that was, uh, Tina. And that was, uh, [incomprehensible].

Adam Grydehøj: How long ago was this? Jane Ritchie: Oh no, no, no. It’s an old story from me Auntie Nini. She was a small girl,

and she’s been dead, oh, years. Kenny, can you remember Tina? No. I don’t think you can from when you came here. No, no. This was in her lifetime. I was told that story as a peerie lass.

Adam Grydehøj: When you say ‘tentacles’ though… Jane Ritchie: Yes. No, this had tentacley things. Adam Grydehøj: Of fire? Jane Ritchie: Yes. Uh-huh. It did. Mam was there to see it. Mam didna want tae see it. She

kept sayin, ‘So, it’ll no matter’. She didna really want tae see it. […] Because she thought probably, agaen, that we would be laughed at that we were seein this thing. She tried to shush me aboot it. But I was just amazed. And she was there watchin it. I wasna on my own.

Adam Grydehøj: You don’t think that it might’ve been because, I mean, because it was something which she thought was bad to see?

Jane Ritchie: Might’ve been. Yeah. You might be right. I never thought of that. Adam Grydehøj: I mean, when we were talking before about how people don’t want to

talk about trows— Jane Ritchie: That’s right. Adam Grydehøj: —And whether or not it has something to do… Would you—. But your

mother didn’t believe in trows for example? Jane Ritchie: I never, ever heard her spaek about them, no. She never spoke aboot that. Adam Grydehøj: But she didn’t try to avoid speaking about things. Jane Ritchie: No, no. she wouldna’ve avoided it. And all these old ladies I grew up wi in

Tresta, they never spaek about trows. They never spaek about even ghosty things. It wasna just the way, no.

Adam Grydehøj: And they didn’t tell stories either. Jane Ritchie: No… Not really. It was quite a hard time, the ’50s, in Tresta. All they were

talkin about was how, how tae work the land and croft. It was quite hard. It was manual, hard work at the croft was at that period in time.

Adam Grydehøj: Do you think—. When do you think widespread belief in the trows died out?

Jane Ritchie: No, I could not tell you that. I really don’t know. Kenny Ritchie: Before our time anyway. Jane Ritchie: Before my time, yes, I think it must’ve been. Adam Grydehøj: But there would’ve been some people in your childhood. Jane Ritchie: Possibly. Kenny Ritchie: Well, there still one or two people— Jane Ritchie: Yes!

Jane and Kenny go on discuss who they know locally who believe or might believe in trows.

Adam Grydehøj: What were the trows said to do with their lives? Jane Ritchie: I don’t know. […] Kenny Ritchie: Trows could be really bad wi you or— Jane Ritchie: You watched—. There was supposed to be a man in Finnie [Funzie.], near

Finnie, that had a drink one night. And he went to knowie hill, trowie hill, sorry. Trowie hill…

Adam Grydehøj: Is there a trowie hill here? Jane Ritchie: No, there was a trowie hill place. In the olden days. I don’t know whaur it is

noo. And as he cam home, he heard this fiddle music. And it was a trow. And they took him. They took him intae the supposed trowie hill. And he was sorta like Rip van Winkle. When he cam back, it was a year or two later. He… And that’s where the tune comes from. There’s a tune that comes from that.

Kenny Ritchie: Trowie Reel. Jane Ritchie: The Trowie Reel comes frae that. Sorry. I’m no awful intae music, but I

know it comes frae it. And that’s about the only story that springs tae my mind. And Jeemsie woulda tellt me that story. When I was doin me English and dat—. […] And I went to this historian that usetae stay here in Fetlar caaed Jeemsie Laurenson. There’s tape o him down in the [Fetlar] Interpretative Centre. He was amazing. A bit like what him in Yell is now.

Adam Grydehøj and Kenny Ritchie: Lawrence [Tulloch]. Jane Ritchie: He’ll be known for that. And Jeemsie was known for that. Kenny Ritchie: Lawrence has been readin up on all Jeemsie’s stuff. Jane Ritchie: I would go—. We had this teacher who loved, I loved— He was a very, very

strict teacher, but I loved English. And, uh, we usetae have to write big essays, and I would go to Jeemsie, and my – the thing you’ll be amused tae hear – I always picked folklore. And I got an awful lot o my stories from Jeemsie, and that’s the ones I wrote.

Adam Grydehøj: […] How were trows supposed to have looked? Jane Ritchie: I’ll tell you what, how, in my mind, they were supposed tae have looked

like. Peerie dwaerves. Adam Grydehøj: OK. How peerie are we talking about? Jane Ritchie: Quite small. [Measuring out with her hands.] Adam Grydehøj: About a meter. Jane Ritchie: I never asked anybody tae—. But my, my imagery conjured that up. Ken

what I mean? Adam Grydehøj: And this whole trow-Pict connection is something you would’ve read

about, not heard from people? Jane Ritchie: No really, no. Adam Grydehøj: Can you remember where you read it? Jane Ritchie: What’s that? Adam Grydehøj: The trow-Pict connection. Jane Ritchie: No really, no. No. I wasna, as I say, awful interested in it. I’ll be honest. Adam Grydehøj: But it’s something which you had heard of. Jane Ritchie: Yes. I had heard it. Yeah.

Unlike Robertson and Jamieson, Jane and Kenny, who learned about the subjects at far later

dates, associate trows with Picts. Kenny attributes his knowledge to books whereas Jane is

uncertain of the provenance of her knowledge.

This situation – of Robertson and Jamieson on the one hand and the Ritchies on the other –

exemplifies the conceptions of trows and Picts in Shetland at present. While it is still possible

for the elderly to possess purely traditional understandings of the subjects, those who grew up

in the post-Saxby era tend to either have MacRitchieist ideas or popular culture-influenced

ideas. The next section will consider additional examples of these conceptions.

4.2: MacRitchieism in Shetland Today

When I tell archaeologically knowledgeable Shetlanders about my work, I am often greeted

with literal disbelief. It is difficult for many such people to imagine that, after decades of

high-level archaeological research in Shetland, after numerous newspaper and magazine

articles, not to mention books, on the subject, a sizable proportion of the population still

believes that Picts were pygmy (or at least very small) savages.

For example, in his response to a draft of an article I wrote on Shetland’s place branding

initiative, Alastair Hamilton, then an employee at the SIC’s Economic Development Unit,

writes:

My honest impression, on reading both your paper and some of your comments, was of being carried back to the late seventies or early eighties, in other words not long after I arrived here. I do remember some people characterising the Picts, in those days, as small dark-skinned pygmies.

We might speculate that Hamilton, an immigrant from mainland Scotland, simply no longer

asks people about the Picts. Despite Hamilton’s protestation, the trowification of the Picts has

proven remarkably difficult to undo. Take, for example, Peter Hunter, a 41-year-old crofter

from Uyeasound in Unst. His mother, Margaret Hunter, is today an avid volunteer

archaeologist, who must know something about the Picts, yet when I ask Peter what a trow is,

it becomes clear that he views them in a modified MacRitchieist/Saxbyean light:

Peter Hunter: Well, dis... It’s no a Norwegian troll, but I mean, dey basically reckon dat da Picts went intae hiding an for a few hundre years, maybe no a hundre years, but for a lot o years, den da Picts were da people o da night who came an milked da kye tae survive an did whatever dey haed tae do tae survive. Nicked probably vegetables an did whatever dey haed tae do as I said. Maybe, pinched sheep off o da hill an took odd sheep an whatever it wis, ya ken, dey did tae survive. An I would think dat so-called trowie stories comes frae dat. ’Cause dey certainly—. [...] I mean, dey were i da banks o da Blue Mull, an ageen, ya ken, ya could, obviously, ya could do raids at night frae der, ken, because dey could get aroond i da middle o da night. Dey could do whatever. So. Ken, I would, I would think dat was more as da same, da origin o it, dis trowie. An I mean, der’s obviously Pettasetter’s a place dat dey went, up i da West Side, [...] ken, juist driven oot o da wild places, I guess.

Adam Grydehøj: Where have you heard of this Pict-trow connection? Peter Hunter: Family. Listenin ower time, whatever, yeah. Likely juist handed down ower

generations, yeah. Adam Grydehøj: But of course, the image that most people have of trows wouldn’t be

what Picts actually looked like. Or is it just that, today, it’s gotten to be such a stereotyped sort of...?

Peter Hunter: Well, dat’s, dat’s da thing. What daes, what daes something come frae? You

ken, ya hear lots o, if ya hear lots o something on da wireless, you maek up in your mind what you think something is going tae look like. Den suddenly, ya see a picture of a person or whatever it is, an ya think, ‘Oh, well, yeah. Dat maybe is what dat should be’ or whatever. You ken, it’s...

Adam Grydehøj: Well, the whole Tushie Truncherface... [Tushie Truncherface is a comic trow figure who appears in a monthly column, written by Valerie Watt, in the Shetland Life magazine.]

Peter Hunter: Yeah. Dat’s a Norwegian troll. Dat’s juist a Norwegian troll. Dat’s what dey sell you i da gift shops i Bergen.

Adam Grydehøj: So, something like this wouldn’t have been what people would’ve believed in 400 years ago? It’s just what we’ve come up with today, trying to reinterpret their...?

Peter Hunter: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, da whole, da whole thing aboot, I guess if it was da Picts raiding or whatever, is dat dey never woulda seen dem, dey werena seein dem. It was i da middle o da night, an der’re no half-million-candle-powered torches tae shine dem up wi. Dey’re sittin der i da hoose wi a bloody lamp, an dey can hardly see across da hoose in a hoose full o peat reek or whatever. Ya ken, it’s a, a world ya can hardly imagine anyhoa.

Adam Grydehøj: But I mean, if we say that these Picts at most lived in the hills for a century or two at the absolutely most afterwards... I mean, what about people believing in trows in the 1600 and 1700s? I’m not actually trying to get you to explain why people believed in trows, but it does make a difference in terms of what a trow would be in their minds.

Peter Hunter: Maybe, it wis juist deir hungry neighbours stealin frae dem, an dey used da trows as a way o coverin it up. Don’t know.

Adam Grydehøj: So, this whole stereotyped idea of what a trow looked like: How tall are we talking about, when you try to think of this Norwegian troll image?

Peter Hunter: Well, I... I... Obviously, because, because it’s made tae look... It becomes like your Irish leprechaun or whatever. You juist imagine it’s a smaa thing, don’t you? It haes tae be smaa.

Adam Grydehøj: Is this one foot? Two foot? Three foot? Peter Hunter: In my mind it would be three. But ageen, when I was—. It’s like, like, it’s

like when you’ve never seen a penguin, an ya see a picture of a penguin, an ya think—. An suddenly, ya see a penguin an it’s a foot tall, an ya think, ‘Christ, I thought dey were gonna be bigger’. But obviously, der’re different breeds an whatever.

Despite accepting MacRitchieism, Hunter possesses sufficient knowledge to understand that

its vision of the Picts cannot be entirely historical:

Adam Grydehøj: Do people ever talk about the influence of the Pictish culture on the current Shetland culture? Or these romantics, is it just the current Viking idea?

Peter Hunter: [...] Da perception is dat da Picts die oot. But what’s Picts? It’s juist people. Picts is a very, a very derogatory name. It was juist Shetlanders, wasn’t it, ya ken? It was juist what da people were. Everybody likes tae think o demselves as six-foot, blond Norwegians, rather as small, rather as people were. I mean, you ken?, der were thousands o years o people before da Vikings came, obviously.

Adam Grydehøj: Were they small? Peter Hunter: Dey were smaller, yeah. Definitely—. Well, I guess, maybe dey were juist

smaller dan da Norwegians who came an conquered dem. Adam Grydehøj: How small? Peter Hunter: I don’t think seriously small, but I mean, five foot six, rather as six feet, I

think, is sort of, sort of da gist of it, yeah. But I mean, dey werena... Deir knuckles werena dragging i da ground or anything like dat. Not juist ape-man.

Hunter’s belief in MacRitchieism, which forms part of Shetland’s romantic narrative, coexists

with historical knowledge to the contrary.

A similar process is at work with 44-year-old Stephen Simpson, who at the time of our

interview was Customer Services Supervisor at the VisitShetland tourist bureau. Simpson

came to Shetland from Wick, Caithness 16 years earlier and has little time for folklore of the

supernatural:

I’m surprised when people mention stuff about trows and so on. And I do think less of them when they do. In your whole, entire life, you’ve got evidence all around you for the way the world is. And you’ve got a responsibility for the rest of us, and yourself, to make things as good as you can and to improve things if you can, and to come out of the world making it better. So, what do you do, you invent things. No! Sorry. […] Maybe, on one level, it’s harmless fun. I mean, if you ask one or two of the other staff, they might say, ‘Yeah, I was told stories when I was a kid, and I’ve always thought it was interesting, and I enjoy hearing them and so on, and the more the merrier’. And on a kind of really superficial level like that, I suppose there’s not much harm.

Nevertheless, promoting supernatural folklore is part – albeit a small part – of Simpson’s job,

so he has thought about the issue:

I used to believe that these stories came about because… For example, the Norse people came here. There must’ve been some real dramatic cultural shift. Obviously was. There are no placenames here, almost zero placenames here from before the Norse people. The Norse people came here, and they named everything. Why didn’t they ask the local people who were here? ‘What’s the name of that island?’ ‘What’s the name of this?’ ’Cause they do it in other places. This is one of the central questions in Shetland: What happened to the people living here? […]

But it still remains, I mean, the central question: Why was this complete obliteration of the culture that was here? Or what we know of as the culture. Um… And you’ve, you’ve heard yourself what the various theories are. I mean, one of the most prevalent theories is by the archivist Brian Smith who holds this theory that there was a complete annihilation of the people here. Like, um, Tasmania, for example. When the British people went to Tasmania, they just drove the aborigines away from the island altogether. And there’s very few Tasmanian names on the island. All the placenames are colonial names.

But here, the main placenames are a thousand years old. But the, but places that are 1200 years old, you can’t find any here. So, I, I used to believe that when people talked about fairies and elves and stuff, what they meant was, they were talking about real human beings who just, who just tried to, um, live alongside this, this huge cultural overtaking of what they had before. And maybe, they spoke in a way that was parochial or whatever, and, and most of the rest of the people said, ‘Oh, whatever. Those are just, those are the brown people, and they live away up in the hills. And you’ll never see them for years, and if you see them, it’s bad luck, blah blah blah’. […] I used to think that. I’m not sure about that at all now.

Simpson does not state where he first heard this theory, so whether he encountered it in

writing or by oral transmission is uncertain. It may be tempting to assume that the theory is

merely a logical consequence of attempting to explain fairy belief naturalistically, but in my

experience, this is not the case. For example, in my research in Ærø, only one of my 61

contributors explained Danish fairy belief in terms of a conquest of races and people being

driven into the wilderness.

Like Simpson, Shona Leask – a youthful, brash, 39-year-old native of Walls, in Shetland’s

West Mainland – once believed in MacRitchieism but no longer does. Leask, who lives in

Lerwick, is highly urbanised and is employed as a youth worker and special needs educator.

At the time of our interview, Leask was involved in work with Davy Cooper of the Shetland

Folklore Development Group in an attempt to use trows for marketing purposes. Her interest

in folk belief is not long running however, and her research has been decidedly anecdotal; for

example, she has never read any ‘old books’ on the subject. When talking about Pictish

broch-builders, Leask says:

Shona Leask: Um, dey, dey werena small. Like, I think I was brought up tae think that they were tiny little people. But that wis just, the doors [of the brochs] were small for defence purposes. So, when you go in, if anybody comes tae attack you, and dey come in with deir head doon, you can bop dem ower da head wi something.

Adam Grydehøj: Now, I, I, I’ve actually been quite interested in this idea of the Picts being a small people. Where do you think it comes from? You, you say from the doors?

Shona Leask: I think it’s because, I think it’s because in the broch, you can see, like, things dat could be beds. An dey’re only, like, the size o a fish box. [Laughs.] Like something, like. An you think, like, ‘Oh! Peerie fokk!’ But I don’t think they were.

Adam Grydehøj: How far back do you think that that belief goes? Shona Leask: Um, well, I mean, God knows whaur dey come frae. I don’t know, I don’t

know how far back da belief goes. I think everybody did think dey were quite sh—. I was brought up believin dat Picts were peerie.

Adam Grydehøj: How peerie would you say the idea was? Like, a meter? Or…? Shona Leask: [Laughing.] Trow size. Adam Grydehøj: So, I mean, it’s not just a coincidence that you mention trows here

because I assume that you – of all people – have heard this theory of the memory of the Picts being the cause of belief in the trows.

Shona Leask: Yeah. I think the whole idea—. Oh, nobody knows aboot da Picts. So, anything could be made oot o dem, y’ ken? […]

Adam Grydehøj: Would you have been told, when you were young, this whole Pict-trow theory? Or just that the Picts were short? Did you get, when you were young, the idea—?

Shona Leask: No, no. I was just tellt that the Picts were short. That was aa. Adam Grydehøj: And where would you have heard the Pict-trow theory from? Shona Leask: Well… I don’t know. I don’t know. It must just hae been a natural kinda

story tae go on frae. It must’ve been some sorta Pictish first cousins dat managed tae survive an den like escape an go up the hills an live, y’ ken? That kinda idea.

Adam Grydehøj: But I mean, where would you personally have heard—? Shona Leask: It woulda been my dad.

Adam Grydehøj: OK. So, was it the sort of thing that when people talked about the trows, they might’ve mentioned—?

Shona Leask: It would’ve been bedtime stories.187

Leask brings up trows without prompting in order to describe the size of Picts, and she, like

most Shetlanders, views trows as quite small:

Shona Leask: I’ve been askin fokk. I’ve just really been – basically in a pub or anywhaur that I can get my hands on somewaan that’ll listen tae me – askin what, what height an y’ ken, if we’re standin up, ‘What height on me would a trow be?’ [Laughs.] An I think, roughly, about three foot eight is what everybody’s come up wi. I think that seems tae be the ballpark, an I think dat’s what dey think dey are.

Adam Grydehøj: Do you think that’s part of the connection between the Picts and the trows that people are making?

Shona Leask: Yeah, it’s peerie. That’s what is, y’ ken? Some sorta first cousin. First cousins wi trolls, first cousins wi Picts, that sorta thing.

The findings of Leask’s informal interviews – that most people place trows somewhere in the

three to four foot height range – fit my own findings. The data from the present study are not

yet so prepared as to permit quantification of the prevalence of belief in diminutive Picts.

However, if pressed, I would estimate that about half of all Shetlanders – cutting across the

various age, gender, geographical, and social groups – have at least a vague idea of Picts as

quite short compared with other peoples living in the same era.

In common with Leask but at the other end of the social spectrum, 82-year-old Jim o Berry

(Jim Smith) from Scalloway also uses trows to describe Picts. Jim has lived at Berry Farm,

which forms a wide crescent around the town of Scalloway, for most of his life, and although

he is a pony breeder by profession, he is known in the community for his various inventions,

including a number of homemade airplanes, a turnip picker, and the shipboard mechanical

fish-gutter that made him his fortune. Jim is irrepressibly active and good humoured. In

speaking about the nature of Shetlanders, he says:

Jim o Berry: And, uh, the Shetlanders are a very sort of peaceful type of people. Maybe, it’s because of all they’ve had to live and have survived. I don’t know.

Adam Grydehøj: Even though they’re Vikings? Jim o Berry: Well… [Laughter.] But that, that, you see, there’s some people who say the

Vikings were pretty peaceful people. Adam Grydehøj: Aye. Jim o Berry: I mean, they caaed them bloodthirsty Vikings, but they maybe werena like

that. Adam Grydehøj: Well, I suppose that, back then, everyone was pretty bloodthirsty. Jim o Berry: Well, I don’t know. What about the Picts? They werena bloodthirsty, I don’t

think! The little Picts, you know, the Pictish castle and that. […] The brochs. Adam Grydehøj: Oh, aye. And were they little people? Jim o Berry: Well, we think they were little. Adam Grydehøj: I really don’t know that much about them. They were the people who

were here— Jim o Berry: —Before the Vikings, yeah. Yeah. […] [Jim goes over to the cabinet and takes out a statuette of a Norwegian troll.] Adam Grydehøj: Oh. You have, you have a sculpture. Jim o Berry: Might be something like that. [Laughing.] [...] Well, the Norwegians have

trolls too. Adam Grydehøj: OK. Aye. So, it looked like one of the Norwegian… Jim o Berry: Something like that, yeah. Well, I dunna ken what they look like. Little guys

wi… Adam Grydehøj: But, uh, I mean, if— Jim o Berry: I think, they’re kind of benevolent people, da trows. Adam Grydehøj: OK. Jim o Berry: I dunna think they’s… wicked people. Adam Grydehøj: Because the popular view today is more that they’re wicked. […] Jim o Berry: I dunna think so. I don’t think they—. Well, I’ve nev—. I think everybody’s

fine. […] [Laughing.] Adam Grydehøj: How tall…? Jim o Berry: How big is a trow? I would say, about that size. [Measures with his hands.] Adam Grydehøj: Aye, so, about a foot and a half. Jim o Berry: That’s 18 inches to two feet. Adam Grydehøj: OK. Jim o Berry: That’s what I think. That’s just my feeling about it! It’s no—. Nobody’s ever

measured one, as far as I know. Adam Grydehøj: We’ll just have to ask the trows… Jim o Berry: Yes! [Laughing.] I don’t know what language they speak, actually. Adam Grydehøj: Trowie? Do… What sort of things were the trows said to do? […] How

does a trow spend its life? Jim o Berry: [Laughing.] I don’t know if anybody knows. Because they seem tae go intae,

tae go under the ground. They just seem tae appear. So, we don’t know, maybe, what they were doin. And but sometimes, they come out and play the fiddle and try an entice, maybe, children away and things like that. I don’t really… I mean, I suppose I could make up a story about a trow, but that wouldna be true.

Adam Grydehøj: But I suppose, when you’re talking about, in the old days, going over to, to different folks’ houses, was there storytelling? Like, did people tell stories to each other?

Jim o Berry: Yeah, they certainly telled stories. Adam Grydehøj: And, and were they trowie stories? Jim o Berry: That’s more the intellectual type of people who said. I’m no an intellectual

sucker. I’m just an ordinary guy. I just do what’s happy to do. You, what you, you have tae talk tae people like Mary Blance. You know Mary Blance?

Adam Grydehøj: I, I, I’ve heard her name. Jim o Berry: Yeah… She could tell you about trows, I think. People like that. Or maybe,

Charlie Laurenson from Voe.188

It is not merely that Jim uses a Norwegian troll statuette to describe Pictish physiognomy; his

associations go deeper, with both the people and the fairies being peaceful races. While it is

unclear whether Jim actually believes that Picts were just 18 inches tall, for him, the

association is not merely incidental.

Perhaps more surprising than Jim’s seeming adherence to MacRitchieism are the ideas

about Picts held by 13-year-old Billy Seatter and 12-year-old Tom Henderson, who I knew

from my work in the Lerwick youth clubs:

Adam Grydehøj: Uh, well, look: What have you heard about the Picts? Tom Henderson: Oh, the Picts… Billy Seatter: The Picts. Tom Henderson: Well, the Picts’ castle in Clickimin [Clickimin Broch.]. Billy Seatter: They were just little small people that built things. Adam Grydehøj: [To Henderson:] Would you say that too? […] I mean, uh, uh, what Billy

said about the Picts, little small people who built things. Is that your impression? Tom Henderson: Um, well… I think they were… Well… Eh, they were like the stage on

from cavemen. They might look slightly like cavemen. But they weren’t—. They built huge things. There’s the Mousa Broch. But with time, people might take rocks, or they might try an build something new with it. But some of them have survived for over two thousand years.

Billy Seatter: Well, if you, if you, said, took somebody to the, uh, Mousa Broch, and said, ‘Look, have, take a look around here’ and, uh, afterwards said, ‘What kind of people do you think built this?’ Because when you’re going up the stairs and everything, when you’re in those rooms, it’s absolutely tiny. When you go up the stairs, you can walk up three stairs at a—

Tom Henderson: The place is big. Billy Seatter: —time, and it’s an absolutely huge place. The stairs are only about half the

size of a normal stair. Adam Grydehøj: So, were they actually small people then? Billy Seatter: I believe they were. Adam Grydehøj: [To Henderson:] What do you think? Tom Henderson: Well, they probably, as everyone’s saying they were, but—. Yeah,

definitely. [Laughs.] Adam Grydehøj: Uh, how, how tall are we talking about by the way? Billy Seatter: Four foot maybe. Tom Henderson: Yeah, they weren’t—. A half, a half midget. Billy Seatter: Four foot, a full grown man. Tom Henderson: They weren’t midgets. They were probably—. The average height of a

man now, and half-way between midget and that. Adam Grydehøj: OK. […] How long ago did the Picts live here? Billy Seatter: Uh… Tom Henderson: Well, Mousa Broch’s about two thousand years. Adam Grydehøj: OK, so the Picts built that? Tom Henderson: Well, actually, I think, every generation – not always true – but every

generation gets slightly taller. So, two thousand years back, people would’ve been shorter. But it’s no wonder you don’t see— […]

Adam Grydehøj: So, when would the Picts have left Shetland or died out or whatever? Tom Henderson: Well, maybe, we could be ancestors of them. Billy Seatter: When the meteor came. Bang! I’m joking. Adam Grydehøj: OK. But did the Vikings replace the Picts? Did the Vikings come when

the Picts were here? Tom Henderson: That’s a good point. Because I’m thinking the Picts were here way

before the Vikings. Definitely, I know that. And, so— Billy Seatter: I think moderation [sic] just happened, and they got all, like—. If it makes

any sense, it was, you start off as a baby, and I think this is still happening, evolution, you just keep on growing. Ehm, eventually, it’s just going to die out. If that makes any sense.

Intriguingly, despite these primitive, ‘stage on from cavemen’ Picts, neither Seatter nor

Henderson associate, or recall having heard any associations between, trows and Picts.

Nevertheless, the general lesson here may simply be that pride in tradition – which Seatter

and Henderson definitely hold – does not necessarily equate to historical knowledge, much

less to biological knowledge.

Some Shetlanders are not only proud of their culture but also knowledgeable about it. One

such individual is 70-year-old Geordie Jamieson of Uyeasound, Unst, a former headmaster of

Anderson High School:

Adam Grydehøj: Do people ever talk about the Picts as having been an influence on current Shetland culture?

Geordie Jamieson: No. I, I’ve heard some funny stories. Adam Grydehøj: What sorts of stories? Geordie Jamieson: Well, I, I, I’ll tell you a funny story. It’s absolutely nothing other than

a story. […] This, this man was, uh… There was alcohol involved! And this old man was singing old songs, old—. There were a man called Pat Shuldham Shaw, who was here, I think, in the ’40s and ’50s. Did a lot of recordings. […] Folklorist and all that. And then, he was recording this man, in Baltasound. And this man in Baltasound – they were obviously having one or two drams – and then, this old man said, ‘I’ll sing you a Pickish tune. A Pickish song’. And of course, Shuldham Shaw, you know, probably well aware. He said, ‘Oh, yeah’. So, he started singing away. But I mean, it must [have] been no more Pickish as I can sing Pictish songs. I, I—. There is—. Apart from the Pettawater and the Petta- name, that’s about—. And the remains of the brochs. What else? No. It’s a—. There’s no culture of… whatsoever.

This ‘Pickish’ song recorded by Patrick Shuldham Shaw may be an example of what Bruford

experienced, of people referring to trows as Picts. Or perhaps, the singer actually believed it

to be Pictish. In any event, this memorat aptly demonstrates how even remembered incidents

can lose or become unclear in meaning as their context is lost.

My discussion with Jamieson continues when I ask whether people ever associate Picts

with trows:

Geordie Jamieson: I’ve heard—. Well, I’ve heard—. Yes, through the Finns, the famous, the Finn people.

Adam Grydehøj: Can you tell me about them? Geordie Jamieson: Oh, I can’t—. Well, purely what I’ve read, no more than what I’ve

read. I can’t say I’ve ever heard this being a past oral tradition thing, to be honest. Simply, simply, this idea that there was this, this sort of, this people who… who lived in

the hills. Who, who were, they were always—. They played tricks on people. They were never visible. They appeared at night. They, they, they, they, they—. There was this sort of, always this mystery. I think, I think they were also cast up often to children. ‘If you don’t behave, such and such, the trows – or the Finns – will come and get you’. There was always that, that type of thing. It, it, it was very much a folklore type of thing. Uh… Trows… Trows are just trows. I mean, they’re, they’re, they’re the great hill people, and stories evolved from them. And of course, the people going to the trows. But it is purely a folklore type of thing. Where the Picts, where the Picts went – or what happened to Picts when the Norse arrived – I think is—. I, I—. There’s a great deal written about that. But there must’ve been an integration. I don’t think, to be fair, that the Norse people exterminated them. There was no need to exterminate them. Whether, whether they got the lesser land, or there was some pushing out, or evictions at an earlier time, God alone knows. I don’t know. But it, it, it’s a type of culture that was very much more prevalent, I would say, if you read John Spence’s Folk-Lore, these books—. Do you know John Spence’s Folk-Lore and books of that kind? Jessie M.E. Saxby’s books on folklore. You will read this type of story.

Although Jamieson never expresses the idea outright, he clearly has the MacRitchieist

narrative in mind, and he seems to consider it at least possibly true. His unprompted mention

of Finns is highly unusual and points, as he himself says, to the extent to which this kind of

folklore has passed on locally in writing. Jamieson continues in this vein and, in so doing,

rather interestingly casts doubt on either the antiquity of trow belief or the applicability of

more recent writing to older trow belief:

Geordie Jamieson: You always read about the trows. And if you travelled from A to B through the hills. Always to music. Like it was always associated with music, or the trows were always feasting or drinking or having weddings or something was going on. And the trowie stories are very much based around fiddle music and music of that type. Now, with all due respect, the fiddle is not an instrument that’s ancient.

Adam Grydehøj: No. Geordie Jamieson: You see, the fiddle music only cam in, Freidaman Stickle [1794–

1867.], that period. I mean, I don’t know. I honestly can’t answer. You maybe know more about that than I do. What, what was the music of the fifteenth century, fourteenth century?

The relative modernity of the fiddle does not say much about trows other than that, like fairies

elsewhere, the narratives concerning them developed alongside the technology of the times.

One answer to Jamieson’s question may lie in Shetland’s ‘King Orfeo’ ballad, recalled by

Biot Edmondston, in which the fairies are impressed by the protagonist’s skill with the

bagpipe (Edmondston and Saxby, pp. 194–98).

Some contributors learned about MacRitchieism from books, others from oral tradition,

others from both written sources and oral tradition. These days, oral tradition is generally

passed along rather informally among family and friends. There are, however, some who take

an active role in its dissemination, and these include Shetland’s numerous self-designated

storytellers. One such storyteller is 46-year-old Davy Cooper, who grew up in Mossbank,

North Mainland and is now employed as Communications Officer at the Shetland Amenity

Trust. He is also involved in a number of local organisations, including the dialect-promotion

group, Shetland ForWirds, and he holds the chairmanships of both the Shetland Storytime

Society and the Shetland Folklore Development Group, the latter of which published Da Book

o Trows. When I ask Cooper if people ever talk about Pictish influence on Shetland culture,

he replies in the negative and continues:

Davy Cooper: I don’t think the vast majority of people appreciate how advanced a society the Picts really were. Um… The average Shetlander doesn’t go to Scatness. Or to Jarlshof. Um, I could guarantee you, if you took a sample of twenty Shetlanders in the street, at least 15 of them will never have been tae Mousa. They’ll be able tae recognise Mousa Broch from a photograph, but they will never have been tae Mousa. They’ll never have been tae Clickimin [Broch] even. And you know, that’s, you know, five minutes [away].

Adam Grydehøj: Yeah. And they might not realise that, uh, that these were Christians and…

Davy Cooper: Yeah. There’s, there’s no real perception—. Um, when I was growin up, in school, um, we were taught about the Picts as bein these little, dark people that lived underground.

Adam Grydehøj: I’ve heard that quite a bit here, from speaking with people. The, the whole Pict-troll, trow connection.

Davy Cooper: Yes. Adam Grydehøj: People truly— Davy Cooper: You know, the, the Vikings were the tall, blond, blue-eyed, you know, sea-

farers, an the Picts were these little people who lived in houses underground. Adam Grydehøj: ‘Just look how small their doors are’. Davy Cooper: Exactly. Um, no concept that small doors are actually easy tae keep a place

warm. [Laughs.] It’s got nothin tae do with size; it’s got tae do with the practicalities of livin in a house that hasn’t got central heating. But, um, but, uh… And that, I don’t think that that perception has ever really shifted. Um, there’s no recognition that the Pict was, you know, a highly civilised character, capable—. Now, if you took all the broch sites in Shetland, and put them together in one place, you know, they’d be one of the wonders of the world, you know. Hundred an odd of these huge, stone towers. […] Incredibly impressive. 200 BC we’re lookin at as potentially the earliest broch date. I mean, that—. 2000 years ago, people were building these structures in the islands here. Um, an tae a very great extent, in terms of civilisation, the Norse era was a huge step backwards for Shetland. Uh, you went from people who were capable of producin these structures an, an creatin fairly extensive villages, uh, wi iron smeltin goin on an so on an so forth. You went from that back to individual farms wi, you know, two rooms i da house. [...] Um, so, yes, we do undervalue our Pictish heritage. An, an even to some extent we undervalue the pre-Pictish stuff. We haven’t got the Neolithic stuff that Orkney’s got, again, but there is some nice Neolithic sites here. An there was obviously civilisation here a long time before the Vikings arrived.

The fact that Cooper – who probably speaks with more Shetlanders about trows than anyone

else – can confirm my own findings that there is a widespread conception of ‘Picts as bein

these little, dark people that lived underground’ provides significant support for my own

findings and helps refute the perception that this belief did not survive the early 1980s. I press

Cooper more closely on this point, also prodding him – unsuccessfully – for knowledge of

MacRitchie’s work:

Adam Grydehøj: Where do you think the idea of Picts as small, dark men came from? Davy Cooper: I think it came from the Norse. I think the—. It was a bit of propaganda tae

some extent. Um, it’s, you know, if you’ve displaced somebody, it’s, um, no bad notion to, um, deride them, to make them something less than what they were. But I think, in a modern context, it came from, again, this, this Victorian obsession wi the Vikings.

Adam Grydehøj: You see, I’ve wondered if, if from some roundabout means, it could’ve come from MacRitchie’s theory of how fairies and trows and so on originated from belief in… Or from there being very small people.

Davy Cooper: The, the Victorians took this notion of the trow, and they converted it intae the Pict. Now, it, it is true that, historically, trows were also referred to as ‘Pechts’. But, uh, whether that’s ‘Pict’ or it’s some other route…

Adam Grydehøj: A lot of people were referred to as Picts. Davy Cooper: Yeah. But I think what—. There’s a lot of the Victorians, an even people

writin up—. I mean, um, Andrew Cluness. I don’t know if you’ve read any of his books. […] Tales from the Peat Fire [sic]. That’s, that’s very much about the Picts as being these people who went underground when the Vikings arrived. Load of rubbish, to be perfectly honest. OK, they may have lived in houses that were partially submerged anyway. You know, they used earthworks to bank up around them to—

Adam Grydehøj: It’s a good idea. Davy Cooper: —to give insulation and so on and so forth. But I mean, they weren’t hole-

dwellers. They weren’t hobbits, for God’s sake. You have to get away from this notion. Um, I mean, these were people that were highly civilised, that, that, that were on a par with the Norse an above them in many ways. And were, uh, as far as we can make out, tall and, uh, you know… Whatever hair colouring and skin colouring is difficult tae speculate, but, um, you know, they may have had some kind of Celtic origin.

Cooper astutely makes a direct connection between the dehumanisation of Picts and the

romanticisation of the Vikings. He has read considerable local archaeological and historical

literature though later comments about trows show that his vast local knowledge is

circumscribed by his lack of knowledge of European folk belief in general. Like most

Shetlanders, he views trows as basically unique to the Northern Isles, with some, but not

considerable, parallels to fairies found elsewhere.

Another local tradition bearer is my friend, 63-year-old Elma Johnson, who grew up and is

still living in Bigton in South Mainland. Johnson is an instinctive storyteller, someone who

answers simple questions by telling a story, so it is natural for her to have become a

professional, owning the Island Trails tour company. When Johnson is working, she dresses

in old-fashioned Shetland garb, bonnet and all. These are simply her work clothes, but in

general, Johnson is nonetheless far more of a traditionalist then the other local storytellers I

met, valorising the Norse and demonising the Scottish landowners.

While describing the history of Shetland’s settlement to me on my first visit, Johnson says:

Elma Johnson: An then, but the Vikins, when they came here, they came straight across. They, they were fleein. Now, I don’t know if they had any idea if they would land here or not. They, they maybe knew; they maybe didna know. But, um, that’s unlikely they would’ve known… But they came straight across. Because they were fleein from their king. I forget his name at the moment.

Adam Grydehøj: Harald. Elma Johnson: Because he was a terrible man. He was, he was, uh, he was, he was, no

very good to his people. But not only that – you know better than me – but what Norway is, it’s not fertile, is it?

Adam Grydehøj: No, well, there’s not much. Elma Johnson: There’s not much. All rocks an trees. An they were lookin, they were

obviously lookin for new ground an new place to settle. So, they settled here. An I think, whoever was settled here – an we tend tae call them the Picts, but we don’t really know—. Who dreamed up this idea of the Picts, I have, actually, no idea, but it’s taken for granted now. That’s what you read in all the books. But who they were, I don’t know. But they would’ve been the people that came from the mainland, obviously. [Incomprehensible.] an I make no doubt that, that the Vikins drove them intae the hills. Uh, undootedly, an so, we have the myth of the little people.

Adam Grydehøj: Were they small people, then? Elma Johnson: Well, that’s debatable. I mean, we don’t really know that. Uh, it’s

generally thought that they were small, but if they were, I mean, I don’t know. But that’s, I think, where they get the myth of the—. We call them trows.

Adam Grydehøj: Aye. Elma Johnson: We don’t speak about fairies here or, or trolls. That’s… Fairies is very

much Scandinavian, an trolls, of course, is the same, as you know. It’s just the same thing though, really.

Unlike Cooper, Johnson accepts the identification of trows with other fairies though, in

keeping with her pro-Norse sentiments, she only notes the Scandinavian fairies.

Johnson knows about the Jarlshof: she even gives tours there. Johnson thus exhibits perfectly

what we shall see more of below and what we noted with Peter Hunter above, namely, that

the Shetland foundation myth can coexist with up-to-date archaeological knowledge. Brown

(p. 53) has already argued this concerning the romantic Shetland historical narrative in

general, noting that ‘A popular or folk history can be constructed which is ahistorical – a

myth – and impervious to empirical or rational scrutiny’.

I get much the same MacRitchieist interpretation the next time I visit Johnson, about two

weeks later:

Adam Grydehøj: You’ve heard, I suppose, uh, people talking about the Picts and the trows together.

Elma Johnson: Uh-huh. […] Because the, the Picts an the trows—. Trows was definitely meant tae be little people. But, um, uh… My theory about the little people goin intae the hill. An they were driven intae the hill be whoever came here. An they were small people. They maybe were Picts, who knows? Uh, this is just something that nobody knows at all. But I think they would’ve been, that’s where the myth came from, of the Picts. But, uh, not everybody would tell you it was a myth. You, you will find people who believe in it.

Alone among my contributors, Johnson even mentions without prompting the heather ale,

that traditional drink of conquered peoples. Remarkably though, her context is that of a local

midwife to the fairies legend:

Elma Johnson: Did you hear the story of the, the woman that was called upon tae, tae go tae a trow birth? […] Well, there were women in Shetland [...], there was a women in Shetland called howdies, an they were women that went around deliverin babies. [...] But there were, they had ointment, you see, and they had this heather wine as well, made from the heather.

Adam Grydehøj: The, the, the, the trows did? Elma Johnson: Yeah. An they brewed the heather wine, an if you drank it, I mean, you

had no sense of time. Long, long periods of time could pass, uh, without you knowin. You would’ve thought you’d only been there maybe a night or a few hours, an then when you came home, it might be a century on an that nobody of your own was there at all. Uh, in the case of this woman that went, the trow – little man – came tae fetch her an deliver the baby, an they went – there was a problem –, so they went an delivered the baby. An then, when the, when she was washin, after she had washed the baby here at the fire, then whoever it was in the house gave her a, a jar of ointment tae rub on the child. An she wiped her hand like this, she wiped her eye, an some of the ointment was on her hand, an it went in her eye, an she suddenly realised that she could see. Uh, long distances. Like, behind the isle. She could see through things. An, um, they surely—. Schö went home of course, but this kind of turned her intae being a kind of witchie person, you see. People thought there was somethun wrong with her. But schö, they were at the hill one day, rewing the sheep, an this peerie trow come past, but she was, of course, the only person tae see him. An he said to her, ‘Which eye do you see me with?’ An she said which one it was, an he blew in that eye, an she never saw in it again (30 April 2007).

Whether Johnson has an oral source for this story, we cannot say. Saxby’s Shetland

Traditional Lore, which Johnson knows, contains a motif-rich midwife to the fairies story as

well, but the completeness of both Johnson’s and Saxby’s versions of this migratory legend is

such that derivation from Saxby can only be presumed. Saxby (pp. 162–63 and p. 90) does

not mention heather ale or heather wine in relation to trows, but as we have seen, she does

give the traditional heather ale migratory legend. Is it possible that MacRitchie’s influence

causes Johnson to conflate even trowie and Pictish beverage-making traditions?

The above interview excerpts give an indication of the MacRitchieist/Saxbyean theory’s

wide geographical, social, and generational spread among the Shetland populace. These

represent merely a selection from the whole. Many of my contributors have no recollection of

having heard the Pict-trow association at all, and many others who I have not presented here

do hold by MacRitchieism.

4.3: Norse Romanticism and Scandinavian Identity in Shetland Today The Saxbyean conception of Picts and trows is closely linked with Scandinavian romanticism,

which contrasts with MacRitchie’s purely scholarly intentions. For the sake of convenience,

we have looked at some of my contributors’ ideas about Picts and trows in isolation from their

ideas about the Vikings, but in the course of conversation, the topics are often linked, with

questions about the Norse leading to discussion of Picts and, by extension, trows. We will

now see, where possible, what the contributors quoted in the previous section have to say

about Scandinavian romanticism in general and the Vikings in particular.

Uyeasound’s Peter Hunter is, it will be recalled, in internal conflict concerning the

historicity of the Pict-trow association. Nevertheless, he is not a Scandinavian romantic.

When I ask him whether most Shetlanders would consider themselves more Scottish or more

Nordic, he replies:

Peter Hunter: It is Scottish, but obviously, der’s a lot—. I mean, ya can, being aroond, everyone haes deir, what dey consider deir Viking ancestry, and obviously, dis whole Up-Helly-Aa thing. But it’s really so...

Adam Grydehøj: But, say, [two particular Uyeasound residents] consider themselves Nordic first.

Peter Hunter: Well, dat’s, dat’s, dat’s up tae dem. Dat’s fair enough. Adam Grydehøj: [Laughing.] I’m not trying to single them out there, but I’m saying, I

mean, is this going to be a real minority viewpoint? I mean, it just comes down to how you view yourself and your culture.

Peter Hunter: Yeah... [Laughing.] I suppose most fokk would laek tae be Nordic in a sense. But... Havin spent time in Norway an everything... I mean, lots o fokk i Norway. I mean, da waans i da wast coast, lots o da fishermen haes been i Shetland an haes a clue. But I mean, if du goes tae da east coast o Norway, ‘Shetland? Whaur’s dat?’ Dey’ve never heard of it, you ken? It’s quite funny how dey perceive Shetland. As I say, a lot o da waans on da wast coast haes a lot o ties, in fishin an whatever an, ya ken, der’s lots o dem comes ower wi yachts an an everything i da summer, but—. I don’t know... I suppose it’s a, it’s like an ideological culture dat ya’d like tae be paert of or something maybe. An obviously, because o dis so-called, well, ties wi da Vikings, but I mean—. I mean, if ya go intae da archaeology, it’s 800, 870 or somethin when da first o da Vikings cam tae Unst. Der obviously is Viking blood or whatever, but der’s a hell of a lot [Laughing.]... Ya only had a—. If ya go through da phone book in Unst, der’s probably, der’s probably 50 percent o da fokk in Unst dat wasna born i Shetland now, I would think. Ken, we were at a wedding a coupla weeks ago, i Baltasoond, an I juist started looking around da hall tae see, for interest, how many, how many o da fokk wis born an bred in Unst an how many wasna, an da times dat I lookit, der wis waan o difference. Der wis exactly— Ya ken, der wis 51 and 49 percent, ya ken? […]

Adam Grydehøj: Why is it that you think some people do have this Nordic romanticism? I mean, in practical terms, the actual cultural similarities between Shetland and Norway—. I mean, I can’t take people too seriously when they tell me that they think the culture of Shetland is more Norwegian than Scottish.

Peter Hunter: It’s juist because dey’ve no been, an dey don’t know. Adam Grydehøj: Exactly. It seems to be the people who’ve been to Norway who most

understand. I did get this one woman telling me about how the Norwegians had very similar interior decorating methods to the Shetlanders, and then I knew that we’d gotten to this level of absurdity where it stops being relevant.

Peter Hunter: [Laughing.] Yeah, exactly. I mean, I mean, da—. I suppose, anyone can copy anything dey see in a book, an den dey go tae IKEA an buy a cheap flat-pack furniture an thinkin dey’re Swedish all of a sudden. Um... No, dat becomes a joke I suppose. I mean, even juist, even juist—. Da difference in da timber, I mean, when you’re ower i Norway, ken, da difference in havin it all available an aa der i front o you an so on, an, yeah... Very difficult. I mean, what, at da end o da day, what daes it matter? You’re juist Shetland. You’re no anything. You’re no Scottish. You’re no Norwegian either in your ootlook on life, I suppose, nearly.

For Hunter, the Scandinavianism felt by some people – not most people, in his mind – is

artificial and ‘ideological’. Like Hunter, most of my contributors consider themselves to be

Shetlanders rather than Scots or Scandinavians: Shetlanders are unique.

Despite these views, in common with many Shetlanders, Hunter thinks that the Shetland

dialect is more Scandinavian than it actually is:

Peter Hunter: I suppose if I wis spaekin tae boys here aboot, like, some o da guys dat’s me ain age an some o da guys dat I would be spaekin tae about goin fishin or workin wi sheep or somethin, den you wouldna maek oot a single word I was sayin. You juist wouldn’t—. Well, you’d pick up some o da words, but you basically wouldna, you wouldna ken what dey’re sayin. But it’s funny too because we found dat when we were i Norway, listenin tae da fokk spaekin Norwegian, dat we could actually pick up a lot o what dey were sayin, an dey didna think dat we would, ken? Dey were, dey were pretty surprised dat we could—. But I mean, tae read it, written, da written word, really didna have a clue. But when you’re listenin tae dem spaekin, der’s an awful lot o words dat is da same. An, an I mean, waan example wis when we were i Norway, we needed cough mixture for waan o da bairns. An Alison wis in dis chemist’s shop tryin tae say “child’s cough” an stuff, an da label on da bottle wis, waans she got it frae da guy an sussed out dat it wis “B-A-R-N-H-A-U-S-T” or somethin, which is juist bairn host. Which is just stupid because—

Adam Grydehøj: If she’d just spoken dialect, then they would’ve figured it out. Peter Hunter: Yeah. Dat woulda, dat woulda been der. An so, yeah. Der is, der is lots o

things dat ya can tie up.

There is no doubt that Shetland dialect possesses more Scandinavian-derived words than other

variations of Scots, but this should not be overemphasised. As the interview excerpts

presented here show, the very mild dialect that many people speak to me, as a foreigner, when

they are knappin is basically Scots. Hunter’s cough syrup example is instructive since both

bairn (child) and hoast (cough) are found in mainland Scots dialects. Many of my

contributors have a few examples of this kind on hand to show the similarity between the

Shetland dialect and Norwegian, but the general lesson is that, on the basis of isolated

examples, it would also be simple enough to show that mainland Scots dialects are, in fact,

variations of Norwegian.

Unlike Hunter, who seems to see Scandinavian romanticism as misguided but basically

harmless, Stephen Simpson, the incomer from Wick, takes a gloomier view of things. Like

many immigrants from mainland Scotland, Simpson notes a pervasive anti-Scottish sentiment

among native Shetlanders, a sentiment that is all the more surprising for the fact that, as

Hunter noted above, so many Shetland residents are incomers. Simpson relates his first

impressions upon coming to Shetland 16 years earlier:

Stephen Simpson: The people had this great community spirit and feel to them, and also within one or two days, I was rabidly taken down to earth with the Scottish thing. There was no Scottish symbolism, and I was seen as a, a south person, which was a complete surprise to me, a complete inversion to everything I thought in my head up until that point. I, I automatically thought that people who came up from the Central Belt of Scotland, ‘Those are the Scottish guys’. And they come up here, and they—. And for me to be treated like that was such a shock. At times, it’s been very, very hurtful. For example, I remember being in a pub close to here quite earlier on, quite early on in my life here. And I could hear young guys in the corner, and they were mocking the way I spoke. They were repeating things I said and saying things the way I said it. And I was really, really, really hurt by it. […] I—. It, it, it does have a dark side. Like I say, I’ve been here, well, 16, coming 17 years here now, and it’s still one of these things that’s uppermost in my mind. Like, when I speak to my mum and dad, I do tell them that there is a dark side to it and that the people here have an attitude towards people who are not from Shetland.

Adam Grydehøj: So, it’s not something which is specifically anti-Scottish, but it’s anti-outsider in general?

Stephen Simpson: Oh, no, no, no. I think it’s specifically anti-Scottish. I think that’s exactly what it is.

Adam Grydehøj: But why? Stephen Simpson: I think it’s the old big brother thing. If you’re Canadian, you feel the

weight of American cultural pressure, and that’s, that’s the typical thing we’d say to North American people. And if you’re Scottish, it’s England. If you’re Irish, it’s England. If you’re Welsh, it’s England. If you’re, if you’re English, it’s probably… Well, I don’t know if these guys have got any—.

Simpson links this ‘dark side’ of Shetland culture directly with many Shetlanders’ sense of

exceptionalism:

Stephen Simpson: I’m always surprised. For example, the most respectable, upright citizens who I’ve known for years will suddenly say something that makes you realise, ‘Oh my god! That’s what they think!’ I mean, for example, a lady who I’m very friendly with, my family very friendly with. And I’ve been here for years and years and years. And she, she said to me, ‘I’ve been down in your country’. [Grydehøj laughs.] And I said, ‘My country? Where’s that?’ And she said, ‘Well, I was down in Elgin’.

Elgin? That’s my country, is it? Oh, my god! So, it was, it was this revelation of ‘You come from down there’. But it, it, as I say, it’s the most astonishing thing sometimes. It’s like dismissal of, of a type of people. ‘Well, of course, she was Scottish’. That explains it! Anything that happens: ‘Well, of course, she was Scottish’.

Adam Grydehøj: Would, would you say—. Obviously, the average Shetlander doesn’t exist, but you say that the average Shetlander feels him or herself Nordic? Or maybe, more Nordic than Scottish? Or simply, Shetlandic?

Stephen Simpson: Yeah… I mean, you’ve hit the nail on the head there. I mean, when they do talk about it, it always ends up that they just feel like Shetlanders. That’s how they feel. They, they don’t really care if someone wants to point out contradictions and so on. They don’t really care about things like that. They, they just feel, ‘Well, I’ve lived all my life here on an island. OK, so, you’ve come here, and I know you like it here, and you’re contributing and so on, and you’re going to die here and so on, but at the end of the day, you know, you can never be a real one, because you werena born and brought up here. And it’s as simple as that’. It’s probably… I don’t know if it’s a minority or majority view. I’m not sure. I, I don’t know, again, how good or bad it is, really. As I said to you at the beginning, […] there is a dark side, a hurtful side to that, which I don’t like. A really good example was, you may have heard this, several years ago, the big Viking, […] the guizer jarl, made a comment at the press conference, and he was less than tactful. And he used a word, which was soothmoother. Now, if you translate it into English, it’s ‘south mouth person’. [That is, someone who came to Shetland on the Aberdeen ferry, i.e., through the south mouth of the harbour.] […] But there you go. It’s one of these words that, it depends on how the person wants to use it in the first place. Like, when I came here at first, someone said that to me, and they werena meaning it in a friendly way. I knew exactly what they were trying to say. So, after the row erupted with the guizer jarl, it was, it wasn’t me directly who was involved, but working here, I was in the middle of it, obviously. But I went in a shop, and I heard the shop assistants were talking about, ‘Well, of course, this word, it doesna mean anything at all. It wasna meant offensively. It’s a word I’ve used all my life’. And I said to them, I thought, well, I had a sudden attack of principles, I said, ‘Well, excuse me, I’ve been here for many years now, and that word is not a nice word to hear used. The fact that some people might perceive it as being offensive is enough for you to think of any other word. And there’s thousands and thousands of words that you can use that are completely neutral and inoffensive, so why choose something that might be interpreted differently? And that’s my point’. And they were, they were astonished that I said that in the middle of a shop. And I said, I said, ‘But no, no, I’m gonna put my foot down. I don’t like racism, any -isms at all. I, I, I just feel that if you arena completely, 100 percent sure that the person is perceiving what you’re saying to them, then take care’. And I think that I made my point, but I’m not sure. They probably called me a “bloody soothmoother” when I went.

None of my other contributors speak to me about anti-Scottishness with such vehemence as

does Simpson, and the majority of my native Shetlander contributors tell me that anti-Scottish

sentiment either does not exist or is a very minor problem. Nonetheless, as we shall see later,

this is an issue that some parts of the local government are taking very seriously.

In common with Hunter, Simpson feels that Shetlanders’ Norse character is largely

illusory:

Adam Grydehøj: Well, you’ve been talking a lot about what’s distinctive in the Shetland

culture, which is what I ask people about. Do you actually think, not just in people’s perceptions, that the way of life here, the culture has truly been influenced strongly by the Nordic history? In a way that it hasn’t been maybe in Wick?

Stephen Simpson: No. Adam Grydehøj: No? Stephen Simpson: I think that people would like to think that. Adam Grydehøj: But that’s just an illusion? Stephen Simpson: I think it is an illusion. And I mean, and if ever anyone asks me about

that, a Shetlander, I say, ‘OK, name a Norwegian football team’. And they can’t. And I say, ‘OK, name a Scottish football team’. And that’s a ridiculous question because they can name every one. And I say, ‘OK, what’s the most popular TV programme in the Faroe Islands?’ And they can’t do it. So, it’s, it’s, if anything, we’re more North American culture. We’re more influenced by what happens in New York or Los Angeles than anything that might happen in Bergen or Oslo. And except maybe at the most arty level or something where someone is trying to make a point with it. But really, it’s an illusion as far as I’m concerned.

Adam Grydehøj: Do you think that’s a helpful illusion to the Shetlanders? I mean, it seems to have brought pretty nice results in terms of cultural knowledge, and feeling, and passion about culture and the arts.

Stephen Simpson: Well, OK, in my opinion, which I’ve never expressed outside my house before, is, no, I think it’s small minded.

Adam Grydehøj: OK. Stephen Simpson: I think it’s naïve. It’s not representative, I’m sure, of, of the great

entrepreneurial spirit that there must’ve been here in times past. There, there is such a culture now of inward-looking, self-obsessiveness, of looking down on other people, that I think it’s completely unhealthy.

One admirable Shetland attribute as far as Simpson is concerned is the local promotion of

dialect:

Like, when I was at school, if we didn’t speak crystal-clear English at school, or attempt crystal-clear English, we were thumped. We were told it was wrong. So, I mean, I’ve still got in my head, ‘You should speak crystal-clear English all the time’. I mean, my job now, obviously, it’s very important to communicate as clear as I can. Whereas now, it’s very much seen as a good thing to be a dialect speaker with a strong accent. One of the striking things about Shetland when I came here was how the dialect was promoted. A complete contrast.

Simpson’s memory of being prevented from speaking dialect at school in Wick is useful to

keep in mind. As we shall see, many of my contributors bring dialect up as an example of a

Scottish attempt to destroy Shetland culture in particular.

We will have the opportunity to hear more from Simpson below, but it should come as no

surprise that his views on Norse identity differ from those of the equally forthright Shona

Leask, the proud Shetlander who grew up in Walls. When I ask her whether Shetlanders are

more Nordic or more Scottish, she answers:

Shona Leask: I would say more Nordic.

Adam Grydehøj: For you personally or for— Shona Leask: For me personally. Adam Grydehøj: What about for the typical Shetlander? Shona Leask: Probably da saam. Adam Grydehøj: What is it that’s distinctively Nordic? Shona Leask: Well, der’s no kilts here. An der’s nobody—. I know it’s gone i da fashion,

folk gettin married in a kilt, an dey fin oot [what tartan they should have]. I mean, everybody, everybody could have a tartan, I’m quite sure. But, um, no in my family, I don’t think! I would say, I would say dat we’re quite prood tae… If I haed my wye, we would be quite independent. Wi wir rich oil an wir rich sea aroond it, it should’ve been done a long time ago.

Adam Grydehøj: But I mean, what is it that’s Nordic about Shetland besides the dialect? Shona Leask: It’s just the location. An I think, also, um, we hae more connections. I think

we have more connections wi that side. No so much noo. No such much noo at aa. Adam Grydehøj: But historically. Shona Leask: Yeah, yeah.

A good number of my contributors mention lack of kilts as a marker of distinction from

Scotland. As for the dialect, like Hunter, Leask has an example of a word that is both

Scandinavian and Shetlandic, benk (bench). Leask believes, on the basis of her own

experience, that the local dialect is primarily Scandinavian: ‘I don’t think a lot [of the dialect]

is Scottish because I lived doon in da mainland Scotland for a good few year, an I was a

foreigner der’. Michael Lange has noted that many Orcadians view Orcadian dialect as

primarily Scandinavian as well.194

Jim o Berry is not in agreement regarding the dialect, noting that ‘it’s not so far off the

English. Maybe, a little bit. […] It’s not a language at all. No, it’s a dialect, right enough’. He

is also humorously dismissive of Norse romanticism yet highlights this, with only minor

prompting, as an important element in Shetlanders’ self-identification:

Adam Grydehøj: Does Shetland – or did Shetland – have any sort of unique culture, or would it have been like that down on the Scottish mainland?

Jim o Berry: Well… The Shetlanders think they’re Vikings, but that’s… [Laughing.] The guys in Up-Helly-Aa’ll be shootin me down if they hear what I’m sayin! [Laughing.] ’Cause I’m no, I’m only a half a Shetlander because my mother came from Scotland! [Laughing.] But I get oot in Up-Helly-Aa. I’ve been out in the Jarl’s squad about three times, so I enjoy it, but… […]

Adam Grydehøj: But, uh, so, do a lot of people think that they’re more Scandinavian than Scottish?

Jim o Berry: Well, yes, uh… Most Shetlanders – the ones who have an opinion on it – thinks they’re, think they’re Vikings. [Laughing.] Especially on Up-Helly-Aa night, they think they’re all Vikings. […]

Adam Grydehøj: And, uh, do you think that there are people who think that Up-Helly-Aa is some Viking thing?

Jim o Berry: Well, they say that, but—. Oh, they know, they know, they know better than

that. They—. You see, there’s a lot of Norse names in Shetland. So, they obviously had an influence on Shetland. And it was, uh, they were supposed to have been big and strong. [Laughter.]

Adam Grydehøj: Blond. Jim o Berry: There was some blond, yeah. […] Yes, yes, yes. Well, they are, see, Shetland

belonged to, was it Denmark or Norway? Adam Grydehøj: Both. Jim o Berry: Yeah. And then, they, somebody sold it back again. I don’t know the history.

I mean, I know the history, but I can’t remember it all. […] They were given as a dowry to some princess. And some of them would like to go back to Norway, some of these Vikings here.

Adam Grydehøj: Are you serious about this? Are there people who’d like to go back to Norway?

Jim o Berry: Well, you do hear them. You see them and hear them talkin aboot it. But I think, if they studied it, they probably wouldn’t really.

Many contributors feel that there is a strong generational difference in terms of Shetland

pride, that those born after the coming of oil do not feel as strongly about Shetland identity as

did their predecessors. I did not interview sufficient young people to be able to comment on

this in a general sense, but the two youths who I did interview, Tom Henderson and Billy

Seatter, certainly feel like Shetlanders. Seatter has lived all of his life in Shetland, but

Henderson, whose parents are Shetlanders and who has visited Shetland on and off over the

years, just recently moved to Lerwick from Warwickshire in England, where he grew up.

Neither Henderson nor Seatter have a very firm grasp of Shetland’s historical timescale:

Adam Grydehøj: [To Henderson:] First of all, I hear you’re not a native Shetlander, are you?

Tom Henderson: Yeah, I am. Well, partly because Scandinavian invaded here a long time ago, but I’m not sure what year.

Adam Grydehøj: [To Seatter:] Do you have any idea when the Scandinavians came here? Tom Henderson: Prob—, probably wrong, but probably three to four hundred years ago. Billy Seatter: Is that when the Vikings came? Tom Henderson: Yeah. Billy Seatter: No idea. It was after… Jesus [incomprehensible]. Adam Grydehøj: And how many years ago was Jesus living? Tom Henderson: Two thousand. Two thousand and seven! Adam Grydehøj: Yeah, two thousand and seven. And, uh, you’re saying that it was about

three to four hundred years ago— Tom Henderson: Probably, but we still keep up Shetland, um, Shetland traditions which is

Viking traditions. Like Up-Helly-Aa. But that’s only been goin on for 107 years. Adam Grydehøj: Oh, we’ll get to that, sonny. [To Seatter:] So, you don’t have any better

guess except for ‘after Christ’. Billy Seatter: Yeah. Adam Grydehøj: Does three or four hundred years sound possible? Tom Henderson: Yeah. Billy Seatter: Yeah, it does. Adam Grydehøj: OK.

Tom Henderson: They moved here for farmin land because if you’ve been to Norway, you’d see why.

Adam Grydehøj: Have you been to Norway? Tom Henderson: Yeah. [Laughs.] Adam Grydehøj: OK. Just had to check there. So, uh, these Viking people moved here,

right? And, uh… What did they do? They set up farms…? Billy Seatter: Raided everywhere. [Laughs.] Tom Henderson: Raped the women, set on fire their houses. But then, they just made

farmin land. Because Shetland’s a lot flatter, and Norway is full of mountains. It’s, there’s not a lot you can do. It’s even harder to make roads there. So, they make farmin land here. And we’re probably anc—, well, they’re our ancestors, quite far back, but—. We’re Shetlanders now.

Despite their lack of awareness as to when the Norse first settled in Shetland, Seatter and

particularly Henderson are proud of their Norse ancestry, with the latter attempting to out-

Norse the former. When I ask them how most Shetlanders would respond if asked to classify

themselves as Scottish or Scandinavian, Henderson responds:

Tom Henderson: Scandinavian, I’d say, because we see Vikings, and we think of Shetland. So, uh, we just think of the torches lightin up the galley [at Up-Helly-Aa], and seein all the men in Lerwick, suits of armour. See, we are part of Shetland [sic], but we, we really come from Norway.

Adam Grydehøj: What would you say, Billy? Billy Seatter: Uh… I’d say both, if that makes any sense. Adam Grydehøj: Yeah, it does make sense. But I’m not letting you say both because I

want too… Billy Seatter: Deep down… I’ve got two answers. Deep down, if you go back through— Tom Henderson: You’re half Orcadian. Billy Seatter: Yeah, because I’m half— Tom Henderson: [To Seatter:] I’m more Shetland than you. [To Grydehøj:] So, don’t say

he’s blue born and bred in Shetland. Adam Grydehøj: OK, if you’re more—. So, so— Billy Seatter: If you’re more, like, lookin down the timeline in the roots, it comes tae be

that on one side of my family, or maybe both sides somehow, then I am truly Scandinavian, but right now, in this modern day, I would rather, at a football game, support Scotland than what I would Scandinavia.

Adam Grydehøj: OK. Billy Seatter: If that makes sense. Tom Henderson: But I think you should say ‘Scotland’ because I’m, like, my parents are

from Shetland, and their ancestors would be from Norway, but you’re half Orcadian. Henderson’s effort to force Seatter into a Scottish category – a category in which Seatter is

pleased to find himself regardless – is intriguing. This is definitely a genetic argument for

cultural inheritance, never mind the fact that Seatter is only half Orcadian and that, despite its

earlier Scottification, Orkney possesses at least as much Viking history as does Shetland.

Geordie Jamieson presents a more complex case. His considerable intellect and reading

have made him aware that today’s Shetland possesses few markers of Norse identity, yet his

place within the culture makes him feel somewhat Scandinavian in an abstract sense. When I

ask whether Shetlanders associate themselves more with Scotland or more with the Nordic

world, he replies:

Geordie Jamieson: Romantically, they’d like to be more Nordic. There’s no question of that. Uh, I think. You know, we always have that hankering to the great Viking age, into, and being part of the Norse thing. And we’re very involved with that. And I think, we have a—. I think, we have, because of our, simply, well, not maybe our geographic location, but we have very strong—. Even, although we’re—. We are part of, we’ve been part of Scotland since, well, 1469 or whatever. You—. I’m quite strongly Scottish in some things. If it comes to sport. Following football. I’d support Scotland against England any day of the week. […] I think that we—. We have a—. I think that, maybe, the Norwegian or the Nordic links certainly were reinforced in the wartime. There’s no doubt at that time. There’s no doubt that, at a critical time like that.

Adam Grydehøj: And that was geographical. Geordie Jamieson: That was geographical. Purely geographical.

Jamieson’s comment on the reinforcing of Norwegian links during World War II is worthy of

note. In fact, despite Scalloway’s important role in transporting fleeing members of the

Norwegian resistance to the UK, few of my contributors mention the so-called “Shetland

Bus” operations. In other words, one of Shetland’s most significant recent associations with

the Scandinavian world has not truly entered into the local identity concept. The reasons for

this are unclear, though it perhaps helpful to consider that the Shetland Bus might have little

to contribute to the romantic historical narrative inasmuch as it was an instance of Norwegian

and British military collaboration. Thus, whether or not the Shetland Bus did, in fact,

reinforce the pre-existing feeling of Norse identity in Shetland, most Shetlanders do not see it

as having done so.

Other than the Shetland Bus, Jamieson finds it difficult to pinpoint what it is that makes

Shetlanders Scandinavians:

Adam Grydehøj: Well, is there anything that’s particularly Nordic in reality about the – besides the dialect – about the Shetland culture? […]

Geordie Jamieson: I find it difficult to define. It’s not something that immediately springs out of my head, is it? When I—. If you start to think about it, then, when you start to think about something, then it’s ‘no’, really, in my opinion.

Adam Grydehøj: Would you say that you consider yourself more Nordic than Scottish? Geordie Jamieson: The, the, the most obvious thing, the thing that’s Nordic, is the,

undoubtedly, is the beautiful words for the placenames. The placenames is things that stick out immediately in my mind. That’s a Nordic thing. […] But in terms of Norway,

let’s be honest. It’s brilliant to go to Norway. […] I look at Norway nowadays very much as a place that we associate through friendship and things of that kind, rather as a lot culturally. There’re not many things—. […] There’s not something that’s leaping out of my head, ‘Oh, God, yes’. […] There’s no doubt there’s still the romantic thing of Up-Helly-Aa. Up-Helly-Aa, Up-Helly-Aa is the – inverted commas – ‘romantic festival of the association with the sagas’. You know. That, I think, if we’re being—. You know, once a year, you have these sort of tenuous links and think of the great raiders crossing the seas and going here and going there and raping and pillaging [Laughing hard.] and singing to themselves. And getting hellishly drunk at the end of the day. Fine! But I’m, I think you’ve got to be realistic and—. [...] I’ve never spent long enough in Norway to really think about it. And even some of the customs and things that people do are, even in the customs, or the type of things that people do. Their customs are quite different than ours.

About the dialect, Jamieson is torn as well although in this case, the issue is the conflicting

demands of cultural preservation and linguistic evolution:

Geordie Jamieson: One of the things education has not done anything for is for the dialect or anything of that kind.

Adam Grydehøj: And people do try. Geordie Jamieson: They do now. But not in my era. If I was—. For most of my lifetime in

education, you spoke in – inverted commas – “Standard English”. Adam Grydehøj: But that, again, would’ve been the same anywhere in Scotland. Geordie Jamieson: Yeah. There’s been a real awakening. That you can—. I mean, when I

became head teacher of Anderson High, my predecessor was John Graham. Who is a very, very eminent Shetland scholar. As you will know. John Graham. But we used to have endless debates in school about ‘appropriateness of speech’. And I never got arsed with that. I can’t be bothered with that. You speak according—. I don’t speak broad Shetland to you. […] If a kid comes into my office in school, if he busts through the door, and he’s in difficulties, and he starts to speak in Shetland, I may need to speak in Shetland to him to, to solve his problem. I didn’t have any difficulty—. Some people—. OK, I’m Shetland, born and bred. But I could speak broad Shetland to pupils if I was head teacher. Or I could speak the Standard English. It’s not something that I get uptight about. I worry, I worry a little bit about it. There are people creating a dialect. That’s slightly—. That worries me. Don’t get me wrong. […] I, I think it’s natural, you have to have a natural evolution. I’m all for supporting the dialect in its current form and, and, and getting people to speak the dialect. But you’ve got to have this sort of evolutionary process as well. Because the dialect will evolve. The, the, the phonetics of it and the linguistic side of it. […]

Adam Grydehøj: A lot of people, of course, see, see the dialect as perhaps more Nordic than it really is. […]

Geordie Jamieson: But a lot of people tend to forget that […] a lot of the Nordic dialect is now influenced by Lowland Scots. That’s why we can understand Burns, reading Burns. You know, that’s why I enjoy reading Burns. […] I think Burns’s poetry comes across—. OK, he was a—. His poetry comes across too because he, he supported the type of things that people in Shetland would be supportive of, politically as well as everything else. He was the common man’s man. But I think we forget, often, just how many Scottish words.

Like Viking identity itself, the dialect can be used as a weapon against incomers. A

number of my contributors speak insultingly about – at times even laughing at – incomers

who attempt to learn how to speak the dialect. In his editorial for the May 2009 issue of

Shetland Life magazine, Malachy Tallack comments on this phenomenon:

What strikes me as odd, particularly given the level of concern many people feel about this trend [of declining dialect use], is the degree of hostility that still exists towards the idea of people who were not born in Shetland learning and speaking dialect themselves. […]

There is still a very strong antipathy towards non-native dialect speakers. This is most often manifested in a quiet tutting or cringing when an individual is brave enough to give it a go, but in private many will go further and suggest that it simply should not or even cannot be done (I have heard it said, in all seriousness, that folk without Shetland genes are physiologically incapable of pronouncing Shetland words).

So, on the one hand, incomers’ lack of respect for the dialect is presented as an example of a

lack of respect for Shetlanders in general while on the other hand, portions of the community

exert social pressure to prevent outsiders from becoming insiders.

The storyteller Davy Cooper is conflicted about Norse romanticism because, as we saw

with his comments on the Picts, he possesses a broad view on potentials for cultural

inheritance and exchange. When I ask Cooper what it is that makes Shetland culture special,

he says:

Davy Cooper: There’s sort of three elements to Shetland culture. There’s the Scots element, which is quite strong, stronger than some people would have you believe. There is a strong Scandinavian element to it as well. Um, whether that Scandinavian element is a real one or whether it’s one that people have decided that they want is open to question. And there’s also an element that fact that it’s a group of islands, and I think island cultures are different than mainland cultures, and I think that is an almost universal thing. So, you’ve got a combination of those three elements that I think is what makes Shetland unique. It’s the Scots, the Scandinavian, and the fact that we’re islanders.

Adam Grydehøj: Now, you, you kind of got to the heart of what, what, what I’m looking into here with the, the question as to whether the Scandinavian influence is real or perceived. But I, what’s your, what’s your personal opinion on that?

Davy Cooper: [Sighs.] I, I think quite a lot of it’s real. Um, but the bits that you see aren’t, if you know what I mean. I think, if you look amongst native Shetlanders, the ones that live in the rural parts of Shetland and in the outer islands, you will find that quite a lot of the way that they think and the way that they speak does have definite Scandinavian connotations. The bits that are publicised – the Up-Helly-Aas and so on and so forth – have very little tae do with Scandinavia.

Adam Grydehøj: That’s just the dream of Scandinavia. Davy Cooper: This whole Viking thing, um, is tae a very great extent an artificial creation.

Um, you need tae look beyond that, and you need tae look at the lifestyle that was current in Shetland almost up until the middle of the twentieth century, um, where it was the crofting lifestyle, the crofter wi his boat, the goin off tae the fishing at night in the summer, um, an catching fish from craig stones and so on. That is a Scandinavian lifestyle. And that is the real Shetland connection wi Scandinavia, not the—. And that’s the lifestyle that was inherited, to a very great extent, from the Norse. Uh, it was the kind of lifestyle that they led as well. Um, and also the business of leavin home an goin

an sailin an comin back again. Again, that’s, that’s, that’s quite a Scandinavian thing too. Um, in some areas of coastal Scotland as well, but… And that, I think, is the true link tae Scandinavia. Um, forget all the rest of this ballyhoo, an concentrate on what we do have in common wi them.

Adam Grydehøj: Do you think that people realise this, in general? Davy Cooper: [Sighs.] I think that anybody who’s put any time an effort intae studying it

probably does, deep down in their heart. I think that the general population don’t. I think that the general population are, are woefully ignorant, in some ways, about our Scandinavian heritage.

Adam Grydehøj: But do you think that, even though they’re ignorant, they regard themselves in some way as Nordic?

Davy Cooper: I think that they do. I think that—. It’s a very strange thing. For the best part of five hundred years, um, various authorities tried tae stamp out Scandinavian influence in Shetland. Even when I went tae school in the late ’60s, I was not allowed tae use dialect in the classroom. I had tae speak English.

Adam Grydehøj: But it was like that everywhere of course. Davy Cooper: Yeah. Absolutely. But in some ways, the more they tried tae suppress the

local culture, the more vibrant it became. Um, and again, I think a lot o dat has tae do wi, um, an independent spirit dat wants tae go its own way regardless of what authority tells it tae do.

Adam Grydehøj: Is that the Scandinavian spirit, or just island spirit? Davy Cooper: I think that that’s an island spirit. I don’t think that’s by any means unique

tae—. I mean, most of my experience of islands, I have tae say, is in Scandinavia because that’s the people I tend tae mix wi. But I think that you tend tae get that independence amongst islanders, simply because ya have tae be independent in order tae survive in a place like this. Ya have tae be able tae make do wi an [incomprehensible] whatever you’ve got. Um, so that’s why I say the islander thing is as important as the Scandinavian and the Scots thing.

In common with Geordie Jamieson, Cooper is one of my few native Shetlander

contributors to ungrudgingly admit that there are strong anti-Scottish sentiments in some

portions of Shetland society. Speaking about the term Lerwick Scottie, used to denote the

mainland Scottish fisherfolk who settled in Lerwick in the early twentieth century, as well as

their descendents, Cooper says:

Davy Cooper: Lerwick Scottie, yeah. It’s an unfortunate term, Lerwick Scottie. But terms like that are, are, um, in many ways originally derogatory, an they still hold that connotation. It’s not a term that you would use about somebody if you were their friend. You wouldn’t call them a Lerwick Scottie.

Adam Grydehøj: What I found rather interesting in this man’s case [A third-generation Shetlander I interviewed who is, nevertheless, considered a Lerwick Scottie.] was that, when I brought up the whole soothmoother point, he thought that that was just over-sensitive…

Davy Cooper: Well, again, soothmoother is not, was never, when I was brought up, soothmoother was not a derogatory term. It was simply a description of somebody who had come frae sooth.

Adam Grydehøj: Yeah. Davy Cooper: Um, an it wasn’t an insult. It wasn’t, you know, ‘Oh, he’s only a

soothmoother’. It was, you know, ‘He’s a soothmoother. He’s somebody from outwith Shetland’. But in those days, it was sufficient of a rarity that, that it elicited comment. I

mean, nowadays, it’s every second person that you meet on the street. An nowadays, it has become a derogatory term, an it’s become a term where people are uncomfortable, um, bein called a soothmoother. Because in some ways, it indicates that you don’t belong here.

Adam Grydehøj: Well, I’ve definitely met Scots who’ve moved up here who feel that they’re seen as some sort of—

Davy Cooper: [Laughs.] There’s the reverse of course in that a lot o the ones that came up for the oil era, um, developed this term “Magnie”—

Adam Grydehøj: OK. Davy Cooper: —for, um, the sort of rabid Shetlander. The one that, you know, wears the

Fair Isle gansey the whole time an, an, you know, talks in broad dialect no matter who they’re talking to. An you know, insists, you know, you need tae be tenth generation before you can be considered local. You know, able to trace your ancestors back tae Erik the Red or something like that. An those people do exist. An, an they caricatures. I mean, they’re ridiculous caricatures. Uh, an I think, the vast majority of intelligent Shetlanders regard them as ridiculous caricatures. And you have to.

In contrast to Cooper, Elma Johnson has in many ways a late-Victorian view of Shetland

history and values:

Elma Johnson: I have no reason tae think that the Vikins didna settle an do well here. An as I’ve just—. You could inherit your land. Son could inherit from the father. An of course, this marriage took place [between Margaret of Denmark and King James III of Scotland]. An of course, in those days, we were always fightin. An this man [King Christian I of Denmark] couldna pay a dowry for his daughter. So, he just gave Orkney an Shetland, just like that. An it was under the conditions that everything remained the same.

Adam Grydehøj: Oh, when was this? Elma Johnson: 14… 1490–something. We could correct that by lookin it up later. […]

But, um, this happened, of course, an funnily enough, there were nothing changed for about a hundred years, a whole hundred years goed past. An then, the first men started tae come, tae Shetland.

Adam Grydehøj: From south? Elma Johnson: Yeah. From Scotland an, um… I think it’s a funny thing that they were all

bad men. Very few good ones. An I think that the reason for that is that it was just a bunch of characters who’s hangin about the palace, an people were probably – Queen Mary, etc. – were probably fed up wi ’em, sent ’em north. But it’s a funny thing that they were all sort o bred the same way. Kind o odd, that. They were the Nevins an, an, uh, came here first. An then, there was, of course, the Stewarts (11 April 2007).

When I speak with Elma again a few weeks later, she repeats her earlier stance concerning the

‘bad’ Scottish landowners, this time in response to my question regarding whether people see

themselves as more Scottish or more Nordic:

Elma Johnson: The old, the old people, in my youth, would’ve responded that they felt far more attached tae the Nordic people than what they did tae British. That, of course, would be comin from the days that followed the Vikings being here. An the, the comin of the Scots people. An the fact that they were all bad. Uh, I know of very few Scottish landowners here – an as we caaed them, uh, lairds –, uh, I know of very few of them that were good people. There were some better than others. An some worse. But, um, I think that that was then. Nowadays, if you would ask, I, I really would not be prepared

tae say how the young generation would answer. Adam Grydehøj: What do they feel about that now? Elma Johnson: I don’t know. An I don’t, I certainly do not hear any young people here

talkin about standin alone. Adam Grydehøj: Independence? Elma Johnson: Yeah. I don’t hear that ever mentioned here. But, uh, if you were tae go

tae Faroe, you would find it there. The, the young people there all want their independence an the older people not (30 April 2007).

Johnson makes an implicit connection between pro-Norse sentiment and the

independence/autonomy movement. For reasons too complex to discuss here, the popular

desire for independence or significantly greater autonomy, which peaked with the Shetland

Movement of the early 1980s, now, anecdotally, seems to have little support within the

community.

4.4: Anti-Scottishness and Shetland Exceptionalism

In Chapter 4 of this thesis, we have seen how the thematic association between Vikings, Picts,

and trows – an association fundamental to the Saxbyean historical narrative – remains

entrenched in the Shetland consciousness. Although there has been insufficient space here

with which to fully evidence this, ideas of Early Modern Scottish oppression of a noble Norse

society are likewise still current. It is not uncommon for people to do what Elma Johnson

does in the excerpts just quoted and answer questions about Scottish versus Nordic identity by

bringing up the notorious Stewart earls.

The contributors quoted here possess a variety of views on Shetland identity and the

islands’ cultural inheritance. Each one of them though – and this goes for nearly everyone I

met in Shetland – grants the Norse a large place in the Shetland national consciousness,

regardless of whether the individual believes that a Norse cultural element is still present in

Shetland today or that present-day attribution of Norse characteristics to Shetlanders is

illusory. The Shetland dialect – perhaps on account of its being a perceived marker of

Scandinavian and non-Scottish identity – is looked upon with fondness by nearly everyone as

The Magnies that Davy Cooper describes – ‘the sort of rabid Shetlander’ – are in the

minority, and I only met a small number of people (none of whom are quoted here) who

would fit this description, despite my consciously trying to seek them out. In a sense though,

the Magnie stereotype simply represents generally accepted Shetland values acted out with

consistency. A great many of my contributors possess the same conceptions of what it means

to be a Shetlander as does the archetypal Magnie; it is just that most people do not live their

lives by the code. Many of my talks with rural Shetlanders contain more or less subdued

complaints about the number of foreigners living in their neighbourhoods. In almost all cases,

these undesirable foreigners are English or Scottish; perhaps due political correctness, none of

my contributors complain about Shetland’s small but growing Eastern European population.

Xenophobia – particularly, anti-Scottishness – is very evident behind closed doors.

It would be easy to criticise this as closed mindedness, yet such reactions need to be seen

in their broader cultural-historical context, in the context of the local identity concept that

developed throughout the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. As Chapter 2 of this thesis

showed, the harnessing of history for Shetland nation building began from the outside, with

Scottish romanticists – most influentially, Sir Walter Scott – placing a Norse identity on the

Shetland public. In the beginning, this identity, with its basis in distant historical events, was a

poor reflection of the state of affairs on the ground. Though Scott himself possessed too

varied of tastes to promote Norse identity to the exclusion of other ethnic identities, many of

his compatriots saw Shetland as a Scotland par exemplar, as a Norse Scotland untainted by

weaker English and Celtic ethnic strands. In the second half of the nineteenth century though,

active attempts were being made within Shetland to take control of the local historical

narrative, particularly at the expense of the Scots. Considering the mainland British academic

roots of Shetland Norse romanticism, it was a treacherous turn indeed that resulted in

Shetland authors labelling Lowland Scots as Celts.

The Shetland identity concept reached something akin to its present state in the Saxbyean

narrative of conquest, which began with the heroic Vikings taming the wild land and driving

the savage indigenes into the hills. For centuries, these Norsemen lived lives that mingled

material contentment with great passion, with conquest of the men from the isles to the south.

Yet the time would come when the Norse too would be conquered, not by vigorous strength

of arms but by Scottish trickery that replaced the old udal law with a corrupt feudal system.

Saxby lived to see the tide turning, to see the impoverished land of her youth gain strength,

not only economically but also artistically. What she could not have imagined was just how

far Shetland would come: the riches of North Sea oil truly made Shetlanders their own

masters. But the narrative is not yet over. The old cycle is unbroken, and as far as local

identity is concerned, the suffering of the Shetlanders and the grasping of the Scots continues

still, though the battleground may be new. Shetland has never gotten more than a fraction of

the benefits brought to Britain as a whole by Shetland’s oil. The worst is that the Scots want

Shetland’s oil for themselves, want to use Shetland’s oil to buy their independence from

England.

This is, perhaps, stating things too dramatically. But it is a narrative, and moreover, it is

precisely the sort of narrative that calls for drama: it is the narrative of a nation. ‘Alien to Celt

or Saxon’, Saxby proclaimed in 1888, making a vital distinction between not only Shetlanders

and the antagonistic Scots but between Shetlanders and the more hospitable English as well.

As historians or folklorists or anthropologists, we may well find these issues interesting. In

Chapter 5 of this thesis, however, we will see that understanding of local identity possesses

value for more than just relatively idle academic pursuits. Such understanding is also valuable

for those concerned with policy making, in this case, for politically and economically

motivated initiatives in place brand, tourism, and heritage development.

Chapter 5

Shetland Place Branding, Tourism, and Heritage Development

5.1: The Roles of Tourism and Place Brands in Island Communities Before proceeding to a discussion of how tourism and tourism marketing take place in

Shetland, it is necessary to look briefly at Shetland’s basic tourism statistics.

In 2006, Shetland had 104,241 visitors in total, including an estimated 24,744 individuals

on holiday, excluding single-day cruise ship visitors.196

Officially, 2007 recorded 18,462 such

cruise ship passengers though it must be kept in mind that many of these individuals do not

actually leave the boat itself when it is docked in Lerwick Harbour. These are fairly large

visitor figures for a community of only 22,000, but they are not sufficiently large to make

Shetland a tourist economy: in 2006, tourism contributed an estimated £12 million to

Shetland’s economy, which may be compared with £225.7 million from combined fisheries

output.197

The average visitor (including tourists, business visitors, and people visiting friends or

family) spends £255 within Shetland, spread out over the price of accommodation, dining, car

hire, admission prices, shopping, etc. (AB Associates, p. 46). As for holiday visitors, they

spend on average £294 in Shetland over their course of their trip. This expenditure is broken

down in Figure 1:

Product Avg. Holiday Visitor Spend per Trip (£)

Avg. Holiday Visitor Spend per Day (£)

Accommodation (incl. food & drink provided)

79 16.80

Travel Costs within Shetland 31 6.60

Food and Drink 48 10.21

Tours/Package Trips 86198

Tourist Shopping 30 6.38

Entertainment and Recreation 12 2.55

Other Shopping 6 1.27

Miscellaneous Items 2 0.43

Total Expenditure in Shetland 294 62.55

Figure 1: Average Expenditure per Holiday per Trip to Shetland, 2006 (Adapted from AB Associates, 49).

£294 does not sound like much, but it is difficult to compare statistics with other

destinations internationally, both because of differing research methodologies and because

exchange rates and local prices skew analysis. Nevertheless, we may profitably consider

Orkney, which recorded an average visitor spend within Orkney of £209.40 per visitor in

2004/2005, compared with Shetland’s £255.199

Since the average Shetland visitor spends 5.8

nights in Shetland and the average Orkney visitor spends 5.3 nights in Orkney, this amounts

to an average daily spend of £44 per night in Shetland and £39.5 in Orkney (AB Associates,

p. 46). The average Shetland holiday visitor stays in the islands for 4.7 nights, resulting in a

daily expenditure in Shetland of £62.55. Nevertheless, in 2004/2005, Orkney received

127,200 non-cruise/non-yacht visitors compared with Shetland’s 59,924 a year later, meaning

that Orkney’s visitor expenditure as a whole is far greater than that of Shetland.200

difference is even more marked when it comes to holiday visitors since Shetland possesses a

much higher percentage of business visitors: in 2004/2005, Orkney had 83,100 holiday

visitors compared with Shetland’s 22,099 (AB Associates, p. 20).

It easy to look at tourism simply in economic terms, yet culture and economy are mutually

dependent. For example, the imposition of the truck system in Shetland led to local men

undertaking da haaf fishing, the romance of which – with its images of sturdy, stoic sailors –

has reinforced the Norse romantic image of Viking seafarers. This has meant that, over a

century after the arduous truck system’s demise, the fishing profession still holds some

lingering romance locally, despite its now being worked in completely different

circumstances (for example, on large, modern trawlers instead of line fishing in small, open

boats). Such an interrelationship is played out both in the private and public spheres. To

continue with the Shetland fisheries example, the decline of the North Atlantic fishery in

general resulted in a cultural crisis for Shetland, as it did for many other communities with

fishing traditions, both elsewhere in the British Isles and, to take an extreme example, in

Newfoundland (Baum et al., p. 224). North Sea oil, however, provided something of a way

out for Shetlanders, not just because there was a new income source for the community but

because it meant the availability of new sorts of ocean-related jobs – on oil platforms, in

supply boats, in life boats, etc. – that could, with some adjustment, fit into the preexisting

identity concept. The same can be said for the even more recent arrival of aquaculture in

Shetland.

Culturally guided reasoning is not the preserve of private individuals however. Lindström

(p. 110) argues that the Modern period saw a fundamental shift in how culture and economy

were viewed and used in governance:

The division of labour described by Adam Smith [...] created an increasingly evident need for a carefully considered and formalised coordination of economy and culture. Unlike pre-industrial society that knew nonseparation between culture and economy, the modern nation state that emerged by the nineteenth century needed to distinguish sharply between economics, that provided for material needs, and culture for linguistic, ideological and intellectual modes of expression (Williams, 1976). Both became essential objects of state power in an emerging industrial society in need of overall economic-cultural control of its citizens. By means of uniform rules, linguistic regimentation and a ‘national’ production of ideology, the state systematically strived to adapt the economic activities and cultural competencies of its citizens to make them capable of mutual cooperation (Gellner, 1983). In the final analysis, all other forms of state power depend on this. One simply cannot fashion a well functioning army, police and judiciary without the stable foundation provided by a territorially well integrated economy and culture. This interrelation is evident in practice. The SIC’s recent fraught decision on supporting

local crofters by further subsidising the unprofitable Shetland Livestock Marketing Group201

shows how certain economic activities can be propped up by the public sector (as has also

been the case with the fishing industry locally) because of their traditionality, their perceived

essentiality to local identity. This is, as we shall see, evident in the field of heritage

development as well. The historical processes described in Chapters 2 and 3 have resulted in

Shetland’s local government being under community pressure to promote Norse rather than

pre-Norse heritage.

A jurisdiction’s government is – depending on the degrees of local democracy,

transparency, and accountability – more or less guided by the opinions present among

members of the population it is intended to serve. Thus, nationalism moves from the bottom

up, from everyday citizens to politicians and then on to civil servants responsible for

implementing nationalist policy. Many politicians and civil servants are, of course, locals

themselves. The process works in the other direction as well, for politicians and civil servants

may not only differ from one another regarding their conceptions of the actual and ideal

identity of the nation; they may, more broadly, possess opinions and identity concepts

divergent from those of the public at large. These are the dynamics that the remainder of this

thesis will discuss.

Increasing attention has been paid to the extent to which nation building drives government

initiatives. As Ashworth, Graham, and Tunbridge (pp. 94–95) write:

Nationalism as a political ideology depends upon the creation and widespread acceptance of that imagined entity, the nation. There is an intimate historical relationship between concern for the past as expressed through heritage and the goal of national legitimation. An instrument of this is the deliberate use of the academic discipline of history in the shaping of a convincing, widely accepted and self-justifying national historical narrative. […]

In theory, at least, such a national history should trace the discernible unbroken path of the clearly defined nation through time from a selected beginning (‘the birth of a nation’) to now. This describes and accounts for the formation of the character of the unique people and their relation to territory and neighbours […]. Three ingredients are generally essential – or at least widespread – as determinants of the effectiveness of such narratives. These are: a thesis of progress, a ‘Golden Age’ and a foundation struggle mythology.

How does Shetland fit into this scheme? Saxby was the first to write in any great emotional

depth about ‘the birth of the nation’, the conquest of the wild natives and the settlement era

itself. Writers like Hibbert (p. 185) had already established the Golden Age of Viking rule,

with democracy enshrined by udal law. The ‘thesis of progress’, however, is unlikely to

appear until/unless Shetland finds itself some sort of internationally recognised national

status.

Susan Pitchford emphasises the importance to nationalism of an ‘us versus them’

mentality:

A people’s historical memories are an important part of the national story (Ury 1996), and can be separated into two categories, which create a flattering comparison between the group and its antagonists. On the one hand, memories of hardship and ill-treatment, such as conquest, colonization, slavery, exploitation, and the like underscore the villainy of the opposition; these might be called “memories of injustice.” On the other hand, the group will have a set of “patriotic memories,” which include national heroes and heroic occasions, accomplishments in the arts, science, religion and other areas, one or more “golden ages,” features of the “national character,” and other traditions that emphasize their own nobility.

Shetland possesses this in spades, with the contrast between the villainous Scots and the noble

Vikings as well as their successors, the hardy, canny Shetlanders. We should note, of course,

that this narrative is in place even though the Scots could hardly be said to have taken over

from the Vikings; even the most generous of chronologies would not date the Viking Age past

the mid-thirteenth century, yet Scottish dominion over Shetland only began in earnest in the

late sixteenth century.

Shetland’s nation building can be seen in relation to nation building elsewhere. Although

the details differ from place to place, there is a pattern to local identification vis-à-vis larger

jurisdictions. As Barry Bartmann (‘Patterns of Localism’, pp. 42–43) writes:

In some cases, antipathy and suspicion of the dominant neighbouring island have even led to a preference for continued association with the metropolitan power. […] Sources of identity involve such elements as perceived discrimination, neglect or exploitation, a history of repression of domination (Premdas, 1990). Critical here is not so much the accuracy of the picture painted but the conviction of the solidary community viewing their relations with the centre and the outside world.

In the case of Shetland, historical arguments are used to justify a preference for control from

London to control from Edinburgh, hence the much-talked about possibility of Shetland

remaining in the UK in the event of Scottish independence. The distant but larger

jurisdictional superior is preferred to the smaller jurisdictional superior that, by virtue of its

heightened commonality with and interest in Shetland, poses more of a cultural risk:

Shetlanders are not afraid of Westminster trying to make them English, but they are very

much afraid of Holyrood trying to make them Scottish. This dynamic can be seen, for

example, in the dislike some of my contributors have for the Scottish government’s promotion

of Scots Gaelic. On the face of it, Gaelic language promotion appears to bode well for local

dialect promotion; however, some Shetlanders take it as a local affront, complaining, in the

context of BBC Scotland’s Gaelic-language programming, that ‘We never spoke Gaelic in

Shetland’ as though these programmes were developed for a Shetland viewership in

particular.

Nationalism today tends to operate under a different dynamic than it did in national

romanticism’s nineteenth-century European heyday. Bartmann (‘Patterns of Localism’, pp.

43–44) argues:

In recent years, pressures for recognition and autonomy, and even separatism and independence, have come from the most advantaged regions – Northern Italy, Slovenia, the Baltic states to name but a few examples. [...] Pascal Boniface has argued that in a post-Cold War world, where prosperity is a more powerful objective than power, it is the grievance of comparative advantage which is responsible for this recent outbreak of secessionist nationalisms (Boniface, 1998). Moreover, a sense of comparative advantage may be putative. Just as the anticipation of ‘Scottish’ North Sea oil fuelled the fortunes of

Scottish nationalism, so expectations of economic windfall can embolden claims for greater autonomy and even independence.

Shetlanders’ nineteenth-century complaint against Scotland was that the Scots had spent the

past 400 years keeping Shetland poor; the current complaint is that “Shetland’s oil” is being

used to prop up Celticist national ambitions.

The old antagonisms may no longer sufficient though, for Shetland’s, Scotland’s, and the

UK’s places in the world today are different than they were seventy years ago. As Ronald L.

Watts writes:

A notable trend affecting not only islands but all polities at the turn of the twenty-first century is the growing constraints upon the sovereignty of nation-states. Indeed, the concept of the sovereign nation-state itself has become regarded as increasingly obsolete. Accordingly, some scholars have pointed to the emergence of a fundamental paradigm shift from a world of nation-states to a world of constrained state sovereignty and increased inter-state linkages of a constitutionally confederal or federal character.

The growth of supranational jurisdictions has profoundly affected subnational-national

alignments, and in Shetland, the European Union has become nearly as despised of a

legislative body as the Scottish Parliament, despite there being no prevalent cultural-historical

arguments against cooperation with Europe as a whole. So, the local narrative has had to

adapt. Whereas Scottish policies that are viewed as harmful to Shetland are commonly

highlighted as a sign of anti-Shetland bias within the Scottish government, EU legislation

(such as the Common Fisheries Policy and regulations on home slaughter of livestock) that

are viewed as harmful to Shetland are often blamed on Scotland as well, the argument being

that Scotland is willing to sacrifice Shetland if such a course of action is to Scotland’s benefit

or necessary to Scotland’s preservation of political capital. It is the old parcel of rogues

argument: if you are powerless to do anything about the oppressor, you might as well blame

the people who delivered you over to the oppressor.

There may be insufficient realisation among the Shetland public that the evolving system

of jurisdictional capacities represents something more than just a Russian doll model of

power, with every jurisdiction possessing a particular degree less power than the jurisdiction

directly above it. Instead, there are reasons for the EU actually preferring to work with

localities rather than member states, as Bartmann (‘Patterns of Localism’, p. 49) explains:

Subsidiarity is the mantra for the resurgence of localism and particularly for the Europe of the Regions agenda. But what are the local authorities? Clearly for deeply committed European federalists, the power of subnational jurisdictions is a means of consolidating the Union at the expense of the pretensions of the nation state. In a view which is shared from Barcelona to Edinburgh, from Mariehamn to Visby, the presumptions of competence lie with the most local jurisdiction: for example, the Commune of Gotland against both Stockholm and Brussels.

While the expansion of EU power may place Shetland up against Scotland, the UK, and the

EU, the subsequent loss of jurisdictional capacity in some realms (for example, agriculture

and state aid) might be more than balanced out by Scotland’s and the UK’s corresponding

losses in these same and other realms. Ironically, the weakening of European nation-states –

very few of which are, of course, actual nation-states (Srebrnik, p. 58) – may presage the

strengthening of European nationalities.204

We are now in a situation in which, to quote

Baldacchino and Milne (‘Conclusion’, p. 240), ‘even municipalities are forging international

mergers and alliances in an increasingly porous and uncertain international environment no

longer exclusively confined to sovereign state actors’. Jurisdiction does not flow just one way.

Shetland’s local government understood this earlier than most. When North Sea oil was

discovered in the late 1960s, it was met with local ambivalence, balancing the expected

economic benefits of building an oil terminal in Shetland against concerns that incoming oil

workers and money would harm Shetland culture. There is no way of evaluating the extent to

which extent these latter fears were realised though the popular opinion is that oil

development was a mixed blessing for the islands. There is no doubt, in any case, that the

advantages materialised. Canny political manoeuvring on the part of local politicians and civil

servants secured for Shetland unparalleled jurisdictional capacity for what is otherwise an

ordinary Scottish municipality. These additional powers resulted in the SIC’s chief executive

Ian Clark negotiating substantial payments from the oil companies, profits that were deposited

in charitable trust funds.205

In theory, these trusts are independent charitable organisations, but

in practice, they act as SIC proxies, sidestepping national and EU regulations on public

funding. Even discounting the trusts, the SIC’s large role in the Shetland economy gives it

strategic clout: the SIC employs about 9.5% of the population, far exceeding council

employment rates elsewhere in Scotland, and the SIC produces approximately 36% of the

value of the Shetland economy.206

Although the SIC is outsized by British standards, island

communities in general tend to possess disproportionately large municipal governments.207

The Shetland municipality’s ability to negotiate with the oil companies was voted on in the

Parliament in Westminster and represented a de jure increase in jurisdictional capacity, but

equally important have been the many subtle expansions in de facto jurisdictional capacity.

Bartmann (‘In or Out’, p. 55) shows that ‘The affirmation of sub-national territorial identity

and jurisdictional competence can only induce the elaboration of para-diplomatic

relationships and thus reinforce the blurring of distinctions of status and privilege that were

once at the core of international diplomatic practice’. Just like conventional state-to-state

diplomacy, paradiplomacy has various goals and expressions. For Bartmann (‘In or Out’, p.

Para-diplomacy can best be understood as a field of international interaction apart from the conventional channels of international diplomacy. Within this field are many players with different objectives and, most important, different levels of sanction. They include sub-national jurisdictions which may pursue agendas that are broadly functional or highly political, that is, identity-reinforcing and even state-building in their objectives. Some [...] have narrowly defined para-diplomacy as essentially “political-functional contacts with foreign countries ... which are bound to have some political dimension” (Lubin, 2003/04, p. 22). In contrast to this perspective, proto-diplomacy “describes those international outreach activities of a non-central government like ... Québec that tries to graft some sort of strong autonomist or even sovereigntist message onto its economic, social and cultural links with foreign countries” (Lubin, 2003/04, p. 22). These distinctions are typically very difficult to dissect. Yet identity affirmation may not be a stepping-stone to secession.

In a world in which sovereignty is intangible and there are numerous sanctioned routes to

jurisdictional capacity that do not involve burning all bridges, secession loses some of its

appeal. In Shetland, the essentially romantic identity construct calls out for independence, but

paradiplomatic experience in the post-oil era contradicts it.

Without the formal mechanisms of sovereignty, subnational jurisdictions like Shetland and

even small states, which possess de jure jurisdictional capacity but lack the international

influence with which to exercise their jurisdiction effectively, are often pressed to flex their

capacity by indirect means, using whatever effective institutions are at their disposal. One

such paradiplomatic lever is the subnational tourism authority. Such tourism bodies – like

other trade bodies – may gain international sanction precisely because their ostensibly

functional nature makes them non-threatening. However, as Bartmann (‘In or Out’, p. 56)

states:

Para-diplomatic missions may be simple and understated, a government mission of non-diplomatic status with an ad hoc and general mandate of representation and information gathering. This may be an office to promote tourism or trade initiatives. Similarly, non-sovereign jurisdictions may be the recipients of such para-diplomatic missions and even of consular offices. Para-diplomatic missions may even stretch the cosmetic features of the mission to simulate full diplomatic status, even though the actual accreditation falls well short of legal recognition, typical of the activity which Martin Lubin terms ‘proto-diplomacy’.

Because most sub-national para-diplomatic missions are in functional areas of representation, they are frequently viewed as benign by the metropolitan centre. Nonetheless, benign or not, they do allow a non-sovereign jurisdiction to reach out beyond and around the metropolitan centre to engage in independent exchanges with the outside world. For subnational jurisdictions and states that do not possess conventional sovereignty, the

functional activities carried out by tourism bodies offer a more or less exploited opportunity

for paradiplomatic political activity. Tourism promotion bodies have long been centrepieces

of paradiplomacy and place brand development in regions and states lacking other

jurisdictional levers. As Ioannides, Apostolopoulos, and Sonmez write:

Realizing the potential of tourism as an economic development tool and, especially in the case of Spain and Greece, as a means of achieving political legitimacy of dictatorial regimes, national and regional governments also played a significant role in stimulating tourism development on many islands. For instance, both Cyprus and Malta saw tourism as an important post-independence development strategy given their limited options for economic growth.

Political legitimacy and the rule of law are preconditions for many types of inward

investment, which is precisely why Britain’s crown dependencies have an attraction as “tax

havens” exceeding that of many other low-tax states.209

De facto jurisdictional capacity only

counts for so much since, in cases in which de jure capacity is either contested or extremely

low, it is precisely the rule of law that is lacking in attempts to distinguish the

state/region/locality from, in the best case, its metropolitan power and, in the worst case, legal

no-man’s lands in the developing world. Seen in this light, the challenges facing island

communities as far flung as subnational Shetland and de facto Turkish Republic of Northern

Cyprus may be more similar than they at first appear: the aim is to shape for external

consumption a national identity that can encourage inward investment vis-à-vis an

internationally recognised autonomous actor.

An example of Shetland’s use of tourism in this regard is the SIC’s successful effort to

create a devolved tourism authority. When the various Scottish regional tourism authorities

were consolidated into VisitScotland in 2006, the SIC, which held primary responsibility for

funding the preexisting Shetland Islands Tourism body, refused to go along with it, as

Stephen Simpson relates:

Until about two years ago when it was decided at Scottish parliament level that for efficiency, that these areas should become linked and joined up, and all of the benefits of centralisation and so on. Well, you can imagine the effect it had on the local people here. Local people here would not support a Scotland-wide tourism body because they said, ‘Well, naturally, you’re going to promote the centre. OK, the edges sometimes, but you’re never going to promote us. Or at least not anywhere near as effectively as we can promote ourselves’. So, prior to the merger, the local council here, who is responsible for part funding what we do, they said, ‘If you become known as VisitScotland, then we won’t fund you’. So, we had to retain the name VisitShetland in some form or another. So, what we’ve done here is unique.

This may appear to be a minor point, but local sentiment runs high:

Stephen Simpson: An absolutely clear example for us here is that the big, brown tourist signs, which represent tourist trails, things of interest to tourists, that the symbol, the symbol on each of these signs is the thistle. Adam Grydehøj: Aye, the VisitScotland symbol. Stephen Simpson: And I’m wearing a badge with the VisitScotland symbol, and it’s a thistle. You will notice that, almost without exception, they’ve been defaced. And there is no vandalism here in Shetland, but those signs have all been vandalised. And it’s obviously a political, a cultural thing.

There have been more recent developments along these lines as well, with the SIC moving to

further decrease VisitScotland’s influence over Shetland tourism development. One example

of this is the initiative by the Economic Development Unit at the SIC to set up a destination

marketing organisation.210

The SIC’s concerns that the setting up of such an organisation

might run counter to Scottish and EU legislation provides yet another indication of the extent

to which assertive subnational jurisdictions sometimes find it tempting to toy with even

apparently minor jurisdictional conflicts.

Over the past decade, there has been increasing realisation in Shetland that the trust funds,

paid for by the initial oil boom, will be unable to sustain local development in the long term.

This has led to a SIC-business consensus for a ‘need to rethink radically our approach to

economic development […] [so that] Shetland can continue to have a prosperous economic

future’.211

The Shetland Local Economic forum produced the ‘Shetland 2012’ economic

strategy document in 2002, aspiring ‘to set a course for economic development in Shetland’

over the following decade. ‘Shetland 2012’ identifies the Shetland brand’s significance for

developing an integrated strategy for promoting tourism and providing value added to the

islands’ primary and manufacturing sectors. Such holistic planning, it was believed, could

improve on Shetland’s hitherto-piecemeal marketing efforts.212

In line with these thoughts, in

2002, the SIC contracted the London- and Bahrain-based brand consultancy, Corporate Edge,

to work on developing Shetland’s place brand.

In their seminal National Image & Competitive Advantage, Jaffe and Nebenzahl describe

place branding thus:

All nations have respective images. By branding, attempts are made to mold, modify, or at least influence the shaping of these images. Nations need branding because image and reputation are becoming essential parts of their strategic equity (Han, 2001). As such, nation branding is no longer a choice but a necessity (de Vincente, 2004). And, there are those who believe that a nation’s reputation capital (as embodied in its brand) can influence consumer choice (O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy, 2000).

Furthermore, Jaffe and Nebenzahl (pp. 9–10) write:

The idea that countries have a “brand” or “image” is not new. Corporations have images (or identities), stores have images and so do individuals (especially actors and politicians). All of these entities are concerned about their identity and try to shape and improve it, if need be. A positive brand image is a valuable asset when interfacing with one’s audience or stakeholders. What is true for corporations, stores and individuals, is also true for nations, regions and even cities. […]

A locality’s “brand”, or image, as viewed by outsiders, is an outgrowth of its economic, political and educational systems, in short its culture. Therefore, how this image is formed, and what form it takes, should be of concern to government, industry and individual firms.

This leads into Simon Anholt’s theories on branding/public diplomacy, i.e., that branding is

distinct from marketing inasmuch as marketing attempts to sell what already exists whereas

branding attempts to influence the place in question with the aim of improving its brand and,

as a consequence, its marketability.214

Theoretically then, branding is a form of product

development though one that looks very much like marketing because the product in question

is so intangible that the brand development is most evident in marketing materials. In practice,

as we shall see in the case of Shetland, the lines between product development, branding, and

marketing are blurred.

That said, it is not only branding experts who are stressing the importance of place brands.

Part of the attraction to focus on place brands is that, ideally, their development offers a

holistic solution to a wide range of issues. In the context of cold water islands in Europe and

Eastern Canada, Shrimpton and Pollett note that:

The image and reputation of a state commonly reflect on the firms based there and therefore their ability to compete internationally. In the case of the project islands, the predominant images in the international markets are of modernity, honesty and independence. This provides a significant advantage to companies trying to compete in export markets.

Central to an understanding of place brands is the knowledge that, like a corporate brand, a

place brand is not just something you can develop once and then have done with. Many of the

cold water islands to which Shrimpton and Pollett refer – for example, Iceland and the Isle of

Man – have seen their brands evolve substantially over the past half century. In the case of

Iceland, its brand has undergone a steep decline just within the past two years, as the global

economic crisis has thrown the island state’s ‘modernity, honesty, and independence’ into

doubt. As noted above, brand development is most visibly expressed in marketing materials.

Considering the holistic nature of place branding, it is the tourism brochure – one of the most

holistic of marketing materials – that is often used as the primary carrier of the brand

message, even when the target market is not limited to tourists but includes potential investors

and immigrants. Of course, use of tourist brochures in this way – as phantom marketing for

other purposes – risks being inefficient or even harmful if the community in question does not

desire an increase in tourist trade.

Those responsible for island economic development planning are thus in something of a

quandary since both the negative and positive impacts of tourism development are not only

well-documented, but as Baum et al. (pp. 216–17) explain, are also magnified in island

communities:

The vagaries of both demand and supply characteristics in any dominant area of the economy appear to hit hardest in island destinations which do not have the ready capacity to generate alternative economic activities and where social support systems are relatively weak. At the same time, tourism does provide a number of side benefits to small islands which should not be overlooked, notably that it can justify infrastructure, services and facilities which the island population could not otherwise sustain.

An underappreciated benefit of certain types of tourism development (in this context,

upmarket tourism) is that branded tourism materials and subsequent tourist visits can, if

appropriately managed, gain much of their raison d’être precisely because of their difficult-

to-quantify influence in encouraging immigration and inward investment. To take the Isle of

Man and the Channel Islands as examples, the role of these locations’ tourism-promotion

materials in divesting potential investors and immigrants of negative “tax haven” associations

could potentially be enough to make the tourism marketing worthwhile even if such

marketing did not result in increased tourism revenues.216

For these reasons, when it comes to economic development, tourism cannot be considered

in isolation, simply as one particular industry in need of centralised promotion. Even laying

economics and jurisdictional capacity building aside, tourism means more than just tourists.

Tourism promotion is a symbolic act, and as Selwyn (p. 38) puts it, there is an ‘overlapping

nature of promotional and nationalistic rhetoric’. We shall discuss this in much greater detail

below.

So, place brands are important, and a place brand’s expression in tourism development

strategies is important. The questions remain, ‘What is a good place brand?’ and ‘How is such

a brand best expressed in tourism development?’ There is general theoretical agreement that a

place brand – being a set of conceptions that people have about a place – is in some way

related to conditions in the place itself. This does not mean that a place’s brand is an exact

replica of the place; such a thing is impossible since a brand is limited by the imperfect

knowledge of its holder. Thus, a particular place possesses numerous – actually, numberless –

brands. The division can be geographical: for instance, Sweden’s brand will be different in

Denmark, where people know quite a bit about Sweden, than it will be in the UK, where

Sweden is to a greater extent viewed as part of some larger Scandinavian conglomerate. The

division can also be social: package holiday destinations like Majorca will possess different

brands among young European adults and among elderly Europeans. A place brand represents

the information and values possessed by the brand’s holder, which is itself somehow based on

the reality on the ground.

There is not much one can realistically do about the values held by overseas consumers,

yet quite a lot can be done about the amount – and type – of information they possess

regarding the place in question: for example, a jurisdiction can print branded tourism

brochures; buy advertising time and space in the media; and plant press releases disguised as

impartial articles in newspapers.217

There are also long-term perspectives to consider, like

some island jurisdictions’ offer of financial incentives and other encouragements to those

considering filming portions of feature-length films or television programmes in their

islands.218

All-purpose tourism brochures are particularly interesting inasmuch as they aim to present

places to outsiders across a more or less targeted range of markets. Such brochures express

the way in which the tourism authorities – and in locations with more integrated governance,

the government as a whole – would like outsiders in general to view the place. How clearly

this message of the desired brand comes across, however, depends in large part on the quality

of the marketing work behind the brochure, again showing the dangers of making a theory-

based decision to consider branding without also considering marketing.

The case of island branding – as opposed to mainland community branding – is a special

one inasmuch as there is a preexisting generic island brand. Writing about cold water islands,

Baum et al. (pp. 215–16) recognise the importance of islandness to island brands, the way in

which the quality of being an island – possibly, of being accessible only by airplane or ferry –

is attractive to visitors. Many islands are generically seen by visitors as being ‘slower paced,

emphasising traditional, old fashioned values’. Additionally:

Islands, to tourists, also represent a finite geographical environment, one with defined and, frequently, relatively small delimiters which are easy to cope with both physically and in psychological terms as well. By contrast, regions or districts which are part of larger land masses have few natural boundaries and official political parameters may mean little to

those visiting. It is a perceived attraction, for visitors, to be able to gain an understanding of the totality of the destination they are visiting rather than engage with just a part of a much larger phenomenon. Islands offer the opportunity to do just that, both in physical environment terms and, more intangibly, in relation to an identifiably different culture and heritage.

There is, therefore, something particularly appealing about islands and island living to visitors which cannot be replicated on the mainland.

The generic island brand is in force for certain categories of islands without the brand

necessarily being promoted by anyone in particular or being particularly true to the situation

on the ground. For example, the island brand would have been present in the minds of most

people considering a visit to Shetland even before local authorities began a concerted attempt

at marketing Shetland as a tourism destination. Similarly, even some bustling, densely

populated islands can draw on the island brand when the need arises: Jersey’s and Guernsey’s

tourism promotion materials play off the island brand not only to attract tourists but also to

attract immigrants and investors, i.e., people who need to be associated with a location that

can provide high-quality financial services but who would also like a slow pace of life.

Special cases of urban/island brand composites aside, many island communities have

chosen to embrace a generic island brand more completely (Baum et al., p. 228). Related to

the concepts of broad or niche branding/marketing in practice, if not in theory, are the

exploitation and exploration strategies analysed by Michel Leseure (p. 478), with

‘exploitation’ being the copying of generic and transferable brand elements from other brands

and ‘exploration’ being the development of new and distinctive brand elements. Leseure

suggests that much of the reason why the island generic is applied by brand developers is that

its simplicity is seen as making up for its limitations:

Although the recourse to common island (e.g., scenery, beach, cruises) and nonisland brand elements (e.g., walks, culture, dining) is easy and may be successful in trying to capture a variety of customers in the short run, this may create a longer-term association of the island brand with an ordinary, mundane product. The tendency of islands to imitate the portfolio of offerings of their competitors increases this perception of island brands as being common. This risk can be worsened by the possibility of developing a negative brand perception when traditional brand features, copied from competitors, are exaggerated in the definition of the brand.

These risks are inherent in attribute analysis, the strategy of listing of all possible brand

attributes. In the more established fields of product marketing, this ‘something for everyone’

approach has been largely dismissed, and non-market leaders are encouraged to undertake

niche positioning rather than attempting to ‘cover all bets’.219

However, as Baldacchino

(‘Island Brands’) has noted, there is a tendency for the island generic to be accepted only in

part and to be supplemented with additional, sometimes incompatible, brand elements. The

result is an attribute analysis that extends beyond the island generic and into other realms,

most frequently involving cutting-edge attributes.

Many warm-water package holiday sites – for example, those in the Caribbean and

Mediterranean – possess a so-called three-S (sun, sea, and sand) generic brand, a ‘largely

undifferentiated mass tourism product’ (Ioannides, Apostolopoulos, and Sonmez, p. 12). José

Fernando Vera Rebollo (p. 51) argues that the maintenance of this generic is promoted by and

in the interest of package tour providers as opposed to host communities:

The rapid growth of mass tourism, particularly in the coastal areas of so many Mediterranean destinations has resulted in a highly standardized product displaying many of the characteristics of what some authors term a ‘Fordist’ phase of tourism development. This means that major tour operators located in northern countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom commonly determine the fortunes of the tourist industry on the Mediterranean islands. Because these tour operators ‘market holiday type rather than [specific] place[s]’ (Ioannides, 1998: 143) and since they employ a multi-locational strategy, they will not hesitate to pull out of certain destinations if they no longer prove profitable. Thus, these players find themselves in the driver’s seat when it comes to negotiating with local representatives of the travel industry, particularly hotel owners. Since there is relatively little variation in the tourist product of most Mediterranean islands, it is easy for these operators to substitute one destination with another, in response to changing consumer demands.

Recent years have seen a reaction against the three-S generic, with island regions and states

seeking to attract more upmarket tourists. In theory, such upmarket tourists spend more

money during their visits than do three-S tourists, thereby allowing the destinations to reduce

the number – and subsequently, the environmental and social impact – of tourists as a whole

without causing a net decrease in tourism revenue. This has been viewed partly as a matter of

branding, with stress placed on the sophistication and authenticity of tourists’ experiences

(Rebollo, p. 56 and Ioannides, Apostolopoulos, and Sonmez, p. 12).

The question is, if not three-S, then what? Rebollo (pp. 61–62) provides an answer: ‘For

Mediterranean islands to be able to enhance their competitive edge vis-à-vis rival destinations

there is a need to establish an appropriate combination of nature, sea, landscape, history, and

myth’. The key here may be the words ‘an appropriate combination’. Until recently,

movement away from the three-S generic seems to have been seen as an answer in itself, as

though any movement toward cultural and/or nature tourism were a movement toward

distinguishing the place from competing tourism products. There has been increasing

realisation though that it is not that simple: islands traditionally associated with package

tourism that have moved toward more upmarket brand identities have mostly tended to move

in the same direction. Thus, it has been noted that, far from creating brands of distinction,

Mediterranean brand development has resulted in brand coordinates that could well ‘apply

equally to any number of destination tourism brands, such as Croatia, or Cyprus, or

Catalina’.220

In other words, despite the fact that every island is unique and that subnational

and national authorities fully recognise the advantages to marketing uniqueness, this is not

reflected in their officially promoted brands.

Just as Mediterranean islands are trying to break free from the limiting three-S generic, the

cold water islands around Britain, Scandinavia, and Canada have been attempting to go

beyond certain associations inherent in the generic island brand discussed earlier. For such

islands, one problem is that some of the very island generic elements that attract visitors are

also liable to deter these same visitors if inordinately emphasised or not counterbalanced in

promotional materials. Upmarket tourists may want to experience a slow pace of life, but they

do not necessary want too slow a pace (for example, undeveloped internal transport

infrastructure); they may want old-fashioned values but not too old fashioned of values (for

example, religious conservativism); they may want isolation and the thrill of a plane or ferry

journey but not if the trip involved is too long and expensive (Baum et al., p. 216).

Furthermore, like Mediterranean islands, North Atlantic islands suffer from the fact that their

preexisting brands, while more or less suitable as the case may be for attracting visitors, seem

likely to obstruct progress in securing inward investment and attracting immigrants. This is

where places like Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man have it easy: the sort of investors and

immigrants for whom they are looking already associate these islands with financial know-

how; all that needs to be done, at least in theory, is to tap into the generic island brand to draw

them away from the big city on the basis of lifestyle choices.

Shetland, the Western Isles, Newfoundland, and so on could never get away with the kind

of market segmentation in which “tax havens” can engage, at least not unless they somehow

obtained the desire and capacity for setting up bespoke tax regimes. These islands must thus

approach non-tourist consumers who see the islands’ positive brand attributes in terms of

lifestyle alone even though a reputation for isolation and old-fashionedness is often

considered an impediment to attracting investors and developing high-tech industries. The

assumption in such cases has typically been that the island generic needs counterbalancing

from other visitor-, investor-, and immigrant-friendly attributes. This process is at work in

Prince Edward Island. There, the provincial government has attempted to have its cake and

eat it too by retaining some elements of the island generic (for instance, pristine nature) yet

also downplaying others (for instance, traditional lifestyles). The brand development in Prince

Edward Island has not limited itself to promoting tradition; it also promotes ‘cleverness’ and

technological advancement (Baldacchino, ‘Island Brands’).

Indeed, this branding strategy is so common among Canadian and European cold water

islands as to be nearly universal. Concurrent with the attempts of Mediterranean destinations

to diversify their tourism markets, cold water islands are heading toward greater product

uniformity, with the emergence of a new island generic. Instead of being based on the three

Ss, this new generic can be seen as what I have termed the three Fs (‘Fresh, Friendly, and

Futuristic’) (Grydehøj, ‘Branding’). When put into practice, such coordinates tend to result in

the core idea of ‘Island X is unique’.

This tendency is displayed in the many cold-water island tourism brochures bluntly

asserting a destination’s uniqueness. For example, consider the following excerpts from 2008

promotional booklets put out by Northern European tourist boards: VisitShetland’s primary

tourism booklet is entitled, Shetland: Get a World Away.221

This is comparable to the Isle of

Man’s Set Yourself Free booklet, which uses the word “unique” twice on its first page of text

(Department of Tourism and Leisure, 2008). Similarly, there is the booklet title, Bornholm- A

World of its Own: Denmark’s Only Rocky Island…, which spreads over its first two pages the

words ‘Everyone needs a bit of Bornholm’.222

This strategy is mirrored by Shetland’s ‘The

Wild Islands with a Warm Welcome: Something for Everyone’ and Jersey’s ‘Welcome to

Jersey: Something for Everyone’.223

The Orkney: Irresistible Islands booklet, meanwhile,

states much the same thing but ends all debate by claiming magical powers: ‘The Orkney

Islands are truly irresistible. [...] The 70 islands that make up our archipelago offer every kind

of enchantment’.224

Most striking, however, is the Outer Hebrides: Beautifully Different

booklet, which takes the “uniqueness” core idea to its logical extreme by using the word

“different” in every one of its section titles (‘Different Hospitality’, ‘Different Outlook’,

‘Different Legends’, ‘Different Cuisine’, ‘Different Atmosphere’, ‘Different Nature’,

‘Different Activities’, ‘Different Culture’, ‘Different Scenery’, ‘Different Traditions’,

‘Different Pursuits’, and ‘Different People’).225

It may not be quite so special to ‘get a world

away’ when there are so many little worlds out there.

The tendency for officially promoted place brands to emphasise modernity has been

recognised before, for example by Jaffe and Nebenzahl (p. 160):

Lack of unique concept can also share in the demise of past national branding campaigns. The German, Danish, British and Scottish campaigns reviewed above have all targeted at presenting their respective nations as being modern, innovative and technologically advanced. Intentionally or not, practically all emerging economies are equally positioned. To be successful in the present day highly competitive global village, it takes more to succeed than just tooting a slogan about being innovative.

The way in which many of these brands seek to use modernity as a counterpart to idyllicness

has, however, received less attention.

With this in mind, we can consider the place brand development carried out in Shetland

and how this has come into conflict with historiographically influenced identity concepts.

5.2: Development of the Shetland Brand An international place brand is a set of perceptions concerning a place. Brand development

aims to alter these perceptions, hopefully either improving them in a general sense or

improving them among specific, targeted segments of the international population. Thus,

theoretically, place branding has a dual focus on the product (the place) and the consumers

(tourists, investors, politicians, purchasers of goods made in the place, etc.). If the product is

not taken into account, then the resultant brand will be a complete work of fiction that will fail

to please eventual consumers. For example, branding Shetland as a tropical paradise replete

with casinos and theme hotels would disappoint visitors’ expectations. If consumers are not

taken into account, then one may reasonably ask what the purpose of the branding exercise is

at all.

In practice, neither of these two extremes exist. It is a matter of balancing the reality of the

product against the needs of the consumer. An excellent example of this is the way in which

the tourism authority of the de facto Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) handles

the Cyprus conflict in its primary English-language tourism brochure North Cyprus: Never

Ending Sunshine:

The Island has been occupied by a succession of peoples from Europe and Asia. In the 8th

century BC it was part of the Assyrian empire, then the Babylonian, Egyptian and Persian. In 58 BC the island was seized by the Romans. Richard the Lionheart settled on the island in 1191 during the third Crusade and, after selling it to the Knights Templar permitted Guy de Lusignan to buy the island. Cyprus remained in Lusignan possession until it was captured by the Venetians in 1489. From 1571 to 1878 the Island was ruled by the Ottomans until they leased its administration to Britain. Independence was granted in 1960, but after Greek Cypriot and Greek military coup in 1974, Turkey was forced to intervene to safe guard the interest of the Turkish Cypriots. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was subsequently proclaimed in 1983.

This heavily branded brochure sensitively places Cyprus’ current politico-cultural division in

the context of a history of settlement by various peoples (though, notably, not by Greeks).

Cyprus is being branded as heritage in Ronström’s sense: it belongs to everyone and thus to

no one in particular. This is a delicate balance between the desires of international consumers

(who may well possess positive ideas about Northern Cyprus and its people yet negative ideas

about the TRNC as a governmental entity) and the desires of the Turkish Cypriots themselves

(who would certainly question any tourism literature that delegitimised the TRNC). On an

even more subtle level, with the exception of the above reference to the TRNC as a state

actor, the brochure solely refers to the country as North Cyprus, likely in order to disassociate

the international conflict over the TRNC’s legitimacy from the attempt to promote the

geographical region as a place for tourism and investment.

How did Corporate Edge balance product and consumers in its Shetland brand

development work in 2003? Corporate Edge’s research focused heavily on communicating

with key informants from the local government and business community. As a result,

Corporate Edge’s June 2003 report to the SIC is awash with consumer-oriented sentiments.

The report states that informants and focus groups expressed ‘a strong feeling that Shetland

needs to reclaim its brand’— not quite what one would expect to hear from most Shetlanders.

Regardless, the consultants conclude that the key is:

to reinstate the Shetland brand for the 21st century. Externally it must persuade the world to

buy what Shetland offers. And internally it must inspire the people of Shetland to unify behind that offer and deliver its promise. [...] Shetland is in danger of being seen as a “pre-modern society”: simple, admirable but lost in a time warp.

The aim of the brand would be to position Shetland as ‘a small, clever country’ (Lodge, p.

5).228

Predictably, Corporate Edge’s fieldwork found that this positioning would face local

opposition, with informants having ‘considerable anxiety about the ability and willingness of

Shetlanders to deliver the quality promise’. The consultants assert, however, that Shetlanders

would work to fulfil the brand’s quality promise if the brand reflected ‘the islands’ character

in a way that is recognized and approved of by Shetlanders’. Corporate Edge identifies three

brand coordinates/key elements of Shetland’s character: Soul, Origins, and Fineness. It is then

noted that ‘these aspects of the spirit of the brand were strongly endorsed by the focus

groups[,] which gives confidence that the brand, if it reflects these elements, will be resonant

with Shetlanders’ (Lodge, pp. 5–6).

Corporate Edge, informed by the SIC, thus opted for the three-F model even though all

parties involved knew that this was an activist approach in the sense that not only was

Shetland in danger of being seen as a ‘pre-modern society’ externally but also as an anti-

modern society internally. The brand was understood as an ideal that the place and its

stakeholders should try to reflect, not as a reflection of the place and the community as they

already existed.

The tourism materials distributed by VisitShetland in 2008 exhibit a striking absence of

Viking imagery despite Vikings being the most significant cultural marker of Shetland for

both locals and non-islanders. Instead of Vikings, the 2008 brochure contains numerous

images of the landscape and pre-Norse archaeological sites. Mention of the Norse in the

brochure’s text is also cursory. We may note that, possibly influenced by this critique, the

2009 brochure features a small photograph of Up-Helly-Aa as well as expanded textual

treatment of the islands’ Norse period.

There are practical reasons, which we shall consider below, as to why it is difficult to

market Vikings in the same way that Shetland’s pre-Norse peoples can be marketed. This

does not, however, entirely explain the branding choices made by Corporate Edge. The

Corporate Edge report to the SIC hints that the consultants did not know much about

Shetland’s cultural environment. Indeed, Corporate Edge mentions that the proposed ‘brand

template is true to Shetland but not yet unique to it, much of it being generic to other small,

northern European communities, especially Orkney with whom Shetland shares many if not

most of its cultural and product characteristics’. The consultants thus recommend that

Shetland remain a step ahead of its competitors by ‘developing a fresh, new, distinctively

Shetland visual style’ before other islands grow savvy to the method (Lodge, 2003: 8).

Having given up on developing a Shetland brand that is both unique and marketable,

Corporate Edge recommends that a generic small, northern European brand be marketed

uniquely.

Parts 1 and 2 of this thesis aimed to show how historiography has influenced conceptions

of identity in Shetland. In light of what we found, we should be extremely cautious at

equating Orkney and Shetland as Corporate Edge does, for although Orkney is Shetland’s

closest historical analogue, the two communities possess different identities. Crucially,

whereas Shetlanders feel little connection with Shetland’s pre-Norse inhabitants, recent

research has shown that most Orcadians accept the pre-Norse peoples’ archaeology and

culture as part of their inheritance (Lange, p. 27). The SIC is aware of this yet is under the

impression that Orcadian appreciation of pre-Norse heritage is due to long-term internal

marketing and that Shetlanders could appreciate it too if it were promoted thoroughly enough

within the islands (Hamilton).

This idea is undermined by the divergent development of Orkney’s and Shetland’s local

identity concepts. Orkney’s literary golden age started in the early nineteenth century literary,

when many archaeologists still believed in the Picts’ Scandinavian origins. This

historiographic context in which Orcadian identity matured allowed for dual acceptance of

Norse and pre-Norse inheritance. George Barry’s 1805 History of the Orkney Islands (p. 79

and p. 93) presented Orkney with a form of Saxonist-influenced Pictish and Norse

romanticism, there are no signs that Orkney was influenced by MacRitchieism at an early

date, and Orkney has never had as forceful a voice for cultural independence as Saxby. Thus,

the tourism initiatives that work for Orcadians and those initiatives that Orcadians will

support are not necessarily transferable to Shetland.

A telling example of the relevance of this Orkney-Shetland distinction is Jarlshof. We saw

above that, in the early-nineteenth century, this site was nothing more than a ruined castle, a

piece of Early Modern Lowland Scottish inheritance that was reminiscent of, if anything,

oppression by the Stewart earls. Sir Walter Scott’s 1822 The Pirate recasts the site in a Norse

mould by attributing its construction to a Viking earl. The late-nineteenth century discovery

of subterranean prehistoric structures at Jarlshof changed the perceived nature of the site yet

again. Subsequent excavations unearthed Bronze Age, Iron Age, Pictish and Norse houses.

Though Jarlshof is a multiperiod site, it is its pre-Norse ruins that are the most visually

impressive and that have made the site known throughout the archaeological world.

Shetlanders today feel more Norse than they did when Scott was writing, but they no longer

view Jarlshof as an object of Norse inheritance. As far as Shetlanders are concerned, Jarlshof

has changed from being a Lowland Scottish site to a Viking site to a pre-Norse site. To

archaeologists, Jarlshof is all of these things. By the same token, Shetland’s other visually-

impressive pre-Norse sites (for instance, Mousa Broch) are complemented by

archaeologically-important but visually-unimpressive Norse sites (for instance, Viking Unst) .

In contrast to Orcadians, most Shetlanders really only accept Norse inheritance, which is

problematic for attempts to harness local feelings of inheritance for tourism promotion.

Unlike Orkney, which possesses impressive Norse sites (for example, St Magnus Cathedral

and the Brough of Birsay), Shetland possesses no Norse built inheritance that can compare for

tourism purposes even with the ruined church at Orphir in Orkney. Similarly, Shetland’s pre-

Norse archaeology cannot fulfil the same nation-building function as can Orkney’s Stenness,

Maeshowe, and Skara Brae. The markers of Norse cultural inheritance in Shetland, then, are

mostly intangible and involve a sense of cultural survivals from the Norse period. A variety of

aspects of local social and character traits – from good seamanship to taste in interior

decorating – are at times cited as such survivals. Oil may have made Shetland wealthy, but it

has also given Shetlanders the resources to promote traditional culture. The Viking-centred

traditional Shetland brand is precisely the backward-looking mindset that Corporate Edge

hoped its brand could replace. This sentiment is quite openly expressed in Corporate Edge’s

‘Shetland Brand Guide’, which discourages use of Norse imagery by focusing on

‘communicating the best of Shetland present and future’ and avoiding mention of the past.229

Up-Helly-Aa photographs are almost inherently off-message in this context. The SIC may

have employed Corporate Edge to develop a brand, but Corporate Edge saw its role as

producing a marketing strategy for the SIC’s internally-developed Shetland brand.

The Corporate Edge-developed three-F generic for Shetland manages to steer clear of a

number of aspects of Shetland identity that may not be particularly palatable to tourists,

investors, and immigrants. For example, as we saw above, feelings of Viking inheritance are

intimately linked with anti-Scottish sentiment, and indeed, anti-Scottish sentiment in Shetland

preceded not only Saxby but Shetland Norse romanticism in general. As a community that

still in numerous ways considers itself colonised by a power that is at best self-interested and

at worst hostile, culturally conditioned xenophobia is prevalent in Shetland behind closed

doors. The SIC is aware of this and has researched the effects of negative publicity resulting

from public xenophobia at the 2005 Up-Helly-Aa.230

The official Shetland brand is less a

means of responding to misapprehensions about Shetland than it is a push by SIC modernisers

to alter Shetland identity from above, coordinating it with hypothesised overseas demand.

It is commonly understood that tourism promotion materials are efficient means of

marketing places to non-tourists. What has received less attention has been the extent to

which tourism promotion and the brand development that lies behind it are used to rebrand

the community in the minds of locals. Aimed though the Corporate Edge-developed brand is

at outsiders, it counts on local support, on stakeholders buying into the concept of a forward-

looking, sophisticated Shetland. It does not distinguish between marketing to outsiders and

directing the development of local identity. A similar effort took place in the 2005 rebranding

of Malta, which was officially announced with the following statement by the Malta Tourism

Authority:

The overall aim of the Internal Branding campaign is to ensure that eventually, the core values of the Malta brand are adopted by each and every citizen of these islands. We need to have 400,000 brand managers if we want to be truly ahead of our competitors. Experience shows that a strong brand is successfully developed from within, by adopting the core values of the brand into our lifestyles.

As in Shetland, this is a case of branding from above, of governments attempting to use brand

development as a kind of fait accomplis cultural reform instead of making genuine efforts to

spur dialogue about potentially negative aspects of local culture. This strategy may work with

corporate brands, but as Jaffe and Nebenzahl (p. 140) write, place brands are different:

A major difference between product branding and place branding is that the branding of the latter involves many stakeholders and interests (Therkelsen and Halkier, 2004) including national, regional and local authorities as well as business organizations and even individuals. These stakeholders include manufacturer organizations, tourist agencies both on national and municipal levels, economic sectors as diverse as high-tech and agriculture, and the public at large. Even citizens of a country have a stake in their national brand because it identifies a country’s values to the outside world. Integrating these different interests into a joint branding process and campaigning a unified message is the ultimate goal.

Additionally, while it is possible to fire off-message employees at a corporation, there is little

a municipal authority can do about off-message residents.

When confronted with the failure of Shetland’s brand development process, the relevant

authorities blame a host of issues. A common source of annoyance for place brand developers

is that the field’s corporate terminology alienates many stakeholders. Community members

may want to facilitate the community’s economic development, but they do not necessarily

want to feel as if the community itself is being sold, especially if they cannot influence how it

is being sold. These concerns often settle on brand logos as convenient bones of contention.

For instance, in Shetland, the Corporate Edge-developed logo was greeted with reactions

along the lines of ‘The SIC paid €160,000 for that?’ In such cases, the local authorities have

failed to clarify to the community the true extent of the place branding, that there is more to

place brand development than creation of a logo. However, if the brand coordinates and core

value do not, in the event, offer a true reflection of the community, then perhaps dislike for

the artificiality of logos is not so displaced after all.

Beyond the fact that unsuccessful branding from above fails to acquire vital stakeholder

engagement and support, its artificiality may be a distinct disadvantage in the global market

even if few consumers analyse brands so concretely as to note such artificiality. We saw

earlier that there is a strong tendency for island authorities seeking inward investment and

upmarket tourists and immigrants to turn to a three-F generic, in which the brand coordinates

can be said to be Fresh, Friendly, and Futuristic and the core idea to be Island X is unique.

Jaffe and Nebenzahl (p. 142) argue that:

A common brand aimed at different target markets that have varying demands may not be effective. For example, potential tourists are interested in leisure time activities, cultural pursuits and perhaps the exotic, while potential investors are interested in the economy, the infrastructure and political climate. Certainly, each target market has widely different needs.

This is correct to an extent but perhaps not to the extent that Jaffe and Nebenzahl believe.

Baldacchino’s (‘Island Brands’) research on the branding of Prince Edward Island calls

into question whether island authorities should really be willing to sacrifice the quaintness

and old fashionedness that form a part of the island generic:

If an island is already deeply wedded to an existing, iconic image typically connected to some locally available species, craft or material with high levels of local input (such as Fair Isle sweaters, Guernsey cows, Shetland ponies, Texel sheep, Barbados rum ...), how does it connect with a more contemporary, dynamic, technologically oriented symbolism without forfeiting its existing baggage, when the latter is likely to have persisting and long-term benefits in terms of reputation, customer loyalty and international recognition?

In other words, to the extent that some islands possess international recognition, they possess

it because of iconic old fashionedness. Abandoning this – or creating brand dissonance by

counterbalancing it with cutting-edge brand elements – sometimes means having to start over

in building brand awareness. Baldacchino’s work suggests that even immigrants working in

high-tech sectors are attracted by traditional quality of life issues. It may, then, be a mistake to

work to modernise island brands since this risks damaging the traditional brand imagery that

draws money, people, and ideas from the cities to rural areas.

Corporate Edge may have left the scene in 2003, but the SIC’s brand development

continues. The officially promoted Shetland brand is still an expression of the ideal of SIC

modernisers and not the ideal of the community in general or the reality on the ground.

Perhaps, Shetland will someday successfully position itself as a forward-looking community,

but if this happens, it will not be because the SIC has willed such a thing into existence with a

brand manual and style guide.

5.3: The Heritagisation of Shetland Capacity-flexing subnational jurisdictions can integrate tourism planning into wider economic

development planning to an extent not attainable by large states or subnational jurisdictions

with little power within their own borders. Baum et al. (pp. 219–20) write that:

Tourism policy, determined at a national or provincial level and integrated into the wider economic, social and political objectives of the island, is an important element in ensuring the effectiveness and sustainable growth of the sector. The research suggested that, while broadly-based policy statements and objectives were articulated with respect to the tourism sector, these tended to operate in isolation from the wider objectives of political economy within which they were located. Tourism is insufficiently recognized as a sector which links closely to the activities and, sometimes, competing demands of other sectors in the economy. Tourism administration, at the local and provincial/national level is frequently isolated from important and related areas of economic policy such as culture, parks, agriculture and industrial development.

Research on the issue of tourism and its role within the regional development of cold water regions revealed clear tensions between the institutions and the private sector involved with tourism development and marketing at a community level and those agencies with national or provincial level (Sigurjonsson, 2000). Even in peripheral locations such as Iceland, Newfoundland and Scotland, where sensitivity to the needs of remote communities might be reasonably expected, evidence of tension was found. Communities located away from the national or regional capital feel isolated and neglected in their efforts to develop and market tourism and may not always ‘buy into’ the national or provincial destination priorities or marketing images.

Such isolation is certainly not the case in Shetland, and indeed, in this age when it seems that

most unitary European island communities are pushing more or less explicitly designed

brands, it seems to be decreasing in general. In Scotland, Shetland led the way for Orkney and

the Hebrides in creating a distinctively local branch of VisitScotland, and the brands

forwarded by these and other tourism authorities show evidence of reaching beyond tourism,

reaching into areas of economic development that would be outside their remit – and most

likely, their interests – were it not for their integration into broader governance.

As noted above, the relative size of the public sector in Shetland gives the SIC and the

SIC-dominated trust funds an unusual capacity for guiding the local economy. The public

sector has somewhat shifted its focus in recent years away from using its accumulated oil

funds to improve infrastructure and construct what might be seen as ‘practical’ amenities, like

the raft of leisure centres and community halls built in the 1970s and 1980s. Part of this shift

is probably a result of there now being less need to build such structures since sufficient

numbers already exist. Additionally, some large-scale projects (most notably, the construction

of a fixed linked between Lerwick and the island of Bressay232

) and whole categories of

investment (for example, loans to various types of fisheries businesses233

) have stalled or

backfired disastrously on account of legal disputes, both internally and with the EU. With the

increasing focus on tourism revenue and stemming the tide of outward migration in the post-

oil era, attention has turned to impressively scaled cultural projects. The most substantial of

these have been carried out by the Shetland Amenity Trust, but at present, it is not truly

possible to differentiate between the political will of the trustees and that of SIC councillors

inasmuch as their memberships overlap substantially.234

2007 saw the opening of the new Shetland Museum & Archives (SMAA), at a then-cost of

£11.6 million, of which £4.9 million came from a Heritage Lottery Fund grant. This facility

represents a heavy investment for so small-sized a community (amounting to about £530 per

Shetland resident), and the fact that the project was at all politically feasible is a testament to

the immense interest that ordinary Shetlanders have in their community’s past. SMAA

features artefacts and displays from a variety of historical periods, and though the periods are

differentiated on a curatorial plane, from the point of the view of the visitor, the Early Modern

period blends rather seamlessly into the nineteenth century. Artefacts from both the pre-Norse

and Norse periods are also exhibited, and as is the case with Shetland’s archaeological sites

the former are considerably more impressive than the latter to the lay visitor. Although there

are prominent opponents to Norse romanticism with positions of authority at SMAA (like

Shetland’s archivist and foremost scholar Brian Smith), the non-emphasis of Shetland’s Norse

era has nothing to do with either their values or the Corporate Edge brand development.

Rather, this non-emphasis is driven by the knowledgeable staff’s desire to create a facility that

provides a historically defensible topical balance. That said, the very act of attempting to

inform Shetlanders as well as visitors about the archipelago’s pre-Norse society is something

of a political statement inasmuch as the local history professionals know the challenge they

are facing and seek to be true to history regardless.

It is interesting to consider SMAA in terms of Ronström’s inheritance model. The

museum’s pre-Norse section, filled as it is with treasures (including stone carvings and a

replica of the St Ninian’s Isle treasure), is very much heritage. In contrast, the Early Modern

to mid-nineteenth-century sections are tradition. Although the artefacts here are carefully

labelled and dated, the museum considers this 400 or 500 year-long period topically rather

than chronologically: there are sections on boats, on knitting, on music, on farm animals.

There is even a section on folk belief, which does not, in contrast to the rest of the museum,

go beyond a superficial – we might go as far as to say ahistoric – romantic treatment. The

paramount sentiment is one of continuity.

2007 also saw the Shetland Amenity Trust commit itself to building the Mareel cinema and

music venue, which will be located close to SMAA. This £12.1 million venture – for which

the SIC has allocated £5.2 million – is highly controversial on account of its cost. The SIC

councillors were evenly split in support and opposition to the project, and it took the deciding

vote of the convenor Sandy Cluness to move Mareel forward. The purpose-built cinema (with

accompanying bar sales) aspect of Mareel is being counted on to help the project pay for its

own operating costs in the long run. The 700-seat music venue, which will be the first

purpose-built music venue in the islands, is important as well and is seen by Mareel’s

supporters as an opportunity to boost and showcase Shetland’s music professionals, hence the

addition of on-site facilities for education and sound recording. Shetland’s musical inheritance

is, indeed, held with considerable pride by much of the population though as we shall see

below, Mareel is intended as something more than just a site for tradition.

Regarding SMAA and Mareel, their internal marketing is no doubt correct: the former was

constructed for the benefit of both Shetlanders and tourists and the latter primarily for

Shetland music professionals and Shetland consumers. However, the depth of the public purse

in Shetland permits the SIC to act on a strategic level closed to many similar local authorities.

What is striking about SMAA and Mareel is that they both represent investment in self-

consciously iconic structures. The shape of the SMAA building, which was designed by BDP,

was one of the elements used by Sumo Design to develop the Shetland Amenity Trust’s logo.

In the words of Sumo Design’s marketing materials:

The distinctive, angular shape of our identity was inspired by various aspects of Shetland life. In part, by the museum’s timber-clad Boat Hall. Its unusual sloping walls were conceived as abstract sails, echoing the sail shape of the old Shetland Herring Drifters. We were also fascinated by the stone brochs, a common feature of the Shetland landscape. Our identity partially mirrors these circular two-storey, dry stone, structures constructed and developed over the period between 600BC and 100 AD.

Sumo Design used the profile of SMAA’s Boat Hall to create a simple yet strikingly

monumental logo, which is used not only for the museum but for the Shetland Amenity Trust

and its constituent bodies as well. The Shetland Amenity Trust/SMAA brand is not, of course,

identical with that developed by Corporate Edge. The two brands are, however, somewhat

compatible, and it is worth noting that, for whatever reason, the SMAA building seems to be a

material expression of the Corporate Edge style guide, with its bold lines and colour scheme.

Prior to budget cuts, Mareel too was envisioned as something on an architecturally grand

scale, and even in its final design, it retains a sense of belonging to the official Shetland

brand.

Debate has been going on since 1991 concerning the construction of a new Anderson High

School in Lerwick. This issue is divisive inasmuch as current plans call for the new complex

to be built on an exposed clifftop site at the Knab in Lerwick, not far from the current

Anderson High School. Detractors protest that this site would very likely be more expensive

to build on than other competing sites, like one near Clickimin Loch, which would have the

advantage of being a neighbour to the Clickimin Leisure Centre. At stake though is the desire

of some within the SIC to create, again, something iconic. The current designs for the new

school building envision a five-storey structure with large, curving glass windows

overlooking – and overlooked by – the sea. An argument in favour of the Knab plan is that an

iconic school building will encourage immigration as visitors see the school and realise that

Shetland is a good place in which to raise children.236

A similar argument has been made for Mareel, that a cutting-edge cinema and music venue

will help retain young people in the islands and will show potential incomers that Shetland is

an exciting, dynamic place in which to live. Sue Wilson, a Mareel supporter, writes:

In many respects, the debate over Mareel can be seen as a microcosm of that which has always raged over public subsidy for the arts, in which the manifest exigencies of underfunded hospitals and schools are weighed against the less tangible or immediate benefits of cultural investment. Reflecting the current policy climate, Mareel’s promoters (chiefly the Shetland Arts Development Agency, which will run the venue) based their case primarily on an alternative bottom line, presenting the project as a crucial motor for developing Shetland’s creative industries sector – already estimated to be worth an annual £25 million - and thereby generating new sources of employment as traditional industries decline. Education was another strong suit, with many of Mareel’s facilities designed in conjunction with Shetland College, who plan to expand their range of music technology and media production courses, offering hands-on experience in a state-of-the-art working venue. Combined with the actual entertainment on offer, it’s hoped that this will persuade more young Shetlanders to remain in the islands, as well as attracting newcomers from outside.

The overall attitude of Shetland’s public sector reveals a complex economic development

strategy. SMAA, Mareel, and Anderson High School are being used as loss leaders, a

corporate strategy that the small size relative to population of most municipalities would be

unable to support. SMAA and Anderson High School represent directly unrecoverable

expenses since neither of these will ever pay their way. Even if Mareel ends up supporting

itself, there are no plans for its paying back its start-up capital, and in any case, the long-term

perspective on the facility’s sustainability represents a significant loss of liquidity. Instead, it

is hoped that such iconic structures and facilities will be made worthwhile by their indirect

benefits to the economy: SMAA exudes sophistication in its interior and exterior design;

Mareel will increase the association between Shetland and music, helping the arts sector

expand; and the new Anderson High School will show the emphasis Shetlanders place on

education. This kind of strategy would be impossible were it not for the oil funds’ facilitation

of a highly integrated local economy.

Corporate Edge’s brand was created to promote a general, consumable concept of Shetland

(Lodge, p. 13). This holistic strategy makes different elements of Shetland identity applicable

for cross-marketing so that, for example, even if a tourist to Shetland is never able to hear live

fiddle music, her knowledge of Shetland’s fiddle tradition provides value added to Shetland’s

other products, whether they be restaurants or archaeological sites, confectionary or places of

natural beauty. Even if public promotion of the Corporate Edge brand has petered out with the

exception of the tourist board, the brand philosophy is alive and well in the public sector. This

is unsurprising since Corporate Edge primarily provided a style guide and explication; the

core idea resided in the SIC from the start. Time will tell whether the SIC’s pursuit of value

added via investment in loss leaders was a wise decision, but Shetland’s experience will

certainly be instructive for future researchers.

Loss leaders, of course, need not be monumental (and therefore hugely expensive). The

Shetland Amenity Trust is also responsible for continuing excavation and interpretation at the

Old Scatness archaeology site. Like nearby Jarlshof, Old Scatness is a multi-period site. The

recentness of Old Scatness’ excavation has permitted the archaeology to be structured as

heritage from the start: replica pre-Norse houses stand alongside the ruins, facilitating generic

prehistoric roleplaying, in which visitors try their hands at reinvented Pictish crafts and listen

to stories from costumed employees. Jarlshof and Old Scatness operate as a single heritage

unit, with visitors viewing remains of the past at Jarlshof and experiencing this past at Old

Scatness. Following Ronström, the use of Jarlshof and Old Scatness shows heritage’s

universalising tendencies, for anyone can role-play at Old Scatness, regardless of inheritance.

The heritagisation of these sites is uncontested by tradition since Shetland’s Norse tradition

has little to say about pre-Norse sites at all. No genealogical connection is claimed, and the

pre-Norse peoples are decontextualised from their geography: Shetland was not Shetland

before the Norse arrived. Promoters of Shetland tradition thus have no qualms about

abandoning archaeology to heritage, to the world at large.

There are numerous examples of tradition in Shetland too. As we have seen, Mareel is an

example of tradition being harnessed for broader aims. SMAA, meanwhile, is something of a

hybrid: the uncontested pre-Norse sections are presented as heritage while the Early Modern

through mid-nineteenth-century sections are presented as tradition. Furthermore, Shetland

possesses a large number of local museums not attached to particularly significant sites but

mostly located in old, restored buildings. These are, without exception, tradition centres,

aimed at creating a sense of place.

In Chapter 5 so far, we have discussed various motivations for attracting tourists to islands,

among which are: direct infusion of money into the economy; expansion of de facto

jurisdictional capacity; attraction of skilled immigrants; attraction of inward investment; and

development of infrastructure and services, which in turn promotes immigration and helps

retain local young people. It is no feat of deductive reasoning to state that all of these

motivations are at work in Shetland. They have been present not only in 2002’s ‘Shetland

2012’ strategic planning document but also in more recent policy work. For example, in

August 2007, the Economic Development Unit produced ‘Heritage Tourism Investment

Programme: 2007–2012’, which was revised in 2008. This document/policy body makes clear

not only the wide breadth of the SIC’s aims for tourism but also the extent to which tourism

planning is integrated into local policy formulations in general:

In the context of this programme, heritage refers primarily to manned and unmanned archaeological, historic and natural heritage sites, museums and interpretive centres as a distinct tourism product[.] In particular the programme does not include Shetland’s creative industries eg visual arts, crafts, textiles, film, music and literature etc which are being developed as an economic sector and tourism sub product in their own right.

However, it is important to note that activities included in the Shetland Heritage Tourism Investment Programme (HTIP) will have strong links to other resources important for tourism, such as music and recreation. The Programme will also contribute to Shetland’s wider aims for developing culture and heritage, such as improving quality of life, physical regeneration, and attracting people to live and work in Shetland. [...]

The programme assumes that: • Shetland’s heritage is fundamental to the islands’ identity and culture. • Tourism is a developing industry in Shetland and heritage is its principal asset. • Shetland’s heritage is a major economic asset in a wider sense, since it is a tool for strengthening the islands’ reputation for distinctiveness and high quality among those who may wish to buy our products, move here or invest here. • Shetland’s heritage has the potential for substantial further development. • Local funding options particularly for large-scale developments are limited in the short term. • Public investment in heritage is one of the keys to building private sector confidence and willingness to invest. • As well as producing economic benefits, developing Shetland’s unique heritage assets will result in visible benefits for local residents, building confidence, and in the provision of educational opportunities.

The trouble with this is the contradiction inherent in both claiming these objects of

inheritance as unique assets ‘fundamental to the island’s identity and culture’ and using them

as heritage in Ronström’s sense, as archetypal, inclusive sites that can encourage investors

and immigrants. It is not that any one object is inherently either heritage or tradition; it is that

the type of inheritance that imbues the object with value will differ accordingly and provoke

different actions in dealing with the object. Thus, Jarlshof, heritage though it may be, could

easily be a traditional site in a parallel universe. It could even be both heritage and tradition

among different communities in the same universe, but it will not be both heritage and

tradition to the same individuals at the same time.

Due to the communal nature of tradition and the ease with which tradition sites can be

established, there is no inherent barrier to multiple, uncomplimentary traditions coexisting in

one region, which is not to say that all individuals within the competing traditions will be

pleased about such competition. Heritage is a different matter though, for it is by nature

monolithic and universal. This is the cause of the fundamental unsuitability of conflating

heritage and tradition management under the auspices of a ‘Shetland culture and heritage

brand’, which is mentioned numerous times in the HTIP document. Indeed, one of the

objectives of the HTIP is to ‘develop[,] reinforce and apply a strong brand identity for

Shetland’s Heritage Sector’.239

But whose inheritance objects are being discussed? Those of

the community (Norse tradition) or those of the world at large (pre-Norse archaeological

heritage and Early Modern Lowland Scottish manor houses)?

In fact, both tradition and heritage are being discussed, with focus on as procedurally

disparate initiatives as supporting local museums and creating ‘a world heritage class visitor

centre at old Scatness Broch. Protect a complex ancient site and present it to visitors in an

innovative and exciting way’.240

Since, however, the HTIP is centred on tourism promotion of

material inheritance, and since a brand – which must encompass Old Scatness, historic

lighthouses, Viking Unst, etc. – is at stake, it should be no surprise that the overarching

marketing, restorative, and interpretative process is one of heritage:

Adopting a coordinated and inclusive approach to developing Shetland’s heritage assets will build a sense of pride and confidence in the heritage sector and strengthen the sense of community ownership of our heritage and culture. It will enhance Shetland’s portfolio of visitor attractions, provide employment and contribute towards the local economy.

Inclusivity is the language of heritage. As Ronström has shown, inclusivity does not

complement community ownership; it complements the ownership of whoever wants to be an

owner. As we have seen, a sense of specifically community ownership is fundamental to

Shetland identity.

5.4: What Tourists Want and What Tourists Offer If the officially promoted Shetland brand is viewed as a means of improving Shetland’s

reputation within its current niche tourism market and playing to the archipelago’s strengths –

and hoped-for strengths – as far as investment and immigration are concerned, it is useful to

know what visitors actually think of Shetland. AB Associates’s 2006 visitor survey therefore

looked at the primary inspiration to visit for holiday visitors (that is, visitors who do not come

for business or in order to visit friends and relatives):

Primary Inspirations All Scottish Other UK Internat’l

1. Birds/Wildlife/Nature/Flora 17% 11% 19% 17%

2. Scenery/Landscape 10 9 7 13

3. Peace and Quiet, Remoteness 10 5 10 12

4. Love of Islands/Island Hopping 9 11 11 6

5. History, Archaeology, Vikings 6 5 8 6

6. Location/Furthest North 6 9 6 5

7. Sport 5 10 5 4

8. Adventure/Curiosity/Experience 5 4 5 5

9. In Transit/Travel Connections242

4 2 5 5

10. Historic Family Connection 4 3 4 5

11. Culture/Up-Helly-Aa/People 4 8 3 3

12. Part of Scotland/UK 3 3 3 3

13. Music, including Festivals 2 5 3 0

Figure 2: Holiday Visitors’ Primary Specific Inspirations for Visiting Shetland, 2006 (Adapted from AB Associates, p. 69).

As these statistics show, generic “island allure” and the closely related nature tourism

represent Shetland’s dominant attraction for holiday visitors, with the top four categories

alone accounting for 46% overall. In contrast, cultural tourism (including categories 5, 10, 11,

and 13 in the above list) accounts for just 16% overall. One difficulty here is that there is a

tendency to conflate nature tourism and cultural tourism, not because these are one and the

same but because there is little market segmentation between visitors to natural and cultural

attractions, who tend to be older and upmarket tourists.244

Evidently though, nature holds a

greater draw than does culture even within this relatively uniform group, at least as far as

Shetland is concerned.

These motivations for visiting Shetland find expression in 2007 site-visit statistics for

particular Shetland attractions although the lack of tourism infrastructure in general prevents

strict market segmentation of site exploitation; there are so few things to do as a tourist in

Shetland, that visitors may take whatever is available:

Attractions (Both Free and Paid) 2004 Visitors

2005 Visitors

2006 Visitors

2007 Visitors

Shetland Museum & Archives (Lerwick) 26,474 n/a n/a 55,142

RSPB Sumburgh Head Reserve (South Mainland) 30,000 30,000 30,000 29,000

Jarlshof (South Mainland) 15,320 13,641 15,589 12,216

Hoswick Visitor Centre (South Mainland) 9,336 6,826 8,264 8,587

Tangwick Haa Museum (Northmavine) 4,627 4,500 5,867 4,719

Old Scatness Broch (South Mainland) n/a 4,192 4,925 4,660

Croft House Museum (South Mainland) 5,102 3,558 4,215 4,214

Unst Heritage Centre (Unst) 2,724 2,812 3,392 3,692

Quendale Water Mill (South Mainland) 2,664 2,270 3,525 3,500

Unst Boat Haven (Unst) 2,650 2,672 2,752 3,366

Old Haa (Yell) 3,109 3,308 3,330 3,123

Muness Castle (Unst) 3,353 3,216 2,408 3,113

Burland Croft Trail (Trondra) 1,500 1,500 n/a 1,700

Hermaness Visitor Centre (Unst) 1,832 1,691 1,361 1,129

Bod of Gremista (Lerwick) 709 604 997 902

Figure 3: Shetland Attraction Visitor Numbers (Adapted from Economic Development Unit, Shetland in Statistics, p. 26).

Based on visitor numbers, archaeology seems to be a major tourist draw in Shetland even

though just 6% of contributors in Figure 2 stated that archaeology or history was their primary

motivation for visiting. For example, in 2007, Jarlshof garnered almost four times the number

of visitors of any other paid attraction, which is a sign both of Jarlshof’s ability to draw

tourists and the lack of competing paid attractions. The paid attraction with the second most

number of visitors was Old Scatness (4,660 visitors), which seems, to some extent, to be

“cannibalising”, or stealing, Jarlshof’s visitors. By far the most popular visitor statistics-

gathering attraction in Shetland is SMAA, which drew an estimated 55,142 visitors in 2007,

despite only opening in May of that year. It will be interesting to see how steep a drop in

numbers is recorded in coming years, after locals’ initial rush to see the new museum has

subsided. The RSPB Sumburgh Head Reserve – Shetland’s most easily accessible clifftop and

bird-watching site – received an estimated 29,000 visitors in 2007. Site-specific visitor

numbers include, of course, locals as well as tourists.

These figures are also interesting in that they show what anecdotal evidence heavily

suggests, that despite the archipelago’s considerable size, there is a congregation of visitor

numbers in South Mainland, with the six of the nine most-visited attractions (Sumburgh

Head, Jarlshof, Old Scatness, Hoswick Visitor Centre, Croft House Museum, and Quendale

Water Mill) located not far off the 18.5 km stretch of road between the Sandwick area and the

southernmost tip of Mainland. This is all the more impressive considering that a number of

these sites are in direct competition with one another. We have already noted that Old

Scatness is snatching visitors from Jarlshof, and there is likewise a cannibalistic relationship

between Hoswick Visitor Centre, the Croft House Museum, and Quendale Water Mill. In

these cases, the lack of infrastructure in general means that independent tourists and,

particularly, guided bus tour passengers frequently stop at one or more of these facilities for

coffee/tea and toilet breaks. In contrast, places like Tangwick Haa at Eshaness and the Old

Haa in Yell receive considerable numbers of visitors in part because, although there are many

reasons for tourists to enjoy the scenery of Eshaness and Yell, there are few facilities and

attractions there.

What is particularly interesting in considering these figures is the effect of cruise ship

passengers. Unfortunately, the 2005/06 visitor survey is somewhat faulty in this regard since

although it gathers statistics for cruise visitors, it does not attempt to discover what percentage

of passengers on cruise ships docking in Shetland actually disembark in Shetland. Therefore,

the official 2007 figures of 18,462 cruise visitors in 2007246

and 25,470 in 2005/06 (AB

Associates, p. 86) cannot be used to make calculations regarding total expenditure or site

exploitation. Nevertheless, the survey finds that in 2006, approximately 78% of cruise ship

visitors took a bus tour while in Shetland.247

This high figure accounts for the similarly high

proportion of cruise visitors who make it outside of Lerwick with, among other places, 45%

visiting Scalloway and 32% going to Jarlshof. Even if we took a conservative stance and

assumed that only, say, 20,000 cruise visitors were in Shetland in 2005/06 and that only 70%

of these took a bus tour, it would still mean that cruise visitors accounted for over a third of

the visitor numbers at Jarlshof that year. This means, among other things, that site visit

numbers cannot be seen as simple reflections of interest in tourism products, for many such

products are bundled with other product types in the form of bus tours. Of course, for people

who choose to take cruises in the North Atlantic, some interest in the North Atlantic island

generic is a factor, but it is important not to read too deeply into these figures in regard to the

success or otherwise of the Shetland brand.

We are left with a situation in which, in 2007, Shetland received 24,744 visitors on

holiday, only a minority of whom visited either of Shetland’s two key archaeological sites,

Jarlshof and Old Scatness, even though, strictly speaking, there is very little other

infrastructure outside of Lerwick for a tourist to exploit.248

Obviously, the above figures do

not show the exploitation of tourism products that do not collect visitor statistics. Thus, while

we can see the extent to which Sumburgh Head and Hermaness are visited, we are in the dark

concerning the majority of nature tourism attractions, i.e., beaches, cliffs, hills, and other

places past which one may drive or at which one may take a walk.

In considering the effect of visitors on the local economy, we have to break down these

visitors’ expenditures by type:

Type of Visitor Avg. Spend per Person (£)

Avg. Trip Length (Nights)

Avg. Spend per Day (£)

Holiday 294 4.7 62.55

Business 246 5.8 42.41

Friends/Relatives 196 7.6 25.79

Cruise Passenger 28.93 0 28.93

Cruise Crew 14.33 0 14.33

Yacht 147 8 18.44

Figure 4: Average Expenditure by Visitor Type, 2006 (Adapted from AB Associates, p. 116). This, in turn, can usefully be considered in light of total visitor and expenditure numbers:

Type of Visitor Number of Visitors

Avg. Spend per Person (£)

Total Spend (£) % Total Spend

Holiday 24,744 294 7,274,736 44

Business 22,099 246 5,436,354 33

Friends/Relatives 13,081 196 2,563,876 16

Cruise Passenger 25,470 28.93 736,847 4

Cruise Crew 17,565 14.33 251,706 2

Yacht 1,282 127 162,814 1

Total 104,241 158 16,426,334 100

Figure 5: Volume and Value of Tourism in Shetland, 2006 (Adapted from AB Associates, p. 117). Thus, even though cruise visitors are significant consumers of what we might consider

essentially Shetland products (Jarlshof, local museums, Sumburgh Head, etc.) and even

though their 2006 numbers exceeded those of holiday visitors, their local expenditure

amounted to only 4% of total visitor expenditures, and their daily expenditure was less than

half that of holiday visitors. This means that many of the distinct products that go into making

the overall Shetland tourism product may or may not draw visitors, but they certainly are not

consistent money makers.

One of Shetland’s difficulties in using tourism revenue to shore up the local economy is

that getting tourists to come is only half the battle; you also have to give them ways to spend

money. This is an issue for Orkney as well since its attractions are, as Corporate Edge notes,

very similar to those of Shetland, being primarily scenery and archaeology. It may be that

upmarket tourists in particular are attracted to scenery and archaeology but that does not

necessarily mean that they are bound to spend more money in their holiday destinations than

are lower-income tourists to three-S destinations, whose much-written of lack of interest in

heritage and authenticity may mean that they are more apt to spend on other things.

Discussing attempts by Malta and Cyprus to boost upmarket tourism, Ioannides and Holcomb

(p. 254) write:

Though both islands have attempted to diversify their product (e.g., through cultural tourism), it is unlikely that such programmes can attract enough quality tourists, especially ones willing to spend large sums of money. After all, many budget-minded tourists (e.g., backpackers) are often attracted to these islands for their historical/archaeological attractions. These cultural tourists can hardly be described as big spenders. Certain mass tourists, by contrast, may end up spending considerable sums on food, drinks and nightclubs.

Thus, the disposable income of the visitor is not necessarily in a direct relationship to the

amount of income disposed in the destination. In the case of Shetland, we can expect that the

high costs of travel to and from the archipelago – in 2006, an average of £189 per visitor (AB

Associates, p. 46) – deters non-upmarket visitors and represents a high proportion of overall

visitor expenditure. Of these travel expenditures, only a very small part actually enters the

Shetland economy, which is the case for many islands (Baum et al., p. 222).

More specifically, Ioannides and Holcomb (pp. 238–39) say of Malta that:

Five-star guests are more expensive to cater to and can have greater environmental and possibly social costs than two-star tourists. While they may spend more money per day, elite tourists also require more imports, resulting in a higher leakage of foreign exchange. Luxury tourists are also more expensive to attract, and may have greater detrimental effects on Maltese society than their more plebeian counterparts. The policy of upgrading the tourist ‘product’ (by, for example, investing in luxury hotels and other amenities, restoring and improving access to archaeological and historic sites, building golf courses) to attract upmarket guests assumes that the cultural/heritage tourist (a main niche market targeted by Malta) spends more than his/her sea/sun/sand counterpart. However, this assumption may not be correct. The policy confuses ‘high culture’ visitors with high spenders, whereas the two may not be synonymous. As a group, probably the most affluent visitors to Malta are the yacht owners using Malta as a port of call while sailing the Mediterranean. Although these individuals contribute revenue through port charges and purchases, they are highly unlikely to use luxury accommodation onshore.

Certainly, it is the case in Shetland that yacht visitors are low spenders, spending just

marginally more per day than cruise ship crew members and considerably less overall than

people visiting friends and relatives.

What is particularly interesting for us is Ioannides and Holcomb’s (pp. 235–36) comment

that upmarket tourists ‘may have greater detrimental effects on Maltese society than their

more plebeian counterparts’ yet that:

There is also the assumption among policy-makers, sometimes overtly expressed, that upmarket visitors offer other advantages. These tourists are, it is argued, more respectful of local culture and society and less disruptive than the ‘lager louts’ of Benidorm. These tourists supposedly appreciate high quality architecture, conserved nature, and preserved heritage. They are believed to generate more positive economic externalities and fewer negative social impacts than their downmarket, mass tourist brethren.

Because of its geographic location, Shetland will never be a three-S tourism destination,

making this discussion appear somewhat academic. Nevertheless, because the upmarket/mass

tourism dichotomy is so fundamental to much tourism rhetoric, it influences conceptions of

upmarket tourists even in locations in which ‘low brow’ tourists are rare. If upmarket tourists

are supposed to somehow contribute to Shetland in non-economic terms (for example, by

their appreciation of conserved objects and places), in whose interest is it – besides that of the

upmarket tourists themselves – that they contribute in such a way?

Selwyn (pp. 35–37) uses concrete examples to illustrate such concerns, describing the

disinheriting effect of favouring heritage over tradition at a Sardinian archaeological site and

in a Spanish national park. There is likewise, Selwyn adds, the problem of ‘urban facadism’,

which emphasises ‘external appearance above all else. Comparisons can be made, for

instance, with the recent case of the illegal killing of grey seal pups in Shetland. These

killings divided the community into camps arguing, on the one hand, that seal culls are

needed to help fishermen and fish farmers and, on the other hand, that seals should not be

killed because Shetland’s wildlife brings in tourist money. One reason why archaeological

sites in Shetland do not tend to be direct battlegrounds for tradition and heritage is that most

of them have been more or less recently discovered and unearthed: in contrast with, say, Ring

of Brodgar and Maeshowe in Orkney, there is no long history of local lore concerning

Jarlshof or Old Scatness.

Additionally, as Stephen Simpson, formerly of VisitShetland, comments in relation to the

Corporate Edge brand development, one of the beauties of Shetland is that it is remarkably

unpackaged for tourism:

So, the big, the main issue was, how on earth do you get all these strands, suggestions of quality and so on, how do you package that? And I clearly remember a focus group. They came up with several themes for their presentation. And they, they said, for example, ‘Shetland is a spiritual place. How do you feel about making that the main message? Shetland is a place where you can go, and you can rest your soul, that sort of idea’. And the image they used was a sort of star or moonlight or something. And…Well, it did nothing for me, I must say. [...] Fantastically difficult to find something which represents such a diverse… […] Well, my attitude at the time was that it was, maybe, a bit naïve. Business graduate, whatever that I am, maybe, I’m a bit naïve. But anyway. Shetland, the beauty of coming to a place like Shetland, clearly is not commercial. It’s not branding. You’re not going to come here and find that people are selling you things. It’s not in your face, and they package things for you. I mean, it’s notoriously unpackaged. And underpackaged. I mean, you’ve mentioned the lack of eating out places. So, why would you want to present it as though it was sort of like that? But I think, from this perspective, this is after three or four, maybe five years now that we’ve been running with this, I can sort of see the logic. I can see that it’s a, it’s a goal. It’s something to head towards. It’s like something that’ll be created from all the elements we’ve got.

Simpson highlights an important point here, and it can be taken further by our own

investigations of heritage and tradition in Shetland. It is not just a question of whether the

heritagisation of sites like Old Scatness overcome prior tradition; as we have seen, this is not

the case in Shetland, and archaeological heritagisation has gone uncontested. Rather, it is a

question of how the integration of various heritage elements into a pan-Shetland heritage

brand might work to the detriment or furtherance of tradition.

Developing infrastructure for tourism – including giving tourists ways in which to spend

money – not only necessitates substantial prior investment but may also run counter to both

the traditional and the officially promoted Shetland brands. People are attracted to Shetland

because it is remote, rugged, and wild, hence the popularity of sites like Sumburgh Head. A

profusion of souvenir shops, upscale restaurants, and paid attractions might be incompatible

with what tourists are actually seeking. And lest we forget, however lovely an impression that

Shetland makes on upmarket tourists, most such tourists will never return to the islands.

Eighty-one percent of Shetland’s 2006 holiday visitors had never been to Shetland before (AB

Associates, p. 33). As Ioannides and Holcomb (p. 245) explain:

When considering the upmarket tourist market, several points can be made. In the marketing world the best customer is the repeat customer because he or she requires less expensive marketing campaigns. Malta’s newspapers frequently have letters from people who have been to the islands twenty or thirty times. Upmarket tourists, by contrast, are much less likely to be repeaters. If they are ‘culture vultures’ they may enjoy the one or two weeks visiting Malta’s heritage and cultural attractions, but next year they will want to see something new in Greece, or Egypt, or Thailand. Similarly, if they are ‘trophy tourists,’ they are likely to want to ‘do’ a new destination next. Affluent travellers are influenced less by the costs of distance than are package tourists. Malta must compete with global destinations (many of them exotic) for five-star guests. Marketing to the affluent market is not only more expensive than seeking mass tourists but, with few repeaters, new customers must be continuously sought.

5.5: Brand Values

In their ongoing content analysis of VisitShetland promotional materials, Koivunen and

Hynes show that, on the basis of the photographs in tourism brochures, Shetland’s target

market seems to be young, upper-middle class, childless couples. Furthermore, the landscape

images that dominate the advertising are largely unpeopled, save for the tourists themselves.

Assuming a brand-conscious selection of images, the SIC and the community as a whole truly

are working at cross purposes. Not only has the official tourism promotion consistently

downplayed Shetland’s Norse elements, but it has played up cultural markers that, as Chapter

4 of this thesis showed, many Shetlanders consider either irrelevant or worrisome. Despite the

undeniable economic boost that tourism gives Shetland, the very act of trying to attract

tourists is of suspicious.

In Chapter 4.4, we noted that xenophobia is common among rural Shetlanders. It is useful

to state here that this xenophobia is more particular than a mere fear of outsiders. Many of my

contributors associate the coming of oil with increased crime in Shetland, but the implication

is that crime rose as wages rose, that it was a result of a broader cultural shift among

Shetlanders themselves and was not precisely a Scottish import. Rather, apprehension

regarding immigrants involves more subtle concerns about fitting in with Shetland cultural

norms and adapting to island life.

One common trope is that Scottish and English immigrants wish to shape Shetland in their

own image, a sentiment that Lange (p. 103) notes in Orkney as well:

As one man put it, some incomers

try to make us go a different way, and I don’t agree with that at all; I don’t mind people coming in and staying, but don’t tell us how to live, for we live far better than they ever did.

The emphasis is again placed on the cultural difference between the Orcadian and the outsider. Being loud, especially when insulting or trying to change Orkney, is presented as a strictly non-Orcadian trait, drawing a line between cultures. Interestingly, this man presents people as living in Orkney “better than they [outsiders] ever did,” demonstrating a deviation from the idea of egalitarianism. While it is not allowable to say that living south is better than living in Orkney, it is allowable to say living in Orkney is better than living south, an attitude reflected in my earlier informant’s discussion of Orkney’s “complacent self-worth.” In fact, the idea of Orkney being a better place to live than south is implicit in

many of the narratives of people who move to Orkney seeking to escape crime, pollution, noise, and other aspects of life in the urban, industrial south. Someone trying to change Orkney to make it more like south is seen as a threat.

Lange associates this with the Orcadian concept of avoidance of being “bigsy”, of attempting

to be better than others, which is akin to the Danish Janteloven. I cannot say that I noticed any

sentiment matching the Orcadian “bigsy” in Shetland. As far as locals are concerned, a few

prominent individuals and families are sometimes singled out for comment on account of

their dynamicism in local politics or the business world, but although such comment

frequently includes an element of ridicule, it more often than not also has a tinge of respect

for what is seen as an inborn Shetland canniness.

Immigrants to Shetland find themselves in something of a double bind, for not only might

they face criticism for getting involved in the community or, as we noted above in the context

of dialect, for trying to enter into the traditional sphere, they are also liable to be criticised for

not involving themselves in the community. Thus, I was told many times that immigrants

come to Shetland to run away from their problems and live in isolation, which is seen as

contrary to the strong community ethic and tradition of helping one’s neighbours.

This is not to overstate the extent to which immigrants are excluded from local society,

which would be impossible in any case since, throughout Shetland, incomers make up a large

percentage of the population. Rather, no one will be on perfect terms with all community

members, whether native or incomer, but while disagreements between natives will simply be

put down to individual personalities, when a native finds something dislikeable about an

incomer, the offending character traits are often explained in the context of the person’s

incomer status. It should be remembered, however, that I found these attitudes by far the most

prevalent in rural Shetland.

These anti-immigrant sentiments represent not only a difficulty for attempts to attract

immigrants to Shetland in general but also to the chosen means of doing so in particular. The

officially promoted brand focuses on ‘getting away from it all’ and achieves the three-F

generic by excluding the Shetland people in favour of the Shetland environment. This is a

recognition of the closed nature of Shetland identity and represents, on an official level, the

triumph of heritage over tradition. Similarly, ongoing projects to attract self-employed, work-

at-home immigrants by means of improving broadband internet access not only skirt the

fundamental issue of creating truly locally sustained jobs, they also risk further undermining

immigrants’ status as community members.

Even if the SIC stopped trying to create heritage and develop its brand in order to attract

immigrants and instead focused solely on promoting cultural and nature tourism, it would still

be acting against the local identity concept. The inclusive nature of heritage – the fact that it

belongs to everyone – allows casual visitors to be a part of it. If many Shetlanders fear

incomers who, they feel, want to turn Shetland into England or Scotland, it is because they

fear that such incomers might actually succeed, that since the coming of oil, they have

already partially succeeded. Whether such a mindset is justified is a value judgment that we

are not prepared to make. We can, however, ask whether, in light of this mindset, the

community benefits by inviting visitors to take part in local culture. Baum et al. (p. 221)

stress the attractiveness to tourists of participatory heritage events:

Special events, including those of a cultural nature, are an important development and promotional strategy at a community and island level in cold water destinations and the study clearly demonstrated the importance of both local and comparatively large events and festivals within the tourism calendar of the islands in the study. Interestingly, the study pointed to the highest value added events as those based on participation (sporting, cultural) rather than those which seek to attract visitors as passive spectators. Special events can be identified as a key component in a range of strategies which peripheral destinations can employ in order to counter the impact of high seasonal dependencies in the tourism sector (Hagen, 1997). The importance of a focused strategy for events tourism, such as in the Isle of Man, cannot be overemphasized and needs to include mechanisms to evaluate the impact of events and remove them from the sponsored list if necessary. This can be problematic because of the management and organization of many, especially community events by committed amateurs.

Baum et al. are concerned with promoting sustainable tourism, but how does this tie in with

promoting sustainable community life?

Participatory heritage is one end of the extreme, but the fact is that tourists will influence

local culture whether you invite them to or not. As Briguglio and Farrugia note of the Maltese

island of Gozo:

Tourism in particular has an important demonstration effect on the Gozitan culture, as tourists expose the Gozitan community to influences of foreign cultures. Business associated with evening entertainment, some of which is induced by tourism, has also had an important impact on the Gozitan culture, especially with regard to Gozitan youth, who frequent discos and night spots.

It is unlikely that tourists are going to cause a proliferation of discos in Lerwick. However, if

we return to the necessity of giving tourists opportunities to spend their money, we must

accept that these opportunities will be open to and frequented by locals as well, for barring a

massive increase in visitor numbers, it is unlikely that a purely tourism funded establishment

like a restaurant, bar, or park could operate on a commercial basis. At the risk of stating the

obvious, if it is deemed unnecessary for visitors to spend much money in Shetland, then one

must ask why Shetland would want visitors at all.

Of course, the SIC does want visitors to come, and it does want them to spend money.

Indeed, one of the stated benefits of the Mareel cinema and music venue is that it offers a

means of giving tourists ‘“wet weather” facilities’:

There is an opportunity to attract tourists, particularly ‘cultural tourists’, who can be assured of obtaining access to live Shetland music, and of enhancing their visit to Shetland with a range of cultural activities. Mareel can enhance the existing service to this sector, including the introduction of a new range of small niche music festivals at off-peak times.

It would be wrong to suggest that Shetland musicians would refuse to play for – and be paid

by – tourists. Nevertheless, the goal of creating ‘assured [...] access’ to such a traditional

element of local culture – in other words, the goal of turning tradition into heritage – brings

up the same cost-benefit analysis as occurs with the exploitation of indigenous arts and crafts

elsewhere in the world.250

The intervening decades have made it easy to find fault in Dean MacCannell’s 1970s

concept of staged authenticity.251

It is not enough, however, to struggle merely with the

question of whether commoditisation and heritage truly are the death of tradition. We must

also ask, ‘What is the life of tradition?’ If fiddle music, storytelling, and animal husbandry

were never full-time traditional occupations in Shetland, is it misguided to insist that they

become so today yet at the same time retain their traditional, internal orientation? Is the

idealised image of Shetland traditional life self-defeating since, just like the related romantic

vision of the Vikings, such a life never truly existed, or rather, it never existed in standards of

living that Shetlanders would find acceptable today? The staging of authenticity might risk

killing whatever authenticity exists backstage, but there is little to suggest that the decision

not to stage authenticity is any great preserver of tradition either.

Chapter 6

Conclusion

6.1: Summary

We began our investigation by asking how the historiography of Picts, Vikings, Scots, and

fairies influences economic development in Shetland today. In order to find the answer, we

used Chapter 2 to see how the conception of Shetland identity evolved from the Early Modern

period until the late-nineteenth century. At the start of Shetland’s post-Medieval recorded

history, the islands – as described by visitors and the local ruling class – were neither one

thing nor the other: people spoke a Scandinavian language as well as Scots, yet it was trade

with the Dutch that predominated. The Norn language had disappeared by the start of the

nineteenth century, and insofar as the documentary evidence grants us insight into the mindset

of the Shetland community in general, there is little to suggest that Shetlanders at that time

considered themselves particularly Scandinavian.

Walter Scott’s 1822 The Pirate melded local anti-Scottish sentiment with mainland British

Norse romanticism. Nevertheless, Norse romanticism was slow in spreading within Shetland

itself. Part of the difficulty might have been that early-nineteenth century scholars knew very

little about the Viking Age. Pinkerton’s theories of Germanic Picts continued to be of

significance, not just for early-nineteenth century writers like George Barry, Arthur

Edmondston, and Samuel Hibbert but also later in the 1800s, when Aryanist philology

supplanted the more legalist strains of nationalism. This mainland British scholarship was

known in Shetland, with figures such as Gilbert Goudie, Laurence Williamson of Gardie, and

Arthur Laurenson taking an active interest in antiquarianism and assisting overseas

researchers. It is by this means, in the late-nineteenth century, that Norse romanticism first

gained popularity in Shetland. Popularity, however, was no guarantee of sophistication, and

figures such as Arthur Laurenson struggled to make use of the burgeoning Shetland

nationalism for artistic and social ends.

The great innovator of Shetland romanticism was Jessie Saxby, who already in the 1880s

opposed Shetlanders to the Scots and the English and began presenting local folk belief in a

unified manner. As to this latter point, a survey of pre-nineteenth century writing regarding

Northern Isles folk belief shows that Orkney and Shetland supernatural traditions were just as

varied and as inconsistent as comparable traditions elsewhere in Europe. Beginning with

Hibbert in 1822, writers make a point of emphasising the essentially Scandinavian character

of Shetland belief and draw apparent distinctions between trows and other Shetland

supernatural beings (such as selkie-folk) on the one hand and Irish and mainland British

fairies on the other. Saxby would eventually adapt a form of David MacRitchie’s pygmy

theory for use in her nationalist narrative.

In Chapter 3, we considered the theories of David MacRitchie and their influence on

Shetland historiographic writing. MacRitchie took contemporary theories in racial

anthropology and used them to construct a historical narrative that was characterised by

anything but Aryan triumphalism. His historical Picts/Finns are intelligent, immensely strong,

and spectacularly widespread, their apparent decline coming as a result of incoming Latin

civilisation rather than Aryan genetics. MacRitchie’s theory was heavily debated for a number

of years, acquiring some high-profile proponents (such as Charles G. Leland, Joseph Jacobs,

and John Rhŷs) as well detractors (such as Alfred Nutt and Edwin Sidney Hartland). This

brief moment in the scholarly sun had a profound impact on the racialist scholarship of the

day. In parallel, however, the witchcraft pseudo-scholarship pioneered by Leland and

continued so successfully by Margaret Murray integrated MacRitchieism into its worldview.

MacRitchie’s Testimony of Tradition was known to at least some Shetlanders in the early

1890s. Robert Jamieson and, later, John Nicolson show familiarity with the theory. In her

1932 Shetland Traditional Lore, Saxby finally makes MacRitchieism a permanent feature of

Shetland writing about folk belief. She adapts the theory to fit a Shetland nationalist and

Norse romantic historical narrative, the same narrative in which the most prevalent form of

present-day Shetland identity is rooted. It is by dehumanising the Picts that Saxby finally

manages the complete romanticisation of the Vikings as a counterbalance to the pre-existing

demonisation of the Scots.

Chapter 4 looks at the extent to which Saxby’s narrative of conquest has retained its power

in Shetland today. Many Shetlanders still conceive of the Picts as pygmies, and Picts and

trows are popularly associated with one another. What is more, Picts, trows, and Vikings are

all linked in discussion, pointing to their roles as key markers of Shetland identity. Similarly,

the Vikings are often explicitly contrasted with the Scots, to the detriment of the latter.

Particularly in rural Shetland, anti-outside sentiment remains high, yet a general anti-

Scottishness can be noted throughout the islands among native Shetlanders.

In Chapter 5, we considered how this historiographically influenced local identity affects

the Shetland economy. Like many European island communities, Shetland has undergone an

official place branding process, which seeks to make the islands more attractive for tourism,

business, and incomers. This is problematic in that many Shetlanders do not support the more

active involvement of tourists and incomers in community life. Furthermore, the brand

elements identified for use in marketing the islands are not accurate reflections of Shetland

identity, and as such, the official Shetland brand struggles to gain adherents internally. On its

broadest level, the brand aims to boost Shetland’s de facto jurisdictional capacity by giving

the islands a more prominent place on the world stage. Branding and identity, however, are

connected with feelings of cultural inheritance, and whereas most Shetlanders are dedicated to

promoting tradition (i.e., exclusive, place-bound, community inheritance), the SIC’s

integrated branding policy forwards an inclusive, international heritage.

6.2: Nationality or Capacity?

Our investigation has brought us to some potentially surprising conclusions regarding the

interconnectedness of culture and economy. But what, practically speaking, can we do with

this knowledge?

Elsewhere, I have criticised VisitShetland for not promoting Up-Helly-Aa because I feel

that Up-Helly-Aa is important to Shetland identity (Grydehøj, ‘Branding’). However, the

promotion of Up-Helly-Aa would bring its own concerns about tourist intrusion into

community life. At the same time though, is it any more sensitive to local sentiment to

promote and officialise “community” events and interpretations that are themselves foreign to

local identity, like trying to make Old Scatness a centrepiece of Shetland culture? As Wai-

Teng Leong argues, presaging Ronström, ‘Culture that is created from above raises issues not

only of authenticity but also of its contradictions with lived traditions. These cracks in the

image of the culture of the state bring to light the tensions in hegemonic attempts to create a

popular national culture’.252

If it is inappropriate to promote local culture yet also

inappropriate to promote something else instead, where does it leave us?

The SIC is in bind. Is it possible to be true to the values of most community members

while also serving their best interests in terms of the economy? Should local identity be

promoted – or left unchallenged – internationally even if it might deter future economic

development? We have been considering these questions in the case of Shetland, but in

abstract, they pertain to governance everywhere, pertain to the extent to which elected and

unelected public sector employees should feel free to go against the will of the populations

they serve. It would be easy to take the moral high ground by unequivocally stating that

change should always come from below, yet this ignores the fact that, in the case of civil

servants, they quite often do know better than the population in general, which is precisely

why they were hired in the first place.

And yet best practice changes over time. It is quite uncertain whether the increasing

sophistication and formalisation of place branding has resulted in improved place brand

development. To the contrary, best practice has led to a remarkable uniformity of products.

By the same token, advances in heritage development have certainly resulted in some

stunning successes as far as heritage is concerned (for example, to follow Ronström,

Medieval Visby), but for some people, heritage may not be the answer at all, and the better

that heritage is developed, the worse it may be for tradition and community cohesiveness.

Similarly, increased tourism and immigration may not be everyone’s idea of a good thing.

Thus, expertise in itself – technocratic perfection – is not free from value judgments. There

are no easy answers to these issues.

The cost-benefit analysis is therefore complex, not just in terms of three-S tourism policy

but also upmarket tourism policy. If it were merely a question of how much tourist

expenditure is sufficient to make up for tourism promotion expenditure, then the calculation

would be simple. In communities like Shetland though, direct visitor spend is not the only

motivation for attracting tourists. The Corporate Edge-developed Shetland brand, the HTIP

programme, Mareel, the new Anderson High School, and various other projects and

programmes show the integrated manner in which the SIC is attempting to improve tourism,

immigration, investment, international reputation, and place-of-origin effect as well as alter

the community’s conception of Shetland identity. Counter to most Shetlanders’ sense of

unique identity though some of these initiatives may be, the promotion of pre-Norse heritage

and the downplaying of Norse tradition and anti-Scottish sentiment are not incompatible with

the pursuit of greater jurisdictional capacity. Rather, these modernising, universalising goals

are seen as ways of increasing Shetland’s economic independence and ensuring the

community’s continued ability to chart its own course.

In this globalised era of international governance and economics, subnational jurisdictions

may be better placed to preserve or enhance their jurisdictional capacity the more

internationally accessible – and acceptable – they are. It is ironic that brand development has

become a means for SIC modernisers to tamp down expressions of nationalism in Shetland’s

paradiplomatic activities (such as in tourism, heritage, and arts marketing) in order to free

Shetland from its jurisdictional constraints. Nationality without capacity would, from a policy

maker’s standpoint, be cold comfort indeed. As Baldacchino and Milne (‘Conclusion’, p. 237)

explain, the situation in which capacity-flexing subnational jurisdictions find themselves is a

delicate one:

It is paradoxical that globalization, while tying the world into larger, and more economically integrated markets, actually serves simultaneously to enhance and exacerbate localism. The consequence is not Marshall McLuhan’s famous ‘global village’, but rather ‘a globe of villages’, hooked closely into a world trading, networking and communication system, yet seeking to engage it on local terms. ‘Glocalization’ is the curious result, an inextricable and paradoxical mixture of the ‘local’ and ‘global’.

Of course, the paradoxical currents of globalization in another sense seek to erode jurisdiction and to make of sovereignty a much more tamed and weakened force. This face of globalization is essentially the agenda of the large, oligopolistic transnational corporations who seek to set up a so-called level playing field in standards and practices across the world economy, the better for making profits.

It is in light of this that we can consider the international industry-led rise of Mediterranean

mass tourism. Although three-S destinations like Rhodes and Majorca are now autonomous

players in the international market, entrance into this global market necessitates conformity to

the market’s requirements. Deviation from the three-S generic may be a good thing for

Rhodes or Majorca in the abstract, but it is not in the interests of the companies that purchase

these islands’ tourism products.

Similarly, the market forces that Baum et al. (p. 225) describe tend to guide cold water

tourism destinations toward sophisticated, differentiated brand development:

Interest in the product range which peripheral island destinations have to offer (scenery, activity, culture, peace and security) is growing within international tourism so that objectives to expand market share and volume are opportune within all seven destinations. However, growth aspirations must be balanced by recognition of a very competitive and demanding international marketplace so that it is rare for any one location to ‘sell itself’ without significant product and marketing investment. Thus, most of the product profile requires strategic investment and marketing commitment over a sustained period of time.

Though there may be no mass tourism in these communities save for cruise ship visits, even

the North Atlantic islands find themselves pushed toward a generic brand, toward the three-F

generic, toward something that consumers can easily recognise— and recognise as good.

Place brand uniformity can be beneficial to large airlines, chain stores, travel agents, and even

tourists themselves, all of whom can shop around for the best value for money. Yet it is the

nature of tourism authorities and the stakeholders they represent to seek monopolistic status,

to offer a unique product. The forces of the global market will always conflict with the forces

of the local market. As far as place branding is concerned, the result of this conflict has

tended to be an uneasy middle ground: most communities claim uniqueness but advertise and

seek to produce a reflection of the target markets’ desires.

Thus, Rebollo’s (pp. 61–62) suggestion that Mediterranean islands ‘establish an

appropriate combination of nature, sea, landscape, history, and myth’ may be correct enough,

yet it neglects the fact that history and myth are not directly saleable products. Every place

has a past and a history, but there is no guarantee that these things are of interest to anyone at

all. As Tunbridge and Ashworth (p. 26) make clear, place branding for cultural and nature

tourism – and for the sorts of investors and immigrants who might be attracted by cultural and

nature tourism products – deals in heritage in Ronström’s sense:

Products produced for sale on the international tourism market will, by the demand-led definition [...], be largely determined by that market. This has a myriad of practical implications. The successful tourism product is thus an interpretation of the local historical experience in so far as it can be related to, and incorporated in, the historical experience of the visitor. Thus a successful foreign heritage tourism industry is dependent less on the sale of the heritage of the destination country to visitors from the consumer country and more on the re-sale in a different guise of the consumers’ own heritage back in an unexpected context within the destination country. Some communities are lucky enough to possess a coincidence of tradition and heritage, as

is the case with Newfoundland’s local Viking tradition and international Viking heritage.

Orkney is similarly blessed with pre-Norse and Norse sites that serve as centrepieces of

tradition, heritage, and ancient lore. This does not mean that no dissonance results. If nothing

else, site interpretation in such contested milieus will tend to favour the heritage market (i.e.,

the essentially monopolising market, which is often also the best-funded market).

Additionally, as we saw above, the heritage-inspired act of conservation may run counter to

traditional site-use practices. The “packaging” of any community in any way causes

dissonance since not all aspects of community life are directly economic insofar as

community members are concerned. Nevertheless, perhaps contrary to logic, the degree of

dissonance between the overall brand message and local identity will be less in communities

in which there is contestation of inheritance than in communities in which there is not, simply

because the former implies some convergence of interests.

Cultural and nature place branding for external markets represents a creation of heritage,

and like all heritage, its sensitivity to tradition and to the identity that informs tradition is

paramount to its success in garnering community support and serving its stakeholders. A

situation in which a municipal government makes money for the community in a way counter

to that community’s values may not be a good means of serving stakeholders. If nationality

without capacity is cold comfort to policy makers, then capacity without nationality is hardly

a triumph for the nation.

The economic impacts of tourism – from direct expenditure to the results of future

investment, immigration, and retention of locals – may be greater than are sometimes

recognised, and so too are the cultural impacts of tourism. What is more, as this thesis has

argued, the interrelationship of culture and economy is not always evident at first glance. If so

apparently innocent a thing as nineteenth-century historiography of folk belief can result in

twenty-first century xenophobia and lack of appreciation for archaeological sites, then new

means of developing and testing place brand and heritage work may be called for.

Unfortunately, there can be no final analysis of the mutual influences of culture and economy.

They will keep combining and recombining over the lifetime of the community, just as

previous waves of invasion and immigration – of Picts, of Vikings, of Scots, of oil men, of

business school graduates – have had repercussions that are still being felt today.

1 W.Y. Evans-Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries [1911] (New York: Citadel, 1994).

2 David J. Hufford, The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural

Assault Traditions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982). 3 Bo Almqvist, Viking Ale, ed. by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne-Almqvist and Séamas Ó Catháin (Aberystwyth:

Boethius, 1991). 4 Callum G. Brown, Up-Helly-Aa: Custom, Culture and Community in Shetland (Manchester: Mandolin,

1998), pp. 31–39. 5 For example, Michael Herzfeld, Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern

Greece (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982); Michael Herzfeld, Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation, 2nd Edition (New York and Oxon: Routledge, 2005); and Michael Herzfeld, The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan

Mountain Village (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985). 6 J. E. Tunbridge and G. J. Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in

Conflict (Chichester: John Wilely, 1996), pp. 6–8.

7 Gwynn Jenkins, Contested Space: Cultural Heritage and Identity Reconstructions- Conservation

Strategies within a Developing Asian City (Zürich and Berlin: GmbH & Co. KG Wien and Dr. W. Hopf, 2008).

8 G. J. Ashworth, Brian Graham, and J. E. Tunbridge, Pluralising Pasts: Heritage, Identity and Place in

Multicultural Societies (London and Ann Arbor: Pluto, 2007), p. 4. 9 Owe Ronström, ‘A Different Land: Heritage Production in the island of Gotland’, Shima, 2, no. 2

(2008), 1–18 (pp. 4–6). 10

Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage (London and New York: Routledge, 2006) and Laurajane Smith and Emma Waterton, ‘The Envy of the World?: Intangible Heritage in England’, in Intangible Heritage, ed. by Laurajane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 289–302.

11 Adam Grydehøj, ‘Uninherited Heritage: Community Reaction to Heritage without Inheritors in

Shetland, Åland, and Svalbard’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 16, no 1 (2010), 77–89. 12

Be that as it may, we will refer to certain racial and ethnic groups by the labels used by the scholars under consideration. For example, the authors we quote most frequently refer to the Nordic region’s Sámi people as Lapps and Finns. Even though the former of these terms is now considered derogatory, and the latter is now quite misleading, today’s accepted denotations do not express the meanings placed on Lapps and Finns by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century philologists and anthropologists. Lapps and Finns are relics of historiography and not merely the Sámi under other names. The same goes for Gypsies, Eskimos, Ainos, Celts, Iberians, Ugrians, Turanians, Aryans and countless other peoples and pseudo-peoples that we shall have occasion to mention.

13 Nicos Peristianis, ‘Cypriot Nationalism, Dual Identity, and Politics’, in Divided Cyprus: Modernity,

History, and an Island in Conflict, ed. by Yiannis Papadakis, Nicos Peristianis, and Gisela Welz (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 100–20 (p. 100).

14 Henk Dekker, Darina Malová, and Sander Hoogendoorn, ‘Nationalism and Its Explanations’, Political

Psychology, vol. 24, no. 2 (2003), pp. 345–76 (pp. 345–46). 15

Luc Boeva, A Different Kind of Kinetics: Establishing a Network of Heritage and Research Institutions, for the (Historical) Study of National and Regional Movements in Europe (Brussels: Centre Maurits Coppieters, 2008), p. 11 and pp. 18–23.

16 Susan Pitchford, Identity Tourism: Imaging and Imagining the Nation, Tourism Social Science Series,

10 (Bingley: Emerald, 2008), p. 40. 17

José Itzigsohn and Matthias vom Hau, ‘Unfinished Imagined Communities: States, Social Movements and Nationalism in Latin America’, Theory and Society, vol. 35, no. 2 (2006), pp. 193–212 (p.194)

18 Colin Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World,

1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 19

Hugh Kearney, ‘Contested Ideas of Nationhood 1800-1995’, The Irish Review, no. 20 (1997), pp. 1–22. 20

Ole Wæver, ‘Identity, Communities and Foreign Policy: Discourse Analysis as Foreign Policy Theory’, in European Integration and National Identity: The Challenge of the Nordic States, ed. by Lene Hansen and Ole Wæver (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 20–49 (pp. 20–21).

21 Pertti Joenniemi, ‘Finland in the New Europe: A Herderian or Hegelian Project?’, in European

Integration and National Identity: The Challenge of the Nordic States, ed. by Lene Hansen and Ole Wæver (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 182–213.

22 Keith Battarbee, ‘The Forest Writes Back: The Ausbau of Finnish from Peasant Vernacular to

Modernity’, in Constructing Nations, Reconstructing Myth: Essays in Honour of T.A. Shippey, ed. by Andrew Wawn, Graham Walker, and John Walter, Making the Middle Ages, The Centre for Medieval Studies (University of Sydney), vol. 9 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 71–96 (p. 74)

23 Ulrika Wolf-Knuts, ‘The Island of the Finland-Swedes’ (9 May 2009), Paper presented at the Taking

Shetland out of the Box conference. 24

Bjarne Lindström, ‘Culture and Economic Development in Åland’, in Lessons from the Political Economy, ed. by Baldacchino and Milne (Houndmills: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 107–120 (p. 110–12).

25 For example, Byron J. Nordstrom, Scandinavia Since 1500 (Minneapolis and London: University of

Minnesota Press, 2000), p. ix and Birgit Sawyer and Peter Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reformation, circa 800–1500, The Nordic Series, vol. 17 (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), pp. ix–x.

26 David Lowenthal, The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (Cambridge et al.: Cambridge

University Press, 1997) and David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

27 Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism; Colin Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in

the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 (Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press, 2006); and

Colin Kidd, Subverting Scotland’s Past: Scottish Whig Historians and the Creation of an Anglo-Scottish Identity (Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

28 Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism, p. 56.

29 Colin Kidd, ‘Race, Empire, and the Limits of Nineteenth-Century Scottish Nationhood’, The Historical

Journal, vol. 46, no. 4 (2003), pp. 873–92 (pp. 874–75). 30

Stefan Thomas Hall, ‘James Macpherson’s Ossian: Forging Ancient Highland Identity for Scotland’, in Constructing Nations, Reconstructing Myth: Essays in Honour of T.A. Shippey, ed. by Andrew Wawn, Graham Walker, and John Walter, Making the Middle Ages, The Centre for Medieval Studies (University of Sydney), vol. 9 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 3–26 (p. 17).

31 Stefan Arvidsson, Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, trans. by Sonia

Wichmann (Chicago and London: University of Chicago, 2006). 32

Richard M. Dorson, ed., Peasant Customs and Savage Myths: Selections from the British Folklorists, 2 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968).

33 Andrew Wawn, The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in 19

th-Century Britain

(Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2000), p. 4. 34

Oscar J. Falnes, National Romanticism in Norway [1933] (New York: AMS Press, 1968). 35

Neil Kent, The Soul of the North: A Social, Architectural and Cultural History of the Nordic Countries, 1700–1940 (London: Reaktion, 2001).

36 Sven Tägil, ed., Ethnicity and Nation Building in the Nordic World (Carbondale and Edwardsville,

Southern Illinois University Press, 1995). 37

A. G. Groat, Thoughts on Orkney and Zetland, Their Antiquities and Capabilities of Improvement; with Hints towards the Formation of a Local Society for the Investigation and Promotion of These Objects; to Which are Annexed Extracts from Curious Manuscripts, Together with Useful Lists (Edinburgh: Neill, 1831), p. 8.

38 Anthony P. Cohen, Whalsay: Symbol, Segment and Boundary in a Shetland Island Community

(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), pp. 24–25. 39

Bronwen J. Cohen, Norse Imagery in Shetland: An Historical Study of Intellectuals and Their Use of the Past in the Construction of Shetland’s Identity, with Particular Reference to the Period 1800-1914 (University of Manchester PhD thesis, 1998), pp. 482–3.

40 Emma-Reetta Koivunen, ‘A Virtual Island? Tourism and the Internet in a Shetland Island Community’

(10 April 2007), Paper presented at the Association of Social Anthropologists conference. 41

Emma-Reetta Koivunen and Deirdre Hynes, ‘Sun, Sand, and Sweaters: A Visual Analysis of the Touristic Representations of Shetland’ (8 May 2009), Paper presented at the Taking Shetland out of the Box conference.

42 Atina Nihtinen, ‘Island Identities and Use of History: Shetland from a Comparative Nordic Perspective’

(9 May 2009), Paper presented at the Taking Shetland out of the Box conference. 43

Thomas Simchak (Lerwick: 15 April 2007), Digitally recorded interview with Adam Grydehøj. 44

Meghan C. Forsyth, ‘Reinventing ‘Springs’: Constructing Identity in the Fiddle Tradition of the Shetland Isles’, Shima, 1, no. 2 (2007), 49–58; Kathryn Jourdan, ‘The View from Somewhere: Coming to Know the ‘Other’ through the Indwelling of a Local Musical Tradition’ (8 May 2009), Paper presented at the Taking Shetland out of the Box conference; and Katarina Juvancic, ‘‘This is Shetland at Its Best’: Examining the Shetland Folk Festival’, (8 May 2009), Paper presented at the Taking Shetland out of the Box conference.

45 Godfrey Baldacchino, ‘Islands, Island Studies, Island Studies Journal’, Island Studies Journal, 1, no. 1

(2006), 3–18 and Shima Editorial Board, ‘An Introduction to Island Culture Studies’, Shima, 1, no. 1 (2007), 1–5.

46 Henry F. Srebrnik, ‘Identity, Culture and Confidence in the Global Economy’, in Lessons from the

Political Economy of Small Islands: The Resourcefulness of Jurisdiction, ed. by Godfrey Baldacchino and David Milne (Houndmills: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 56–71 (pp. 57–58).

47 Barry Bartmann, ‘Patterns of Localism in a Changing Global System’, in Lessons from the Political,

ed. by Baldacchino and Milne (Houndmills: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 38–55 and Barry Bartmann, ‘In or Out: Sub-National Island Jurisdictions and the Antechamber of Para-Diplomacy’ in Case for Non-Sovereignty, ed. by Baldacchino and Milne (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 53–71.

48 Agneta Karlsson, ‘Sub-National Island Jurisdictions as Configurations of Jurisdictional Powers and

Economic Capacity: Nordic Experiences from Åland, Faroes and Greenland’, Island Studies Journal, 4, no. 2 (2009), 139–162.

49 Michel Leseure, ‘Exploitation versus Exploration in Island Economies: A Brand Diagnostic

Perspective’, International Journal of Entrepreneurship & Small Business, 9, no. 4 (2010), 463–80.

Grydehøj, ‘Uninherited’; Adam Grydehøj, ‘Branding from Above: Generic Cultural Branding in Shetland and other Islands’, Island Studies Journal, 3, no. 2 (2008), 175–98 (pp. 178–79); and Adam Grydehøj, ‘Nothing but a Shepherd and His Dog: Social and Economic Effects of Depopulation in Fetlar, Shetland’, Shima, 2, no. 2 (2008), 56–72.

51 Dimitri Ioannides, Yorghos Apostolopoulos, and Sevil Sonmez, ‘Searching for Sustainable Tourism

Development in the Insular Mediterranean’, in Mediterranean Islands and Sustainable Tourism Development: Practises, management and policies, ed. by Dimitri Ioannides, Yorghos Apostolopoulos, and Sevil Sonmez, Island Studies Series (London: Continuum, 2001), pp. 3–22.

52 Tom Selwyn, ‘Tourism, Development, and Society in the Insular Mediterranean’, in Mediterranean

Islands, ed. by Ioannides, Apostolopoulos, and Sonmez, pp. 23–44; José Fernando Vera Rebollo, ‘Increasing the Value of Natural and Cultural Resources: Towards Sustainable Tourism Management’, in Mediterranean Islands, ed. by Ioannides, Apostolopoulos, and Sonmez, pp. 47–68; and Dimitri Ioannides and Briavel Holcomb, ‘Raising the Stakes: Implications of Upmarket Tourism Policies in Cyprus and Malta’, in Mediterranean Islands, ed. by Ioannides, Apostolopoulos, and Sonmez, pp. 234–58.

53 Thomas G. Baum with Laura Hagen-Grant, Lee Jolliffe, Sheldom Lambert, and Bjorn Sigurjonsson,

‘Tourism and Cold Water Islands in the North Atlantic’, in Lessons from the Political Economy, ed. by Baldacchino and Milne (Houndmills: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 214–29; Godfrey Baldacchino, ‘Island Brands and “The Island” as a Brand: Insights from Immigrant Entrepreneurs on Prince Edward Island’, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 9, no. 4 (2010), 378–93; and Leseure.

54 Dundes, Alan, ‘The Study of Folklore in Literature and Culture: Identification and Interpretation’, The

Journal of American Folklore, 78, no. 308 (1965), pp. 136–42 55

Henry Glassie, Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community [1982] (Bloomington, Indiana University Press: 1995), p. 33.

56 Henry Glassie, All Silver and No Brass: An Irish Christmas Mumming [1975] (Philadelphia: University

of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), p. xvi. 57

Stephen L. Schensul, Jean J. Schensul, and Margaret D. LeCompte, Essential Ethnographic Methods: Observations, Interviews, and Questionnaires (Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 1999), p. 5.

58 Marlene de Lane, Fieldwork, Participation and Practice: Ethics and Dilemmas in Qualitative Research

(London: SAGE, 2000), p. 178. 59

Paul Atkinson and Martyn Hammersley, Ethnography: Principles in Practice, 3rd Edition (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2007).

60 Karen O’Reilly, Ethnographic Methods (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2005).

61 F.A. Salamone (1979) ‘Epistemological Implications of Fieldwork and Their Consequences’, American

Anthropologist, New Series, vol. 81, no. 1, March, pp. 46–60 (p. 47). 62

Gerald Fry, Supang Chantavanich, and Amrung Chantavanich, ‘Merging Quantitative and Qualitative Research Techniques: Toward a New Research Paradigm’, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 12, no. 2 (1981), pp. 145–58

63 Robert Monteith, Description of the Islands of Orkney and Zetland: With Mapps from Them, Done

from the Accurat Observation of the Most Learned Who Lived in These Isles [1633], ed. by Robert Sibbald (Edinburgh: Thomas G. Stevenson, 1711), pp. 15–16.

64 John Marr, A General Geographical Description of Zetland [c. 1680], in Walter Macfarlane,

Geographical Collections relating to Scotland made by Walter Macfarlane, ed. by Arthur Mitchell James Toshach Clark, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1906–1908), III (1908), p. 254 and p. 250.

65 Michael P. Barnes, The Norn Language of Orkney and Shetland (Lerwick: The Shetland Times, 1998).

66 John Brand, A Brief Description of Orkney, Zetland, Pightland-Firth & Caithness: Wherein, After a

short Journal of the Author’s Voyage thither, These Northern Places are first more Generally Described; Then a Particular View is given of the several Isles thereto belonging, Together with an Account of what is most Rare and Remarkable therein: with the Author’s Observes thereupon [1701] (Edinburgh: William Brown, 1883), p. 104.

67 Thomas Gifford, An Historical Description of the Zetland Islands [1733] (London: J. Nichols, 1786),

pp. 31–32. 68

George Low, A Tour Through Orkney and Schetland: Containing Hints Relative to Their Ancient, Modern and Natural History, Collected in 1774 (Kirkwall: William Peace, 1879), pp. 142–43.

69 Arthur Edmondston, A View of the Ancient and Present State of the Zetland Islands; Including their

Civil, Political, and Natural History; Antiquities; and an Account of their Agriculture, Fisheries,

Commerce, and the State of Society and Manners, 2 vols (Edinburgh: James Ballantyne, 1809) I, pp. 141–142.

70 Edith C. Batho, ‘Sir Walter Scott and the Sagas: Some Notes’, The Modern Language Review, 24, no. 4

(1929), 409–415 and Julian Meldon D’Arcy, Scottish Skalds and Sagamen: Old Norse Influence on Modern Scottish Literature (East Linton: Tuckwell, 1996), pp. 2–3.

71 James Wallace, A Description of the Isles of Orkney [1688], ed. by John Small (Edinburgh: William

Brown, 1883), pp. 79–93. 72

Cf. Martin Martin’s statement on the etymology of the word Pight, qtd. in H. F. F. Searight et al., ‘A Contribution to the Anthropology of the Outer Hebrides’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 74, no. ½ (1944), 25–32 (p. 30).

73 Roland M. Smith, ‘Sir Walter Scott and the Pictish Question’, Modern Language Notes, 66, no. 3

(1951), 175–80 (p. 175). 74

George Barry, The History of the Orkney Islands: In which is Comprehended an Account of their Present as well as their Ancient State; together with the Advantages They Possess for Several Branches of Industry, and the Means by which They may be Improved (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable; London: Longham, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1805), p. 79.

75 The means of transmission of this information from Historia Norwegie to our authors is too complex to

discuss here. Suffice it to say that Historia Norwegie itself was only rediscovered in the mid-nineteenth century. Earlier scholars like Pinkerton were, in fact, reading Historia Norwegie through the very dark lens of the Genealogy of the Orkney Earls, which was used by Wallace. Inger Ekrem and Lars Boje Mortensen (eds.), Historia Norwegie ̧trans. by Peter Fisher (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2003), intro., 8–47.

76 Samuel Hibbert, A Description of the Shetland Islands, Comprising an Account of Their Geology,

Scenery, Antiquities, and Superstitions [1822] (Lerwick: T. & T. J. Manson, 1891), pp. 14–16. 77

Eliza Edmondston, Sketches and Tales of the Shetland Islands (Edinburgh: Sutherland & Knox, 1856), p. 16 and pp. 79–82.

78 Hector MacLean, ‘On the Comparative Anthropology of Scotland’, Anthropological Review, 4, no. 14

(1866), 209–226 (pp. 212–213). 79

Hector MacLean, ‘The Ancient Peoples of Ireland and Scotland Considered’, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 20 (1891), 154–179 (p. 170).

80 Hyde Clarke, ‘The Picts and Pre-Celtic Britain’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, n.s., 3

(1886), 243–280 (p. 244). 81

Gilbert Goudie, ‘Excavation of a Pictish Tower in Shetland’, The Illustrated Archæologist (December 1893), 137–149 (p. 137).

82 Unfinished letter from Laurence Williamson to John Clark [25 July 1892], qtd. in Laurence G. Johnson,

Laurence Williamson of Mid Yell (Lerwick: Shetland Times, 1971), p. 59. 83

Letter from Laurence Williamson to Francis Grant [August 1894], qtd. in L. G. Johnson, p. 70. 84

John R. Tudor, The Orkneys and Shetland: Their Past and Present State (London: Edward Stanford, 1883), pp. 161–62.

85 Wawn; Arvidsson; and Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism.

86 Biot Edmondston and Jessie Saxby, The Home of a Naturalist (London: James Nisbet, 1888), p. 181.

87 We are here reliant on the deficient text provided by Barry and reprinted by the Scottish History

Society in Macfarlane, p. 318 and p. 315. We accept MacDonald’s manuscript-based emendation of Barry’s nomine Troici and spiritu maximo, provided in G. MacDonald, ‘Note on “Jo. Ben” and the Dwarfie Stane’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 70 (1936), pp. 230–36 and p. 231.

88 G.F. Black and Northcote W. Thomas, eds., Orkney & Shetland Islands (London: David Nutt, 1903), p.

85. 89

For example, Thomas Keightley, The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves, and Other Little People [The Fairy Mythology, 1850] (New York et al.: Random House, 2000), pp. 78–93 and pp. 94–138. Even the Stith-Thompson index differentiates between fairies, dwarves, and trolls.

90 Jakob Jakobsen, An Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland [1928] (Lerwick:

Shetland Folk Society, 1985) II, pp. 966–67. 91

OED, troll, n2. 92

OED, trow, n4. 93

Walter Scott, qtd. in OED, pixie, n: ‘If a Pixie, seek thy ring, — If a Nixie, seek thy spring.’ 94

H. R. Ellis, ‘The Hoard of the Nibelungs’, The Modern Language Review, 37, no. 4 (1942), 466–79. 95

Ernest Marwick, The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland [1975] (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2000), pp. 39–42.

Katherine Briggs, The Fairies in Tradition and Literature (London: Routledge, 1967), p. 3. 97

Olaf D. Cuthbert, The Life and Letters of an Orkney Naturalist: Reverend George Low 1747–95 (Kirkwall: The Orkney Press, 1995), p. 55 and Low, p. 82.

98 Black and Thomas, p. 39.

99 OED, fey, a.

100 Though cf. John Spence, Shetland Folk-Lore (Lerwick: Johnson & Greig, 1899), p. 162: ‘A person likely to die was said to be fey, and a gaenfore or feyness was a prelude of death.’

101 Though cf. Michael Hunter, The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science and Second Sight in Late Seventeenth-Century Scotland (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001), pp. 79–89. In the Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle’s 1692 treatise The Secret Common-Wealth, wraiths and fairies seem to be linked.

102 Among Hibbert’s selkie-folk stories is what has become possibly the most famous version of the seal bride legend, thanks to its inclusion (via a number of intermediate publications) in Katherine Briggs’s A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales. Katherine M. Briggs, A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language: Part B- Folk Legends, Volumes 1 and 2 [1970–71] (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 321–22.

103 Karl Blind, ‘Scottish, Shetlandic, and Germanic Water Tales’, The Contemporary Review [1881] and The Gentleman’s Magazine [1882], qtd. in MacRitchie, Testimony of Tradition, pp. 1–2.

104 Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism, pp. 11–35.

105 Walter Scott, Minstrelsey of the Scottish Border: Consisting of Historical and Romantic Ballads, Collected in the Southern Counties of Scotland; with a Few of Modern Date, Founded upon Local Tradition, 3

rd edn, 3 vols (Edinburgh: James Ballantyne, 1806), II, pp. 111–13 .

106 Laurence Williamson of Gardie is aware of this version of theory, possibly through Hibbert: ‘The stone age dwellers in Scandinavia were dwarfish and buried in mounds and cairns. The Norse successors probably thought that their sepulchres were inhabited by the spirits of this hostile race, and as the mystery and fear shrouded their history every knoll and stone heap was infested with trolls or trows. Contact with the superstition of other lands and a rude Christianity perhaps confounded them with fairies and fallen angels. This shows their vast age.’ Laurence Williamson, qtd. in L. G. Johnson, p. 135.

107 Harald Löfgren, ‘A deconstruction of Sven Nilsson’s Modern prehistoric man: Archaeology’s use of the Other in the re-peopling of the past’, Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia Uppsala universitet C-uppsats, (2004) <www.arkeologi.uu.se/ark/education/CD/Cuppsats/CHT04/Lofgren.pdf> [accessed 15 August 2009].

108 Henderson and Cowan note that Herbet Hore also proposes a similar theory no later than 1844 but that MacRitchie himself denies the influence: Lizanne Henderson and Edward J. Cowan, Scottish Fairy Belief: A History (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2004), p. 32.

109 J. F. Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands [1860], 4 vols (Paisley and London: Alexander Gardner, 1890), I, pp. xcv–cii.

110 David MacRitchie, Fians, Fairies and Picts (London: Kegan Paul, Trench Trübner & Co., 1893), pp. viii-ix.

111 Carole G. Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 45–47. Silver may, however, overestimate the weight placed on the pygmy theory – as opposed to its mere prevalence – prior to MacRitchie when she writes that ‘By the time of Frederic T. Hall’s The Pedigree of the Devil (1883), it was almost taken for granted that dwarfs, trolls, and fairies were folk memories of prehistoric races of small people’.

112 Frederic T. Hall, The Pedigree of the Devil (London: Trübner, 1883), pp. 78–81.

113 David MacRitchie, The Testimony of Tradition (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1890).

114 ‘Anthropological Notes’, Man, 21 (1921), 176.

115 Colin Richards, ‘Monuments as Landscape: Creating the Centre of the World in Late Neolithic Orkney’, World Archaeology, 28, no. 2 (1996), 190–208.

116 Charles G. Leland, ‘Review: The Testimony of Tradition’, Journal of American Folklore, 3, no. 11 (1890), 319–20 (p. 319).

117 W.W.N. [William Wells Newell], ‘Notes and Queries’, The Journal of American Folklore, 1, no. 3 (1888), 235.

118 W.W.N. [William Wells Newell], ‘Review: The Golden Bough’, Journal of American Folklore, 3, no. 11 (1890), 320–21 (p. 320).

119 Alfred Nutt, ‘Celtic Myth and Saga: Report upon the Progress of Study during the Past Eighteen Months’, Folklore, 1, no. 2 (1890), 234–60 (pp. 258–59).

120 Edwin Sidney Hartland, The Science of Fairy Tales: An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology [1890] (London:

Walter Scott Publishing & Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), pp. 349–51.

121 Sidney Hartland even offers a case study of faulty tradition in a journal article the following year: Edwin Sidney Hartland, ‘Report on Folk-Tale Research in 1889–1890’, Folklore, 2, no. 1 (1891) 99–119 (pp. 115–16).

122 ‘Review: Testimony of Tradition’, Science, 21, no. 523 (1893), 82–83.

123 Tom Peete Cross, ‘Review: Joseph Ritson: A Critical Biography’, Modern Philology, 17, no. 4 (1919), 233–38 (p. 238).

124 D. G. Brinton, ‘Current Notes on Anthropology: XXI’, Science, 21, no. 521 (1893), 46–47 (p. 47).

125 Gary Allan Fine, ‘Joseph Jacobs: A Sociological Folklorist’, Folklore, 98, no. 2 (1987), 183–93.

126 Joseph Jacobs, ‘Recent Research in Comparative Religion’, Folklore, 1, no. 3 (1890), 384–97 (p. 395) and Joseph Jacobs, ‘The Folk’, Folklore, 4, no. 2 (1893), 233–38.

127 Joseph Jacobs, ‘Review: The Science of Fairy Tales: An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology’, Folklore, 2, no. 1 (1891), 123–27 (p. 126).

128 Joseph Jacobs, ‘Childe Rowland’, Folklore, 2, no. 2 (1891), 182–97 (pp. 192–94).

129 John Rhŷs, Science, n.s., 12, no. 301 (1900), 502–16 (pp. 504–08).

130 Elizabeth Andrews, Ulster Folklore (London: Elliot Stock, 1913), pp. v-vi and pp. 11–12.

131 M. Longworth Dames, ‘Review: Ulster Folk-lore [sic]’, Man, 14 (1914), 114.

132 For example, David MacRitchie, The Underground Life (Edinburgh: Privately printed, 1892); David MacRitchie, ‘The Kayak in North-Western Europe,’ The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 42 (July-December 1912), 493–510; and David MacRitchie, ‘Earth-Houses and Their Occupants’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 9 April 1917, 178–97.

133 J. Kollmann, ‘Pygmies in Europe’, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 25 (1896), 117–22 (p. 118).

134 William Morris, The Collected Works of William Morris: Volume XV: The Roots of the Mountains [1889] (London: Longmans Green, 1912), p. 136.

135 Margaret Alice Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921), p. 14.

136 Margaret Alice Murray, The God of the Witches [1933] (n.p.: NuVision, 2005), pp. 38–39.

137 Jacqueline Simpson, ‘Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her, and Why?’, Folklore, 105 (1994), 89–96.

138 J. Simpson, p. 92.

139 Canon J. A. MacCulloch, ‘Were Fairies an Earlier Race of Men?’ Folklore, 43 (1932), 362–75 (p. 370).

140 John M. MacAulay, Seal-Folk and Ocean Paddlers: Sliochd nan Ròn (Cambridge: White Horse, 1998), p. 55.

141 This letter was discovered by Brian Smith on 22 October 2009, inserted in E. S. Reid Tait’s copy of Testimony of Tradition. At the time Smith was graciously helping me learn the provenance of the copies of MacRitchie’s works that are housed at the Shetland Library and in the Shetland Archives.

142 W. Fordyce Clark, The Story of Shetland (Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1906), pp. 12–13.

143 Ernest W. Hardy, Land o’ the Simmer Dim, (London: W.A. Hammond, 1914), pp. 25–26.

144 John Nicolson, Some Folk-Tales and Legends of Shetland (Edinburgh: Thomas Allan, 1920), pp. 11–12.

145 The less said, then, the better about Graeme Davis, The Early English Settlement of Orkney and Shetland (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2007). However, as the book has been roundly ignored by scholarly reviewers and journals, and lest neglect foster acceptance as was the case with Margaret Murray, let us note our opposition to Davis’s theory. When a writer purports to prove that the Anglo-Saxons settled the Northern Isles in the fourth century yet neglects to equip his book with any references to previous scholarship, either supportive or dissenting, the burden of proof surely remains at the feet of the book’s author.

146 J. A. Teit, ‘Water-Beings in Shetlandic Folk-Lore, as Remembered by Shetlanders in British Columbia’, Journal of American Folklore, 31, no. 120 (1918), 180–201.

147 W. Fordyce Clark, The Shetland Sketch Book: Folk-Lore, Legend, Humour, Incident (Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1930).

148 Jessie Saxby, Shetland Traditional Lore (Edinburgh: Grant & Murray, 1932), p. 5.

149 Peter A. Jamieson, The Viking Isles (Paulton and London: Heath Cranton, 1933), pp. 18–19.

150 John Nicolson, Restin’ Chair Yarns (Lerwick: Johnson & Greig, 1937), p. vii.

151 Joseph Jacobs, ‘Review: The Science of Fairy Tales: An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology’, Folklore, 2, no. 1 (1891), 123–27 (p. 126).

There is an interesting instance of external reaction to localised MacRitchieism in W. P. Livingstone, Shetland and the Shetlanders (London: Thomas Nelson, 1947): The evangelical Livingstone accepts euhemerism but rejects the theory of ‘local ethnologists’ that Lapps/Finns were the islands’ first settlers, instead deciding, on a rather contrarian note, that the euhemerised race was Celtic and came from Scotland (pp. 29–30). Livingstone also castigates at length the Shetlanders for their Viking romanticism and anti-Scottish sentiment (pp. 64–71).

153 John Nicolson, ‘Shetland Folk-Tales’, in Shetland Folk Book, ed. by E. S. Reid Tait, I (Lerwick: Shetland Times, 1947), pp. 1–16.

154 William Moffatt, Rough Island Story: Being Cavalcade of Ultima Thule (Lowestoft: Heath Cranton, 1936), pp. 19–20.

155 William Moffatt, Twilight over Shetland: The Story of Derili the Obdurate (Lowestoft: Heath Cranton, 1939), pp. 81–82.

156 Andrew T. Cluness, The Shetland Isles, The County Book Series, ed. by Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald (London: Robert Hale, 1951), pp. 111–12.

157 Andrew T. Cluness, Told Round the Peat Fire (London: Robert Hale, 1955), pp. 132–33.

158 Samuel S. S. Polson, ‘Trollawater: A Tale of the Pictish Resistance Movement’, New Shetlander, 65 (1963), 24–25.

159 A. T. Cluness, ed., The Shetland Book (Lerwick: Shetland Times, 1967), p. v.

160 Shetland Folklore Development Group, ed., Da Book o Trows (Lerwick: Shetland Folklore Development Group, 2007), pp. 60–61.

161 James R. Nicolson, Shetland Folklore (London: Robert Hale, 1981), pp. 84–85.

162 Walter Traill Dennison, Orkney Folklore & Sea Legends, ed. by Tom Muir (Kirkwall: Orkney Press, 1995), pp. 33-38.

163 L. G. [Laurence Graham], ‘No Trows by request!: Some notes on Shetland Culture and Literature’, New Shetlander, 34 (1952), 33–34 (p. 34).

164 Alan Bruford, ‘Trolls, Hillfolk, Finns, and Picts: The Identity of the Good Neighbors in Orkney and Shetland’, in The Good People: New Fairylore Essays [1991], ed. by Peter Narváez (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), pp. 116–141 (pp. 123–124).

165 Katherine Briggs, An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures (New York: Pantheon, 1976), p. 328–31.

166 K.M. [Katherine] Briggs, The Anatomy of Puck: An Examination of Fairy Beliefs among Shakespeare’s Contemporaries and Successors (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959), p. 21.

167 Rather off-handed association between petta- names and supernatural folklore is also sometimes present in academic writing: For example, Peder Gammeltoft, ‘Contact or Conflict? What Can We Learn from the Island-Names of the Northern Isles?’, in Scandinavia and Europe: Contact, Conflict, and Coexistence, ed. by Jonathan Adams and Katherine Holman, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 87–95 (p. 91 and p. 94).

168 Adam of Bremen, History of the Archbishops of Hamburg Bremen [1076?], trans. and ed. by Francis J. Tschan (Chichester: Columbia University Press, 2002), pp. 212–13.

169 Thomas A. DuBois, Nordic Religions in the Viking Age (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 23–28.

170 Olaus Magnus, qtd. in DuBois, p. 115.

171 Olaus Magnus, A Description of the Northern Peoples, 3 vols, ed. by P.G. Foote (London: Hakluyt Society, 1996), I, pp. lxx–lxxii.

172 Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson, The Lore of the Land: A Guide to England’s Legends, from Spring-Heeled Jack to the Witches of Warboys (London: Penguin, 2005), pp. 366–67.

173 Alexander Fenton, The Northern Isles: Orkney and Shetland [1978] (East Linton: Tuckwell, 1997), pp. 13–14.

174 Andy Orchard, Cassell’s Dictionary of Norse Myth & Legend (London: Cassell, 2002), p. 145 and Westwood and Simpson, pp. 20–21.

175 Lee M. Hollander (trans.), ‘Dvergatal’, The Poetic Edda (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962), pp. 322–23.

176 John DeWitt Niles, ‘Lamkin: The Motivation of Horror’, Journal of American Folklore, 90, no. 355 (1977), 49–67 (pp. 60–62) and Bengt Holbek and Iørn Piø, Fabeldyr og sagnfolk (Copenhagen: Politikens forlag, 1967), pp. 322–20.

177 Francis James Child, ed., The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 2nd

edn, 5 vols (Northfield:

Loomis House, 2001–), I (2001), pp. 35–36. 178

Charles de Rochefort, Histoire naturelle et morale des Iles Antilles de l’Amérique: Enrichie de

plusieurs belles figures des raretez les plus considérables qui y sont décrites: Avec un vocabulaire Caraïbe (Rotterdam: Reinier Leers, 1681), p. 209 and p. 213.

179 Emma Wilby, Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern Witchcraft and Magic (Brighton: Sussex Academic, 2005).

180 Annie May Robertson, Helen Jamieson, Jane Ritchie, and Kenny Ritchie (Fetlar: 11 May 2007), Digitally recorded interview with Adam Grydehøj.

181 For the site’s history [NMRS: HU69SW 20], see Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, ‘Fetlar, Aith, St. Rognvald’s’ <http://www.rcahms.gov.uk> [accessed 5 March 2009].

182 Gillian Bennett, “Alas, Poor Ghost!”: Traditions of Belief in Story and Discourse (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1999), p. 125 and p. 132.

183 Jane Ritchie and Kenny Ritchie (Fetlar: 11 May 2007), Digitally recorded interview with Adam Grydehøj.

184 Alastair Hamilton (20 August 2008), E-mail on behalf of Shetland Islands Council sent to Adam Grydehøj.

185 Peter Hunter (Uyeasound: 08 July 2007), Digitally recorded interview with Adam Grydehøj.

186 Stephen Simpson (Lerwick: 16 February 2007), Digitally recorded interview with Adam Grydehøj.

187 Shona Leask (Lerwick: 21 June 2007), Digitally recorded interview with Adam Grydehøj.

188 Jim o Berry [Jim Smith] (Scalloway: 28 March 2007), Digitally recorded interview with Adam Grydehøj.

189 Billy Seatter and Tom Henderson (Lerwick: 03 August 2007), Digitally recorded interview with Adam Grydehøj.

190 Geordie Jamieson (Uyeasound: 07 July 2007), Digitally recorded interview with Adam Grydehøj.

191 Davy Cooper (Lerwick: 28 February 2007), Digitally recorded interview with Adam Grydehøj.

192 Elma Johnson (Bigton: 11 April 2007), Digitally recorded interview with Adam Grydehøj.

193 Elma Johnson (Bigton: 30 April 2007), Digitally recorded interview with Adam Grydehøj.

194 Michael A. Lange, The Norwegian Scots: An Anthropological Interpretation of Viking-Scottish Identity in the Orkney Islands (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2007), pp. 113–14.

195 Malachy Tallack, ‘Editorial: The Language Question’, Shetland Life, 343 (2009), 3.

196 The survey on which much of the tourism data in Part 3 is based took place over the span of a year in 2005/06. When referring to the time of the survey, we will follow the example of the surveyors and refer to it as 2006: AB Associates, Shetland Visitor Survey 2005/2006 (December 2006), Final draft of report prepared for Shetland Enterprise.

197 Economic Development Unit, Shetland in Statistics: 2008 (Lerwick: Economic Development Unit, 2008), p. 12 and pp. 25–26.

198 The source gives a total of £172 without comment. This number would seem, however, to be an error since it would significantly alter total expenditure, which is attested elsewhere. The issue, I suspect, is that calculating expenditure in Shetland from package tours run by overseas companies is a complex task, and AB Associates simply neglects to include this breakdown in their report. Holiday visitors make up 97% of package tour expenditures, but the majority of holiday visitors do not take package tours. So, package tours skew other expenditure statistics, accounting for spend that otherwise would have been classified as accommodation, food and drink, etc.

That the figure of £172 is not simply a misprint is confirmed by calculating percentages of visitor types and their various package tour expenditures. The average package tour spend for all overnighting visitors is £72. Assuming that holiday package tour visitor spend averages £172, if a = (Total Holiday Visitors), b = (Total Business Visitors), c = (Total VFR Visitors), d = (Avg. Holiday Spend), e = (Avg. Business Spend), f = (Avg. VFR spend), and g = (a + b + c), then:

((g ÷ a) × d) + ((g ÷ b) × e) + ((g ÷ c) × f) = £72. 199

Department of Development Services, Orkney Economic Review (Kirkwall: Orkney Islands Council, 2006), p. 26.

200 AB Associates, p. 13. Methodological differences prevent, however, meaningful comparison of actual overall expenditure in Shetland and Orkney.

201 Louise Thomason, ‘Despair for livestock co-op as council asks for another plan’, The Shetland Times (19 June 2009) <http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/1006151/despair-for-livestock-co-op-as-council-asks-for-new-business-plan> [accessed 19 June 2009] .

202 Pitchford, pp. 43–44.

203 Ronald L. Watts, ‘Island Jurisdictions in Comparative Constitutional Perspective’, in The Case for Non-Sovereignty, ed. by Godfrey Baldacchino and David Milne (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp.

21–39 (p. 24).

204 Lindström, p. 118; Ronald L. Watts, ‘Islands in Comparative Constitutional Perspective’, in Lessons from the Political Economy, ed. by Baldacchino and Milne (Houndmills: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 17–37 (pp. 18–19); and Godfrey Baldacchino and David Milne, ‘Conclusion’, in Lessons from the Political Economy, ed. by Baldacchino and Milne (Houndmills: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 230–41 (p. 240).

205 As an example of how subnational capacity flexing is still popularly seen as strange and unreasonable, consider Ian Johnston, ‘How Shetland’s ‘Gaddafi’ took on oil giants to win bountiful deal’, The Scotsman (1 January 2005) <http://business.scotsman.com/business/How-Shetlands-Gaddafi-took-on.2591741.jp> [accessed 19 June 2009].

206 Reference Economic Consultants, ‘Opportunities for the Future of the Shetland Economy’, Economic development review document (February 2006), <http://www.shetland.gov.uk/council/documents.asp> [accessed 10 July 2010], p. 35.

207 Lino Briguglio and Nadia Farrugia, ‘The Cultural Impact of Economic Conditions in Gozo’ (8 May 2009), Paper presented at the Taking Shetland out of the Box conference.

208 Ioannides, Apostolopoulos, and Sonmez, pp. 9–10. Also, see Pitchford, pp. 4–5.

209 William R. McKercher, ‘The Isle of Man: Jurisdictional Catapult to Development’, in Lessons from the Political Economy of Small Islands, ed. by Baldacchino and Milne (Houndmills: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 91–106 (p. 103).

210 Economic Development Unit, ‘Report No: DV008–F, A Local Approach to Marketing’ (18 February 2009).

211 Shetland Local Economic Forum, ‘Shetland 2012’, Highlands and Islands Enterprise (September 2002) <www.hie.co.uk/SHE-lef-economic-strategy.pdf> [accessed 12 August 2008], p. 3.

212 Economic Development Unit, ‘A Marketing Strategy for Shetland, 2008-2011: Draft’ (April 2008), pp. 1–2.

213 Eugene D. Jaffe and Israel D. Nebenzahl, National Image & Competitive Advantage: The Theory and Practice of Place Branding, 2nd

edn (Gylling: Copenhagen Business School, 2006), p. 139.

214 Simon Anholt, ‘Place Branding: Is It Marketing, or Isn’t It?’, Place Branding and

Public Diplomacy, 4, no. 1 (2008), 1–6. 215

Mark Shrimpton and Craig Pollett, ‘Small Places, Big Ideas: Exporting North Atlantic Expertise’, in Lessons from the Political Economy, ed. by Baldacchino and Milne (Houndmills: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 193–213 (p. 201).

216 Isle of Man’s tourism brochure, for example, includes a section on why to move to the Isle of Man. Department of Tourism and Leisure, Set Yourself Free (Ramsey: Lily: 2008), pp. 46–49.

217 We ignore internet-based promotion because websites belonging to even the most brand-aware tourism authorities tend – in contrast to these authorities’ printed materials – to be ‘all over the board’ in terms of content. See Leseure.

218 For example, the Malta Film Commission and Isle of Man Film.

219 Al Ries and Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (New York: MacGraw-Hill, 2001), pp. 47–51 and p. 60.

220 Weekly B.S., ‘Malta Brand Effort is Advertising in Disguise’, Whisper (5 January 2006)

<www.whisperbrand.com/blog/2006/01/malta-brand-effort-is-advertising-in-disguise> [accessed 12 August 2008].

221 VisitShetland, Shetland: Get a World Away, (Lerwick: VisitShetland, 2008).

222 C. Sonne, Bornholm- A World of Its Own: Denmark’s Only Rocky Island…, (Rønne (Bornholm): Destination Bornholm, 2008).

223 VisitShetland, p. 4 and Jersey Tourism and Jersey Hospitality Association, Destination Jersey (St Helier (Jersey): Jersey Tourism and Jersey Hospitality Association, 2008).

224 D. McLean, Orkney: Irresistible Islands (Kirkwall (Orkney): VisitOrkney, 2008).

225 VisitHebrides, Outer Hebrides: Beautifully Different (Stornoway (Lewis): VisitHebrides, 2008).

226 North Cyprus: Never Ending Sunshine, n.p., n.d.

227 Creenagh Lodge, ‘Project Selkie: The Recommended Brand Strategy for Shetland’, Project

report document (5 June 2003), pp. 3–5. 228

E.g. Shrimpton & Pollett, p. 201. 229

Corporate Edge, ‘Shetland Brand Guide’, Visual guide created for Economic Development Unit (April 2003), p. 8.

230 Neil Henderson, Place Branding: Linking the Shetland Brand to a Marketing Strategy for Shetland Tourism (unpublished MA dissertation, Robert Gordon University, 2005).

231 Malta Tourism Authority, ‘Branding Malta’ (Malta: Malta Tourism Authority, 2005)

<http://www.mta.com.mt/index.pl/branding_malta> [accessed 20 July 2008].

232 Hans J. Marter, ‘Fury over “one-sided” bridge report’, Shetland Marine News (29 August 2006) <http://www.shetlandmarine.com/archives/2006/05%20Oil%20&%20Shipping/fury_over_one-sided_bridge_report.htm> [accessed 19 June 2009].

233 Shetland Islands Council, ‘Shetland Islands Council update on State Aid investigations’ (04 October 2006) <http://www.shetland.gov.uk/news-advice/prced1004.asp > [accessed 19 June 2009].

234 At the time of writing, 22 of the Shetland Charitable Trust’s 24 members are SIC counsellors. In theory, this arrangement allows the SIC to avoid national and EU state aid regulations though this has been successfully challenged before, for example, in the case of loans to fishermen. Some SIC counsellors are pressing for reform, most notably the anti-romantic counsellor Jonathan Wills. Neil Ridell, ‘SIC relationship with trust to be reviewed’, The Shetland Times (22 June 2009) <http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/1000196/sic-relationship-with-trust-to-be-reviewed> [accessed 22 June 2009].

235 Sumo Design, ‘Case Study: Shetland Museum and Archives’ (2008) <http://www.sumodesign.co.uk/tpl/uploads/shetland_m_a_case_study.pdf> [accessed 22 June 2009].

236 Neil Ridell, ‘Councillors delay new school as they back another review’, The Shetland Times (22 June 2009) <http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/1006103/new-high-school-project-placed-on-hold> [accessed 22 June 2009].

237 Sue Wilson, ‘Mareel, Lerwick: The fight for Mareel’, Highlands & Islands Arts (2008) <http://www.hi-arts.co.uk/july08–feature-mareel-lerwick.htm, 2008> [accessed 22 June 2009].

238 Economic Development Unit, ‘Heritage Tourism Investment Programme: 2008–2011’ (rev. October 2008), pp. 1–2.

239 Economic Development Unit, ‘Heritage Tourism’, p. 16.

240 Economic Development Unit, ‘Heritage Tourism’, p. 9.

241 Economic Development Unit, ‘Report No: DV048–F, Heritage Tourism Investment Programme’ (2 October 2008), p. 6.

242 This, we may assume, represents passengers on the Smyril Line ferry, which no longer docks in Shetland.

243 The columns do not equal 100% because I have omitted inspirations that are either nonspecific (i.e., “Other”) or are mentioned by less than 2% of contributors.

244 Tunbridge and Ashworth, pp. 44–45. Indeed, the two categories are conflated in Economic Development Unit, ‘Heritage Tourism’, p. 2.

245 To ease meaningful comparison, we exclude the relatively inaccessible attractions in Noss, Whalsay, Fair Isle, Mousa, and Fetlar.

246 Economic Development Unit, Shetland in Statistics, p. 26.

247 Though note AB Associates’ caveat that uneven sampling may mean that this figure is somewhat high: AB Associates, pp. 92–93.

248 Not only cruise tourists but also yacht visitors, VFR visitors, and locals make up some percentage of site visitors.

249 Economic Development Unit, ‘Report No: DV032–F, Mareel Cinema and Music Hall’ (21 August 2008), p. 5.

250 For example, Erik Cohen ‘Authenticity and Commoditization in Tourism’ [2003], in The Political Nature of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, ed. by Dallen J. Timothy, Critical Essays, III (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 109–24.

251 Dean MacCannell, ‘Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings’ [1973], in The Political Nature of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, ed. by Dallen J. Timothy, Critical Essays, III (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 289–303

252 Laurence Wai-Teng Leong ‘Culture and the State: Manufacturing Traditions for Tourism’ [1989], in The Political Nature of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, ed. by Dallen J. Timothy, Critical Essays, III (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 231–51 (p. 243).

Bibliography

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