More about Shetland...
I truly love Scotland, but Shetland is like Scotland on cocaine.
Robert Malcolm Kay
A retrospective post from October 2017
And so, from Shetland - !
What have I learned from a few days working on these bleak, wind-swept islands and conducting in-depth social interviews of 19 of their hardy people?
Abiding memories of - and respect for - proud and independent hard-working farmers, fishermen, mariners, builders, quarriers, craftspeople, who mostly left school at 16 or 17 to work in their windswept family farms, follow the plentiful shoals of fish, set up business, or to work the dangerous bounty of the North Sea oil and gas fields. The sea is both their highway and their larder, and their expertise in mastering the arts of navigation and boatmanship in the harshest conditions is their passport to survival, and prosperity.
Hospitality is evident in doors left permanently unlocked, strangers made welcome.
I listened to stories of life on the edge and personal tragedies. Accidents, illness, alcoholism, divorce, and quarrels - there is plenty of stress, this is no Utopia, far from it. The North Atlantic winter is a fickle mistress at the best of times, and a cruel and arbitrary dominatrix at the worst.
Loneliness, isolation, long dark winters, high costs of living, very limited social and cultural opportunities, yet strong and abiding social bonds and friendships.
A social culture that, as one respondent kindly put it, is in some ways 20 years behind the rest of Europe. I would have said 50!
That's not surprising when considering the expense and time of journeying to the mainland, 12 hours by ferry to Aberdeen.
Yet Shetland is also comparatively affluent, by virtue of superb natural resources, hard graft, and skills. Unemployment is almost zero. Most homes are well built and spacious.
Not Scottish, not British, not Viking, but a forged mix of all the cultures and peoples who have made their homes here and built in stone and turf for the last 4,000 years at least, since well before the Egyptian Pyramids. And a language and culture that is unique, vibrant and incredibly precious.
And then, the strange co-incidence of enquiring for directions at a remote croft and accidentally meeting one of my shipmates from the voyage we took from Lerwick on the Swan around Britain three years ago.
My now late step mother in law and her parents and three siblings emigrated to NZ South Island about 80 years ago.
They were all of diminutive stature, God fearing, frugal, hardworking.
My step mother in law was so lightweight she would have been blown into the North Sea.
The beauty and rewards of living close to nature's challenges.