Shetland's Culture & Music
From Scandinavia and Scotland
Shetland's earliest inhabitants, around 6,000 years ago, appear to have had a highly developed aesthetic sense, to judge by the extraordinarily beautiful polished stone axes found in archaeological sites.
Other artefacts such as pottery, soapstone bowls, bone combs, fishing gear and jewellery, testify to our prehistoric ancestors' practical skills and artistic abilities.
The Viking Period
Excavations from the Viking period show the invaders were just as appreciative of good design. Magnificently decorated swords, clasps and brooches speak of Viking taste for finery. From Viking times also come the first records of Shetland's spoken culture - not just in the occasional saga references to Shetland but also in the thousands of local place names, almost all of which are Norse, and in the hundreds of dialect words still in daily use, particularly in connection with nature, livestock, farming, fishing, boats, the sea and the weather.
The Spoken Word
Some of Shetland's dialect folklore must have been lost, together with ancient dances and songs, but enough survived to be collected in the late 19th century (notably by the Faroese philologist Jakob Jakobsen) and show how rich this oral culture once was.
Preserving Shetland's Heritage
Most of the surviving folk stories have now been preserved and published, thanks in part to the oil money that became available through the Shetland Arts Trust in the last decades of the 20th century.
The use of dialect was actively discouraged in schools, churches and civic life until the late 20th century but islanders now take a pride in their native speech. Shetland Arts and BBC Radio Shetland have done much to encourage this. Dialect writing, kept alive by the Shetland Folk Society and the quarterly New Shetlander magazine, revived in the 1980s as funds became available to encourage local writers. There is now a large Shetland Booklist in print and local collectors bid keenly for antiquarian books about the islands.
What's In a Place Name...
Work continues on collecting and analysing Shetland's vast treasure store of place-names. In the long centuries when few islanders could read and only the very rich had maps (and those very inaccurate) everyone had to carry several thousand place-names in his or her head - all the detailed geographical information that enabled them to take part in a subsistence economy.
Thus there are dozens of place-names describing in great detail where to find different food species (from seals and seabirds to wild berries, fish and shellfish); explaining how the landscape was used for herding, grazing and crops (for example the many 'punds', or enclosures, and 'bools', or sheltered spots); and identifying different kinds of terrain, from 'heogs' (rocky hilltops) to 'houbs' (sheltered, shallow bays).
For more information see the article 'What's in a Shetland Name?' by Allen Fraser.
Artistic Inspiration
The landscape and the clear, northern light of Shetland have inspired hundreds of artists, from the 19th century illustrator John Reed and some of the Scottish Colourists in the early 20th century to modern artists such as Brian Henderson, Liam O'Neill, Gail Harvey, Mei Lo So, Ron Sandford and Jim Tait, all currently in Shetland.
Art and Architecture
The splendid Victorian stained glass windows in Lerwick Town Hall have their modern counterparts in stained glass work by Patrick Ross-Smith in Fair Isle. There are several local art galleries, including the Bonhoga Gallery at the converted Weisdale Mill, the Burravoe Haa' gallery in Yell, Lerwick's commercial Vaila Fine Arts and the rotating exhibitions at the Shetland Museum Gallery, also in Lerwick.
Music
World-renowned musicians, Tom Anderson, Aly Bain, Willy Hunter, Violet Tulloch, "Peerie Willie" Johnson, and latterly, Catriona Macdonald have helped to bring an international focus to Shetland music.
Shetland's fiddle music is world-famous with a tradition stretching back generations. The distinctive Shetland sound is a blend of many influences, including ancient Norwegian folk music, Scots reels, jigs and slow airs, and tunes brought home by sailors from Ireland, Germany, North America and even Greenland.
Pub Music
As well as traditional fiddle groups there are dozens of local dance, jazz and rock bands, which can all be heard regularly in Shetland's pubs.
Today, organisations such as Shetland Arts, the Shetland Fiddle and Accordian Club and the Shetland Folk Festival Society draw high calibre musicians from around the world to perform throughout the islands.
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