Shetland's Location
Shetland is on longitude 01ºW of Greenwich and straddles latitude 60ºN, 598 miles (962km) north of London and just 400 miles (643km) south of the Arctic Circle. This is as far north as St Petersburg, Russia, or Anchorage, Alaska.
Cape Farewell, the southern tip of Greenland, is 1450 miles (2333km) due west of Shetland, while Bergen is just 225 miles (362km) east. Even cold places like Labrador, the Aleutian Islands and Kamchatka lie far to the south.
With good transport links to Shetland by air and sea, getting here is easy.
Geology
Geologically, the Shetland Islands are the drowned summits of a range of low hills, rising from the continental shelf about 100 miles north of Scotland. The 50-mile-wide Fair Isle Channel separates Shetland from the similarly-sized but more low-lying Orkney Islands which lie just off the coast of the Scottish mainland.
Climate
For somewhere so far north, Shetland has a remarkably mild climate. In winter, it's the warmest place on earth - at this latitude. Around Shetland the warm Atlantic currents flowing along the edge of the shelf meet colder water from the Norwegian Sea to the north. These mix with water from the North Sea to give Shetland its temperate maritime climate.
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