The history of Shetland

Words by Hidden Scotland.

People have lived on these islands for some five thousand years, and the past sits close to the surface here. At Jarlshof, by Sumburgh, the first houses date from around 2700 BC, and at Stanydale a great heel-shaped hall was raised about 4,000 years ago. In the Iron Age, Shetlanders built brochs, tall round towers with double walls that are found only in Scotland. Mousa still stands 13 metres high after more than two thousand years, and many more survive as ruins and grassy mounds round the coast. Before the Norse arrived, an early church stood on St Ninian's Isle, where Pictish silver from around AD 800 was found in 1958. For centuries the islands looked outward. German merchants of the Hanseatic League traded here from the 1400s until after the Union of 1707, and Lerwick grew up in the 17th century selling to the Dutch fishing fleet in Bressay Sound. It took over from Scalloway as the capital in 1708. Shetlanders rowed open sixareens far out to the deep-water fishing, at a terrible cost in storms like the one of July 1881. In the Second World War, Norwegian volunteers ran secret crossings to occupied Norway from Scalloway. Then, in November 1978, the first North Sea oil reached the new terminal at Sullom Voe, and the islands changed again.