Museums
in Shetland.

It’s 20:06 in Shetland.

Shetland Islands

Box beds, lace and the Shetland Bus.

Shetland tells its own story well, and often in the very buildings where it happened. In Lerwick, the galleries on Hay's Dock cover five thousand years, with boats hanging in a tall hall, while a restored fishing booth on the edge of town is given over to Fair Isle and lace knitting. Scalloway remembers the Shetland Bus, the wartime boats that crossed to Norway. Out in the districts there's a thatched croft house with box beds at Boddam, a merchant's house of 1672 on Yell and a laird's house in Northmavine. Several of the smaller ones open in summer only, so check before a long drive.

Museum of the day12 hours ago

Shetland Museum.

The islands’ own story, on the restored dock at Hay’s.

Read about it

From the magazine5 hours ago

Issue 10Spring / Summer 2025

The photographer Conor Gault was five when he flew by helicopter to Fair Isle, in Shetland, to see his grandfather Bill, Scotland's last lighthouse keeper, at the closing ceremony.

Bill Gault turned off the light at Fair Isle South Lighthouse in 1998, and Conor still remembers the day: 'I remember the feeling of travelling to the island on a helicopter, and my kilt socks itching my legs'. It was the only time he visited a station with his Granda, apart from Kinnaird Head in Fraserburgh, where Bill went on to work as a tour guide for the Museum of Scottish Lighthouses. Conor became a freelance photographer in 2018, after studying at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen. In 2023, when the museum marked 25 years since automation, he went along to meet some of the last keepers, and photographed them and their families for his project.