Yup, I’m still talking about Scotland. The ridiculous amounts of history, outdoor activities, and maritime-based culture left me with a lot to talk about and share. For this particular post, we are leaving the mainland and heading for the furthest reaches of Scotland.

The idea of going to the Shetland and Orkney Islands had always been in the back of my head. I have always been fascinated by moody and remote islands//landscapes, and other than going to Iceland (been there) or the Faroe Islands (really want to go), Shetland and Orkney seemed to fit that bill. Ultimately, for this excursion, I decided exploring the main Shetland Island (Mainland) would be the most accessible from Aberdeen. Before I embarked on this adventure, I had a passing knowledge of Shetland but abundant curiosity; I knew that Shetland, like mainland Scotland, had a long, rich history of cross cultural interactions rooted in maritime trade and coastal lifeways, but I was curious to see how that all played out in the present day.

THE BASICS

One can reach both Shetland and Orkney via air or sea from mainland Scotland. If you choose sail to the Islands like I did (and was the only option until the 1930’s), and you don’t have access to a boat of your own, check out NorthLink Ferries which maintains a regular, year round schedule from both Aberdeen and Scrabster (in Caithness). Because I was based in Aberdeen, I opted to take the direct ferry from Aberdeen to Lerwick, the capital (and only town) of Shetland. NorthLink offers a range of fares for the daily 12 hour crossing from Aberdeen—from private cabins to a basic fare that allows you to choose a public seat to camp out in. For my trip, I decided to try out the Sleeping Pod option; the Pod are seats (that give off airline business class vibes) in a separate room and include dedicated charging outlets and access to showers without having to pay for a shared or private cabin. This perfectly suited my needs going to Shetland, but it had me wishing for a private cabin on my return home. Each of the trips were overnight—roughly 7pm to 7am, with boarding and disembarking adding an hour or so the trip

BON VOYAGE

Getting to ferry is quite easy. The NorthLink terminal is in the heart of Aberdeen, just a few minutes walk away from Union Station. The quay is also not far from where I was staying at the Residence Inn Aberdeen, so I knew that I could get to the hotel in time for their full, hot continental breakfast when I got back. On board there is a café that offers full meals as well as a bar and sundry shop with smaller snacks. If you don’t feel like eating the food onboard, or you have special dietary requirements, you can do as I did and bring food onboard with you. I elected to eat before I boarded then bought some snacks at the M&S next to my hotel. Boarding was a smooth experience despite there being a lot of people (I can’t speak for boarding with a car) and I managed to find the Pod room pretty quickly. The trip itself was very smooth—the waters between mainland Scotland and the northern islands have the ability and reputation of being pretty temperamental. As smooth as the crossing was, there wasn’t a whole lot to do to keep a solo traveller occupied; I don’t like casinos//to gamble and the “cinema” onboard was out of order. Luckily, I tend to have a supply of TV shows and movies downloaded to my phone and there was free Wi-Fi onboard so I could text family back in the States until I fell asleep. There is an outdoor seating area on the top deck, where I hung out as we left Aberdeen Harbour.

Reaching [main]land & Peerie Stop for Breakfast

Since we sailed into Lerwick and disembarked by 8am, I did some last minute research to find a local place to get breakfast. Thanks to Google and TripAdvisor, I found the Peerie Shop and Cafe (4.5 out of 5 stars) on the main street not far from the harbour. The small and charming cafe lives up to the name and hype—“peerie” means small in the Shetland dialect. In addition to really good coffee and delicious food, the cafe is very eco-conscious. They only sell drinks in glass or aluminum cans and don’t use plastic straws. When I asked if I could refill my water bottle before I left, the barista was very willing to oblige and even asked if I wanted ice or lemon, etc. in it. If the awesome staff wasn’t already enough of a selling point, following the cafe’s daily soup updates on IG is enough to make me hungry ESPECIALLY when they make Cullen Skink (still on the hunt for that). Once I filled up on food, I went around to the front and checked out their shop which sells high quality souvenirs and locally-made gifts; they even have a nice selection of books in the back. I wanted to buy the Shetland cookbook but it was hardback and heavy. This has to be one of my favorite little shops on Earth. I didn’t want to leave, alas, I had to make my way to Scalloway.

Getting around Mainland without your own car is quite easy. In addition to plenty of ferry services to other isles and towns, there is a regular bus service to villages//settlements as close as Scalloway and as far as Cullivoe on the northern isle of Yell, with fares under £5 each way. Because Scalloway is a 20ish minute trip, my round trip fare was under £4.

the [literal] keys to the castle

Once I got to Scalloway, I had to stop by the Scalloway Hotel and grab my keys. Not the keys one would normally get from a front desk agent, but the keys to a 17th century scheduled monument, Scalloway Castle. Now, as a cultural heritage professional that has worked in collections management, I honestly thought the Historic Environments Scotland website had been hacked when I read that in order to access the normally locked—and not staffed—castle, one had to stop by one of two places in Scalloway that had the public key. I don’t think I’ve heard of any museum or historic site that allows people to do that but…Scotland. It’s awesome. When I got the the castle there were already a few other people there so my moment to pretend I was unlocking and walking into my own private castle was taken away. On the other hand, I didn’t have to be worried about walking to a cavernous stone building alone.

Scalloway Castle

Scalloway Castle was built in 1600 by a local persona non grata, Patrick Stewart, 2nd Earl of Orkney and Shetland. This isn’t the universally adored actor & Pittie advocate; but a cruel man (and illegitimate first cousin of Mary, Queen of Scots) who was later imprisoned and executed in Edinburgh for treason. After the Earl was shipped off to prison and the local assembly (“Thing”) stopped using the building for meetings, the castle fell into disrepair; it still served the the community into the 20th century when it was used as a munitions store during WWII. The castle today is a lovely place to visit—it’s in the middle of town (you won’t need a map, just walk towards the tallest old building you can see), and even though there are no interpretive staff present there are plenty of interpretive panels//waysides to give you an overview of the history of the building. IF you still have questions, the lovely docents at the neighboring Scalloway Museum would be very happy to answer them.

Scalloway Museum

If you saw my last post recommending museums to see in 2020, you already saw my love for the Scalloway Museum. It is a great, lovely, charming, informative, small museum. The docent I met was so happy to be there and got really excited that I came to Scalloway on my own from Aberdeen to see the castle and museum. There are a lot of tour groups in Shetland during summer. He made an effort to find something interesting about every visitor that walked in the door—I LOVE LOVE to find people like that in museums. Scalloway Museum is also very proud of its role in the Shetland Bus, which is the code name for a network of [fishing] boats that shuttled money, supplies, and resistance fighters to and from their native Norway during the Nazi Occupation. This was far from the first time Norwegians took up residence in Shetland; the Islands, as well as the Orkneys, were officially part of Scandinavia until the early 15th century. Vikings settled during there during their heyday (essentially kicking out the Picts) and the islands remained a part of the Nordic world until they were given to Scotland as a dowry for a Danish princess. Today, the Norse heritage is evident in street names (Anyone fancy a flat on King Erik or Olaf Street?) and their iconic annual Up Helly Aa festival. For hundreds of years, they spoke their own Norse language. When I tried to describe Shetland to my mum all I could come up with was, “It’s like Iceland or Norway…. with a Scottish accent”.

The Scalloway Museum also has exhibits on many other important parts of local life: cod//herring fishing, whaling, boatbuilding, sheep farming, and knitting. In addition to discussing the importance of knitted goods to local life, one can buy locally knitted goods in the museum store. I did and it’s now one of my prized possessions. I also love now being a part of a long tradition of selling knitwear to visitors; local women would sell their creations to fishermen from the Netherlands and other countries that spent the herring season on and around the Islands and needed gear that would keep them warm. Knitted goods, for over a century, were used in a “truck system” that meant local women could provide merchants with finished and sellable clothing in exchange for sundry goods like grain and materials*. Fair Isle, for which the iconic sweaters are named, is a part of the Shetlands.

Backtracking to Lerwick

Shetland Museum and Archives

As much as I enjoyed Scalloway, and really wanted to explore longer, I wanted to explore Lerwick a bit more before I had to go back to the ferry. Once I returned to the bus stop where I started my cross-island adventure, I made my way over to the Shetland Museum and Archives. The Museum is located at Hay’s Dock which was once home to boats and sheds with equipment for a life at sea, and the space to cure what food was brought up from the depths. Inside, the Museum curates and interprets thousands of years of history, including an insane amount of maritime history. Obviously the collection ultimately interprets life on an archipelago, but even then, the amount of maritime history is striking to me. If I were to go through all of the interesting, fascinating, and remotely maritime-related material on display, I would have to turn this into multiple blogs. Maybe I should have. I’m still learning.

What I really enjoyed about the museum was they created a space that, despite the amount of information and objects, flowed and neither felt overwhelming or closed off nor too open to the point that you’re not quite sure where you should go. They arranged the exhibits chronologically, but within the “eras” created thematic vignettes that allow visitors to almost deep-dive into that era. After a few hours and a pit stop for tea in the café, I ended my visit at the museum store and boat shed. The museum store was definitely what I look for in a great museum store; so many products that relate to//are inspired by the collection and they have a great selection of local books. Again, super friendly and curious staff. I would have bought way more than I did if I had the space to take back to the States. As I mentioned before, the Islands have a very strong boat building tradition, and the Museum continues that tradition in their Boat Shed, also at Hay’s Dock. More recently, the Museum built the Vaila Mae, a replica of a sixareen that can sometimes be seen in the Harbour. A “sixareen” is a Shetlandic clinker-built yoal that originated in Norway.

More Local Foods

Following the same process of getting ready for a 12 hour ferry that I did in Aberdeen, I stopped to get dinner and some snacks before I boarded the ferry. This time, I didn’t have the ability to cook in my hotel room so I stopped at The Happy Haddock, to get fish (haddock) and chips. Normally, if you ask for fish and chips and don’t care about the species you’re about to eat, they get your meal out pretty quick HOWEVER, I wanted fish that hadn’t been sitting in a warming display so asked for Haddock (which I really love) . So I had to wait a bit for my meal. But the wait was worth it. It was hot, the fish batter crispy, the chips were perfect size to soak up [a probably really unhealthy amount of] malt vinegar, even after I first went to the COOP for snacks and boarded the ferry—because I decided to eat on the top deck.

BON VOYAGE, again

The trip from Lerwick to Aberdeen was very much as the trip north, same Pod Room, same vessel (the M/V Hjaltland, the Norse name for Sheltand) and same cinema still out of order. The only thing about the trip back was that it was not as quiet this time around. On the way up people seems to be very conscious that they were around others and that maybe being loud would be annoying (you know, basic manners) but not this time around. There was a man and his sons? nephews? whatevers? that were incredibly loud and spent the first couple of hours shouting in conversations on their speakerphones and playing YouTube videos//bad audio recordings. At some point in the night, once it was finally quiet enough to sleep, they came in shouting and stumbling (from I guess the bar?). I was so tired I kind of started crying and almost went to the front desk to ask if I could upgrade to a different cabin but somehow I went back to sleep. The next morning I was up within seconds of the ship-wide courtesy alarm, packed and out of the Pod Room before my neighbors became more annoying.

Hame! (HOME!)

As much as I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT want to leave Shetland, I was very very grateful when the M/V Hjaltland docked at Jamiesons Quay in Aberdeen. My night obviously was not what I hoped for after long, windy, and very sunny day. I got back to my hotel in record time, sat down long enough to enjoy my hotel’s breakfast, then rocketed up to my room to shower and finally get some sound sleep. It took about 12 hours before I started missing Shetland.

Downsides:

-Oh my gosh my neighbors were loud. Honestly, it was the worst part of my trip.

-I didn’t get to stay longer. There were more things in Scotland I wanted to see and I had about a week and a half left to do it.

-I may have caught a cold. Maybe it was from being in a confined space with many other people, but all I know is I went to Glasgow a couple of days later and my friend had to drive me to the train station earlier than planned so I could go home and be miserable in “my own bed”. The week I had left was pretty much me watching a lot of TV. I also saw “Rocketman” twice because the cinema was as far as I could walk without being exhausted. Foodora became my friend.

UPsides:

-Pretty much everything. I loved it. It was awesome.

-I REALLY LUCKED OUT WITH THE WEATHER. It was mostly sunny, not too warm, the seas were so calm.

-Shetlanders are just nice. Not weirdly sticky sweet, just enthusiastic to see outsiders interested in their home but respectful of distance.

-The food is awesome. It’s fresh and simple. And affordable.

I can.not. wait to go back

I hope that I can visit Shetland again soon. It’s such a unique place (about as unique as the Scotland’s national animal) and one that embraces the culture forged by cross-cultural interactions and by it’s remote location. Shetlanders are all about the sea and life on//near water; they do not let it limit their access to the rest of the world and they make being surrounded by it work for them. They have managed to live for hundreds of years with what they can harvest from the North Sea//Atlantic Ocean and what little is available from land… nowadays, one can access much more from further abroad relatively easily but they still keep their past alive. Shetland is authentic. Granted, that authenticity may also include a curmudgeonly local elder yelling at tourists (I mean, there has to be one, right?) but they’re authentic about it. Apparently, there is no place on the archipelago that is more than 2-3km from the sea. It shows. I want to go back. I want to stay. I need to, there is a “Maritime Heritage” travel brochure that tells me there are about a million sites calling my name, it may take awhile. Thanks, Shetland!

Has anyone been to Sheltand? Is there anything I need to see on my next trip? Anything else you’re curious about?

Additional Sources

Chapman, Roslyn. “Truck and Barter: Knitting for Nothing but Goods.” 60 North, 2018.