The preserved ruins of a wheelhouse and broch at Jarlshof, described as "one of the most remarkable archaeological sites ever excavated in the British Isles".
Due to building in stone on virtually treeless islands—a practice dating to at least the early Neolithic Period—Shetland is extremely rich in physical remains of the prehistoric era, and there are over 5,000 archaeological sites.[2] A midden site at West Voe on the south coast of Mainland, dated to 4320–4030 BCE, has provided the first evidence of Mesolithic human activity in Shetland.[3][4]
Overview of the distribution of "brochs", showing those in the Shetland isles
The same site provides dates for early Neolithic activity, and finds at Scourd of Brouster in Walls have been dated to 3400 BC.[Note 1] "Shetland knives" are stone tools that date from this period made from felsite from Northmavine.[6]
Brochs were built in Shetland until 150-200 CE: in the case of Old Scatness in Shetland (near Jarlshof), brochs were sometimes located close to arable land and a source of water (some have wells or natural springs rising within their central space).[7] Sometimes, on the other hand, they were sited in wilderness areas (e.g. Levenwick and Culswick in main Shetland). Brochs are often built beside the sea and sometimes they are on islands in lochs (e.g. Clickimin in Shetland).
The Romans were aware of (and probably circumnavigated, seeing in the distance Thule according to Tacitus) the Orkney & Shetland Islands, which they called "Orcades", where they discovered the brochs. A "king of the Orcades" was one of the 11 rulers said to have paid tribute to Claudius following his invasion of Britain in AD43. Indeed some 4th and 5th century sources include these islands in a Roman province.[8]
Archaeological evidence suggests that the Romans only traded with the inhabitants, perhaps through intermediaries, no signs of clear occupation have been found. But, according to scholars like Montesanti, "Orkney and Shetland might have been one of those areas that suggest direct administration by Imperial Roman procurators, at least for a very short span of time".
Evidence for the language spoken in Shetland immediately before Norse colonization (c. 650 to 800 CE) is limited. Katherine Forsyth (2020) suggests that such evidence, including the island name Yell and a number of names and words found on inscriptions such those at Lunnasting and St Ninian's Isle, indicates the presence of a Celtic language of the Brittonic branch.[9]
Viking expansion
Harald Fairhair took control of Hjaltland in ca 875. The image is from the Icelandic manuscript Flateyjarbók from the 15th century.
Shetland was colonised by Norsemen in the 9th century, the fate of the existing indigenous population being uncertain. The colonists gave it that name and established their laws and language. That language evolved into the West Nordic language Norn, which survived into the 19th century.
After Harald Fairhair took control of all Norway, many of his opponents fled, some to Orkney and Shetland. From the Northern Isles they continued to raid Scotland and Norway, prompting Harald to raise a large fleet which he sailed to the islands. In about 875 he and his forces took control of Shetland and Orkney. Ragnvald, Earl of Møre received Orkney and Shetland as an earldom from the king as reparation for his son's being killed in battle in Scotland. Ragnvald gave the earldom to his brother Sigurd the Mighty.
Shetland was Christianised in the late tenth and eleventh centuries due to pressure from the Norwegian kings, especially Olaf Tryggvason.
Conflict with Norway
In 1194 when king Sverre Sigurdsson (ca 1145–1202) ruled Norway and Harald Maddadsson was Earl of Orkney and Shetland, the Lendmann Hallkjell Jonsson and the Earl's brother-in-law Olav raised an army called the eyjarskeggjar on Orkney and sailed for Norway. Their pretender king was Olav's young foster son Sigurd, son of king Magnus Erlingsson. The eyjarskeggjar were beaten in the Battle of Florvåg near Bergen. The body of Sigurd Magnusson was displayed for the king in Bergen in order for him to be sure of the death of his enemy, but he also demanded that Harald Maddadsson (Harald jarl) answer for his part in the uprising. In 1195 the earl sailed to Norway to reconcile with King Sverre. As a punishment the king placed the earldom of Shetland under the direct rule of the king, from which it was probably never returned.
Håkon Håkonsson and Skule Bårdsson depicted in the Icelandic manuscript Flateyjarbók from the 14th centuryAn inaccurate map of Shetland from the Carta Marina of 1529
When Alexander III of Scotland turned twenty-one in 1262 and became of age, he declared his intention of continuing the aggressive policy his father had begun towards the western and northern isles. This had been put on hold when his father had died thirteen years earlier. Alexander sent a formal demand to the Norwegian King Håkon Håkonsson.
After decades of civil war, Norway had achieved stability and grown to be a substantial nation with influence in Europe and the potential to be a powerful force in war. With this as a background, King Håkon rejected all demands from the Scots. The Norwegians regarded all the islands in the North Sea as part of the Norwegian realm. To add weight to his answer, King Håkon activated the leidang and set off from Norway in a fleet which is said to have been the largest ever assembled in Norway. The fleet met up in Breideyarsund in Shetland (probably today's Bressay Sound) before the king and his men sailed for Scotland and made landfall on Arran. The aim was to conduct negotiations with the army as a backup.
Alexander III drew out the negotiations while he patiently waited for the autumn storms to set in. Finally, after tiresome diplomatic talks, King Håkon lost his patience and decided to attack. At the same time a large storm set in which destroyed several of his ships and kept others from making landfall. The Battle of Largs in October 1263 was not decisive and both parties claimed victory, but King Håkon Håkonsson's position was hopeless. On 5 October, he returned to Orkney with a discontented army, and there he died of a fever on 17 December 1263. His death halted any further Norwegian expansion in Scotland.
King Magnus Lagabøte broke with his father's expansion policy and started negotiations with Alexander III. In the Treaty of Perth of 1266 he surrendered his furthest Norwegian possessions including Man and the Sudreyar (Hebrides) to Scotland in return for 4,000 marks sterling and an annuity of 100 marks. The Scots also recognised Norwegian sovereignty over Orkney and Shetland.
One of the main reasons behind the Norwegian desire for peace with Scotland was that trade with England was suffering from the constant state of war. In the new trade agreement between England and Norway in 1223 the English demanded Norway make peace with Scotland. In 1269, this agreement was expanded to include mutual free trade.
In the 14th century Norway still treated Orkney and Shetland as a Norwegian province, but Scottish influence was growing, and in 1379 the Scottish earl Henry Sinclair took control of Orkney on behalf of the Norwegian king Håkon VI Magnusson.[11] In 1384 Norway was severely weakened by the Black Plague and in 1397 it entered the Kalmar Union. With time Norway came increasingly under Danish control. King Christian I of Denmark and Norway was in financial trouble and, when his daughter Margaret became engaged to James III of Scotland in 1468, he needed money to pay her dowry. Under Norse udal law, the king had no overall ownership of the land in the realm as in the Scottish feudal system. He was king of his people, rather than king of the land. What the king did not personally own was owned absolutely by others. The King's lands represented only a small part of Shetland.[12] Apparently without the knowledge of the Norwegian Riksråd (Council of the Realm) he entered into a commercial contract on 8 September 1468 with the King of Scots in which he pawned his personal interests in Orkney for 50,000 Rhenish guilders.[13] On 28 May the next year he also pawned his Shetland interests for 8,000 Rhenish guilders.[14] He secured a clause in the contract which gave Christian or his successors the right to redeem the islands[15] for a fixed sum of 210 kilograms (460lb) of gold or 2,310 kilograms (5,090lb) of silver. There was an obligation to retain the language and laws of Norway, which was not only implicit in the pawning document, but is acknowledged in later correspondence between James III and King Christian's son John (Hans).[16] In 1470 William Sinclair, 1st Earl of Caithness ceded his title to James III and on 20 February 1472, the Northern Isles were directly annexed to the Crown of Scotland.[17]
James and his successors fended off all attempts by the Danes to redeem them (by formal letter or by special embassies were made in 1549, 1550, 1558, 1560, 1585, 1589, 1640, 1660 and other intermediate years) not by contesting the validity of the claim, but by simply avoiding the issue.[18]
Hansa era
From the early 15th century on the Shetlanders sold their goods through the Hanseatic League of German merchantmen. The Hansa would buy shiploads of salted fish, wool and butter and import salt, cloth, beer and other goods. The late 16th century and early 17th century was dominated by the influence of the despotic Robert Stewart, Earl of Orkney, who was granted the islands by his half-sister Mary Queen of Scots, and his son Patrick. The latter commenced the building of Scalloway Castle, but after his execution in 1609 the Crown annexed Orkney and Shetland again until 1643 when Charles I granted them to William Douglas, 7th Earl of Morton. These rights were held on and off by the Mortons until 1766, when they were sold by James Douglas, 14th Earl of Morton to Sir Laurence Dundas.[19][20]
British era
The trade with the North German towns lasted until the Act of Union 1707 prohibited the German merchants from trading with Shetland. Shetland then went into an economic depression as the Scottish and local traders were not as skilled in trading with salted fish. However, some local merchant-lairds took up where the German merchants had left off, and fitted out their own ships to export fish from Shetland to the Continent. For the independent farmers of Shetland this had negative consequences, as they now had to fish for these merchant-lairds.[21] With the passing of the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 the Liberal prime minister William Ewart Gladstone emancipated crofters from the rule of the landlords. The Act enabled those who had effectively been landowners' serfs to become owner-occupiers of their own small farms.[22][23]
During the 200 years after the pawning, the islands were passed back and forth fourteen times between the Crown and courtiers as a means of extracting income. Laws were changed, weights and measures altered and the language suppressed, a process historians now call "feudalisation" as a means by which Shetland became incorporated into Scotland, particularly during the 17th century. The term is a nonsense because a feudal charter requires ownership by the Crown[24] – ownership it has never had and has never openly claimed to have had. As late as the 20th century the courts declared that no land in Shetland was under feudal tenure.[25]
The Crown might have thought that by prescription (the passage of time) it gave them ownership necessary to give out feudal charters, grants, or licences. It certainly behaved that way. Nevertheless, this was proved wrong by the Treaty of Breda (1667). Its direct concern was the redistribution of colonial lands throughout the world after the second Anglo-Dutch war. It was signed by ‘the plenipotentiaries of Europe’ – delegations having full government power.
The Danish delegation tried to have a clause inserted to have the islands returned without delay. Because the overall treaty was too important to Charles II he eventually conceded that the original marriage document still stood, that his and previous monarchs' actions in granting out the islands under feudal charters were illegal.
In 1669 Charles II passed the Orkney and Shetland Act 1669, restoring the situation much as it had been in 1469. He abolished the office of sheriff and "erected Shetland into a Stewartry", having "a direct dependence upon His Majesty and his officers" (what today we would today call a Crown Dependency)[Note 2]. Charles II also provided that, in the event of a "general dissolution of his majesty's properties" by which he clearly meant the Act of Union, Shetland was not to be included. Shetland could not be incorporated into the realm of Scotland or the proposed new union with England. The terms of the marriage document also meant that any acts of Parliament before or after the pawning could have had no relevance to Shetland.
With the consent of Parliament, Charles was taking the exclusive rights to the islands back to the Crown for all time coming. Furthermore, he was specifically excluding Shetland from the coming Act of Union, even going so far as to say that the Act of Union itself would be null and void if Shetland were to be included.
Several attempts were made[who?] during the 17th and 18th centuries to redeem the islands, without success.[26] Following a legal dispute with William, Earl of Morton, who held the estates of Orkney and Shetland, Charles II ratified the pawning document by a Scottish Act of Parliament on 27 December 1669 which officially made the islands a Crown dependency and exempt from any "dissolution of His Majesty’s lands". In 1742 a further Act of Parliament[which?] returned the estates to a later Earl of Morton, although the original Act of Parliament specifically ruled that any future act regarding the islands status would be "considered null, void and of no effect".
Nonetheless, Shetland's connection with Norway has proven to be enduring. When the union between Norway and Sweden ended in 1906 the Shetland authorities sent a letter to King Haakon VII in which they stated: "Today no 'foreign' flag is more familiar or more welcome in our voes and havens than that of Norway, and Shetlanders continue to look upon Norway as their mother-land, and recall with pride and affection the time when their forefathers were under the rule of the Kings of Norway."[27]
During World War II a Norwegian naval unit nicknamed the "Shetland Bus" was established by the Special Operations Executive Norwegian Section in the autumn of 1940 with a base first at Lunna and later in Scalloway in order to conduct operations on the coast of Norway. About 30 fishing vessels used by Norwegian refugees were gathered in Shetland. Many of these vessels were rented, and Norwegian fishermen were recruited as volunteers to operate them.
The Shetland Bus sailed in covert operations between Norway and Shetland, carrying men from Company Linge, intelligence agents, refugees, instructors for the resistance, and military supplies. Many people on the run from the Germans, and much important information on German activity in Norway, were brought back to the Allies this way. Some mines were laid and direct action against German ships was also taken. At the start the unit was under a British command, but later Norwegians joined in the command.
The fishing vessels made 80 trips across the sea. German attacks and bad weather caused the loss of 10 boats, 44 crewmen, and 60 refugees. Because of the high losses it was decided to procure faster vessels. The Americans gave the unit the use of three submarine chasers (HNoMS Hessa, HNoMS Hitra and HNoMS Vigra). None of the trips with these vessels incurred loss of life or equipment.[29]
The Shetland Bus made over 200 trips across the sea and the most famous of the men, Leif Andreas Larsen (Shetlands-Larsen) made 52 of them.[30]
Historical, archaeological, place-name and linguistic evidence indicates Norse cultural dominance of Shetland during the Viking period.[31] A few place names might have Pictish origin, but this is disputed. Several genetic studies have been conducted investigating the genetic makeup of the islands' population today in order to establish its origin. Shetlanders are less than half Scandinavian in origin. They have almost identical proportions of Scandinavian matrilineal and patrilineal ancestry (ca 44%), suggesting that the islands were settled by both men and women, as seems to have been the case in Orkney and the northern and western coastline of Scotland, but areas of the British Isles further away from Scandinavia show signs of being colonised primarily by males who found local wives.[32] After the islands were transferred to Scotland thousands of Scots families emigrated to Shetland in the 16th and 17th centuries. Contacts with Germany and the Netherlands through the fishing trade brought smaller numbers of immigrants from those countries. World War II and the oil industry have also brought about population growth through immigration.[21]
Population development
This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(December 2020)
The population development in Shetland has through history been affected by deaths at sea and epidemics. Smallpox afflicted the islands in the 17th and 18th centuries, but as inoculations pioneered by those such as Johnnie Notions came into widespread use the population was able to grow more quickly.[33] By 1861 the population increased to 40,000. The population increase led to a lack of food, and many young men went away to serve in the British merchant fleet. By 100 years later the islands' population had been more than halved, mainly due to many Shetland men being lost at sea during the two world wars, and the waves of emigration in the 1920s and 1930s. Now more people of Shetland background live in Canada, Australia and New Zealand than in Shetland.
Orkney, also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago off the north coast of mainland Scotland. The plural name the Orkneys is also sometimes used, but is now considered incorrect. Part of the Northern Isles along with Shetland, Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north of Caithness and has about 70 islands, of which 20 are inhabited. The largest island, the Mainland, has an area of 523 square kilometres (202 sq mi), making it the sixth-largest Scottish island and the tenth-largest island in the British Isles. Orkney's largest settlement, and also its administrative centre, is Kirkwall.
Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands, is an archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands, and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom.
The Orkneyinga saga is a narrative of the history of the Orkney and Shetland islands and their relationship with other local polities, particularly Norway and Scotland. The saga has "no parallel in the social and literary record of Scotland" and is "the only medieval chronicle to have Orkney as the central place of action". The main focus of the work is the line of jarls who ruled the Earldom of Orkney, which constituted the Norðreyjar or Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland and there are frequent references to both archipelagoes throughout.
Papa Stour is one of the Shetland Islands in Scotland, with a population of under fifteen people, some of whom immigrated after an appeal for residents in the 1970s. Located to the west of mainland Shetland and with an area of 828 hectares, Papa Stour is the ninth largest island in Shetland. Erosion of the soft volcanic rocks by the sea has created an extraordinary variety of caves, stacks, arches, blowholes, and cliffs. The island and its surrounding seas harbour diverse populations of wildlife. The west side of the island is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and the seas around the island are a Special Area of Conservation.
The Northern Isles are a chain of islands of Scotland, located off the north coast of the Scottish mainland. The climate is cool and temperate and highly influenced by the surrounding seas. There are two main island groups: Shetland and Orkney. There are a total of 36 inhabited islands, with the fertile agricultural islands of Orkney contrasting with the more rugged Shetland islands to the north, where the economy is more dependent on fishing and the oil wealth of the surrounding seas. Both archipelagos have a developing renewable energy industry. They share a common Pictish and Norse history, and were part of the Kingdom of Norway before being absorbed into the Kingdom of Scotland in the 15th century. The islands played a significant naval role during the world wars of the 20th century.
Jarlshof is the best-known prehistoric archaeological site in Shetland, Scotland. It lies in Sumburgh, Mainland, Shetland and has been described as "one of the most remarkable archaeological sites ever excavated in the British Isles". It contains remains dating from 2500 BC up to the 17th century AD.
The Treaty of Perth, signed 2 July 1266, ended military conflict between Magnus the Lawmender of Norway and Alexander III of Scotland over possession of the Hebrides and the Isle of Man.
Humans have inhabited Orkney, an archipelago in the north of Scotland, for about 8,800 years: Archeological evidence dates from Mesolithic times. Scandinavian clans dominated the area from the 8th century CE, using the islands as a base for further incursions. In the late 15th century the archipelago became part of Scotland.
St Magnus Cathedral dominates the skyline of Kirkwall, the main town of Orkney, a group of islands off the north coast of mainland Scotland. Originally Roman Catholic, it is the oldest cathedral in Scotland and the most northerly cathedral in the United Kingdom - a fine example of Romanesque architecture built when the islands were ruled by the Norse Earls of Orkney. Today it is owned not by any church, but by the burgh of Kirkwall as a result of an act of King James III of Scotland following Orkney's annexation by the Scottish Crown in 1468.
The Earldom of Orkney was a Norse territory ruled by the earls of Orkney from the ninth century until 1472. It was founded during the Viking Age by Viking raiders and settlers from Scandinavia. In the ninth and tenth centuries it covered the Northern Isles (Norðreyjar) of Orkney and Shetland, as well as Caithness and Sutherland on the mainland. It was a dependent territory of the Kingdom of Norway until 1472, when it was absorbed into the Kingdom of Scotland. Originally, the title of Jarl or Earl of Orkney was heritable.
Thorfinn Sigurdsson, also known as Thorfinn the Mighty, was an 11th-century Jarl of Orkney. He was the youngest of five sons of Jarl Sigurd Hlodvirsson and the only one resulting from Sigurd's marriage to a daughter of Malcolm II of Scotland. He ruled alone as jarl for about a third of the time that he held the title and jointly with one or more of his brothers or with his nephew Rögnvald Brusason for the remainder. Thorfinn married Ingibiorg Finnsdottir, daughter of Finn Arnesson, Jarl of Halland.
Sigurd Hlodvirsson, popularly known as Sigurd the Stout from the Old Norse Sigurðr digri, was an Earl of Orkney. The main sources for his life are the Norse Sagas, which were first written down some two centuries or more after his death. These engaging stories must therefore be treated with caution rather than as reliable historical documents.
Haakon Paulsson was a Norwegian jarl who ruled the earldom of Orkney together with his cousin Magnus Erlendsson from 1105 to 1123. Their lives and times are recounted in the Orkneyinga saga, which was first written down in the early 13th century by an unknown Icelandic author.
Orcadians, also known as Orkneymen, are an ethnic group native to the Orkney Islands, who speak an Orcadian dialect of the Scots language, a West Germanic language, and share a common history, culture and ancestry. Speaking Norn, a native North Germanic language into the 19th or 20th century, Orcadians descend significantly from North Germanic peoples, with around a third of their ancestry derived from Scandinavia, including a majority of their patrilineal line. According to anthropological study, the Orcadian ethnic composition is similar to that of Icelandic people; a comparable islander ethnicity of North Germanic origin.
The Orkney and Shetland Act 1669 was an act of Parliament passed by the Parliament of Scotland to establish Orkney and Shetland's status as Crown Dependencies following a legal dispute with William Douglas, 9th Earl of Morton, who held the estates of Orkney and Shetland.
Prehistoric Shetland refers to the prehistoric period of the Shetland archipelago of Scotland, when it was first occupied by humans. The period prior to human settlement in Shetland is known as the geology of Scotland. Prehistory in Shetland does not end until the beginning of the Early Medieval Period in Scotland, around AD 600. More than 5,000 archaeological sites have been recorded in the Shetland Islands.
Scandinavian Scotland was the period from the 8th to the 15th centuries during which Vikings and Norse settlers, mainly Norwegians and to a lesser extent other Scandinavians, and their descendants colonised parts of what is now the periphery of modern Scotland. Viking influence in the area commenced in the late 8th century, and hostility between the Scandinavian earls of Orkney and the emerging thalassocracy of the Kingdom of the Isles, the rulers of Ireland, Dál Riata and Alba, and intervention by the crown of Norway were recurring themes.
St Magnus Bay is a large coastal feature in the north-west of Mainland Shetland, Scotland. Roughly circular in shape with a diameter of about 19 kilometres (12 mi), it is open to the North Atlantic Ocean to the west. The indented coastline to the north, south and east between Esha Ness in the north and the Ness of Melby in the south contains numerous bays, firths and voes and there are several islands around the perimeter. The waters of the bay are up to 165 metres (541 ft) deep and may have been the site of a substantial meteor impact.
The island groups of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles are all currently regions of Scotland. Their constitutional status has periodically been discussed, for example during the Scottish independence referendum campaign. Currently, they are council areas with the same constitutional status as the other 29 local government areas. The three island councils are the only local authorities among the 32 in the country where independent councillors form a majority.
The term Norwegian Realm and Old Kingdom of Norway refer to the Kingdom of Norway's peak of power at the 13th century after a long period of civil war before 1240. The kingdom was a loosely unified nation including the territory of modern-day Norway, modern-day Swedish territory of Jämtland, Herjedalen, Ranrike (Bohuslän) and Idre and Särna, as well as Norway's overseas possessions which had been settled by Norwegian seafarers for centuries before being annexed or incorporated into the kingdom as 'tax territories'. To the North, Norway also bordered extensive tax territories on the mainland. Norway, whose expansionism starts from the very foundation of the Kingdom in 872, reached the peak of its power in the years between 1240 and 1319.
References
Notes
↑ The Scord of Brouster site includes a cluster of six or seven walled fields and three stone circular houses that contains the earliest hoe-blades found so far in Scotland.[5]
↑ The Isle of Man is a Crown Dependency. It is one of Her Majesty’s personal dominions, not subject to Acts of the UK Parliament. In Shetland, because it is only in the position of having trusteeship, the Crown has an even weaker hold than it has in the Isle of Man, so a new description would have to be invented.
↑ Fleming (2005) p. 47 quoting Clarke, P.A. (1995) Observations of Social Change in Prehistoric Orkney and Shetland based on a Study of the Types and Context of Coarse Stone Artefacts. M. Litt. thesis. University of Glasgow.
↑ Forsyth, Katherine - Protecting a Pict?: Further thoughts on the inscribed silver chape from St Ninian’s Isle, Shetland. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (2020) p. 11
↑ No original is known to exist: transcript in British Library, Royal Mss., 18.B.vi, p.13. Latin. Printed in NgL, 2nd series, ii, no. 116; based on the translation of B.E. Crawford, ‘The earldom of Orkney and lordship of Shetland: a reinterpretation of their pledging to Scotland in 1468–70’, in Saga-Book, xvii, 1966–69, pp.175–76
↑ Macdougall, Norman (1982). James III: a political study. J. Donald. p.91. ISBN978-0-85976-078-2. Retrieved 19 February 2012. What James III had acquired from Earl William in return for this compensation was the comital rights in Orkney and Shetland. He already held a wadset of the royal rights; and to ensure his complete control, he referred the matter to parliament. On 20 February 1472 the three estates approved the annexation of Orkney and Shetland to the crown...
↑ Gilbert Goudie, The Danish Claims upon Orkney and Shetland, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. 21 p. 245
↑ McLean, Duncan (20 September 1998) "Getting on the Map". London. The Independent. Retrieved 12 October 2008.
↑ McNeil - Common Law Aboriginal Title, p. 139: "If the Crown grants land where it has neither title nor possession, the grant is simply void." - p. 82: "In common law, if the king was not in possession, he could not grant." - p.93: "For the Crown to be in possession of land its title in most cases must appear as a matter of record." Stair - The Laws of Scotland, Vol 24, p.202: "There can be no proper feudal holding that does not flow from the Crown."
↑ Lord Johnson, Lord Advocat v. Balfour, 1907. SC 1360 at 1368.
Coull, James R. "A comparison of demographic trends in the Faroe and Shetland Islands." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (1967): 159–166.
Miller, James. The North Atlantic Front: Orkney, Shetland, Faroe and Iceland at War (2004)
Nicolson, James R. (1972) Shetland. Newton Abbott. David & Charles.
Schei, Liv Kjørsvik (2006) The Shetland Isles. Grantown-on-Spey. Colin Baxter Photography. ISBN978-1-84107-330-9
Withrington, Donald J. Shetland and the outside world, 1469–1969. Oxford Univ Pr, 1983.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
