Shetland

Many maps plonk the Shetland Islands in a box somewhere off Aberdeen, but in fact they're a lot closer to Bergen in Norway than Edinburgh. The Shetland landscape is a product of the struggle between rock and the forces of water and ice that have, over millennia, tried to break it to pieces. Smoothed by the last glaciation, the surviving land has been exposed to the most violent weather experienced in the British Isles. In winter, gales are routine and Shetlanders take even the occasional hurricane in their stride, marking a calm fine day as "a day atween weathers". There are some good spells of dry, sunny weather from May to September, but it's the "simmer dim", the twilight which lingers through the small hours at this latitude, which makes Shetland summers so memorable; in June especially, the northern sky is an unfinished sunset of blue and burnished copper.

People have lived in Shetland since prehistoric times, certainly from about 3500 BC, and the islands display spectacular remains. For six centuries they were part of the Norse empire which brought together Sweden, Denmark and Norway. In 1469, Shetland followed Orkney in being mortgaged to Scotland, King Christian I of Norway being unable to raise the dowry for the marriage of his daughter, Margaret, to King James III. The Scottish king annexed Shetland in 1472 and the mortgage was never redeemed. Though Shetland retained links with other North Sea communities, religious and administrative practice gradually became Scottish, and mainland lairds set about grabbing what land and power they could. Later, especially in rural Shetland, the economy fell increasingly into the hands of merchant lairds; they controlled the fish trade and the tenants who supplied it through a system of truck, or forced barter.

During the two world wars, Shetland's role as gatekeeper between the North Sea and North Atlantic meant that the defence of the islands and control of the seas around them were critical. With a rebirth of the local economy in the 1960s, Shetland was able to claim, in the following decade, that the oil industry needed the islands more than they needed it. Careful negotiation, backed up by pioneering local legislation, produced a substantial income from oil which has been reinvested in the community. However, it's clear that the oil boom days are over, and the islanders are having to think afresh how to carve out a living in the new millennium.

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