The Celtic Viking Islands | Shetland Language, Culture & Norse History

head north as far as you can go in Britain when you hit the North Shores of Scotland keep going 150 Mi further to the UK's last Solid Ground between Britain and the Arctic 5 months of cycling and over 4,6 600 km on the road and here we were on the edge of the world this is Shetland home to 23,000 people and it feels wild up here the most blurred the line between civilization and Wilderness can get in the [Music] UK [Music] after weeks of trying to outrun it winter had caught up with us and the conditions would get brutal it was bitterly cold but there was a mesmerizing harsh Beauty in these Windswept islands where the remnants of Viking Heritage and even an Old Norse language still permeate the culture and being so far from anywhere else it didn't really feel like we were in the UK anymore it took 14 hours to get here by ferry rising and falling over huge waves in the North Sea in the dead of night and trying not to get seasick while catching up on some much needed rest before the bumpiest ferry ride of Our Lives was over and we pulled in to lock and we'd arrived just in time for one of the worst storms in a decade storm Awin is hitting the UK on Friday night and it's prompted a rare Met Office red [Music] warning every way on and off these islands ground to a halt all the flights and fairies were cancelled as gusts of wind reached 130 km an hour so we paused the cycling hunkered down rented a car and watched the wind batter these islands whoa I just missed that one here comes Daran it's so so so so so windy outside all the fairies to in between the islands and to the Scottish Mainland are cancelled today we spoke to our host today and she said this was a bit of a freak storm so close to outs scaries our final destination we were faced with the possibility of a storm forcing us to turn back but at least being stuck in one Place gave us a while to learn about [Music] Shetland the correct name for these islands is Shetland or the Shetland Islands not the shetlands as it sometimes incorrectly called and Shetland was not always Scottish territory it was once part of the kingdom of Norway which then came under Danish control it's only part of Scotland now because of a botched arranged marriage over 550 years ago the king of Denmark Christian I had arranged for his daughter Margaret to marry a Scottish King James III back then the brid's family had to make a payment called a dowy to the group but Christian was in financial trouble maybe that's why he looks so sad so in 1468 the two families came to an agreement the deal was clear temporarily give up control of Shetland and orne to Scotland for some money which would then be used to pay the dowy to the Scottish King and then when the Danish King wasn't in financial trouble anymore pay the money back minus the dowy which had already been paid and get control of the islands again but when the Danes kept trying to do that over the next few hundred years all the way up until 1667 the Scottish rulers repeatedly either refused or just ignored them and the islands have remained part of Scotland ever since but Scandinavian rule left a big Legacy here and you can see it today every winter a viking Longboat is paraded through the streets of shetland's communities dragged by men dressed as Vikings and burnt in a fire festival called upia and in a visual representation of shetland's Norse and Scottish links the Shetland flag follows the Nordic Cross design but with the blue and white of the Scottish flag on top of that ancient folklore here is full of stories of TRS mythical creatures that share a lot of similarities with Scandinavian trolls and there was even a unique language on these islands norn of a form of Old Norse it's still on signs dotted around the islands with know names displayed under the English ones the language is thought to have died out in 1850 when the last native speaker Walter souland died but it might actually have lasted until the early 1900s on some of shetland's northernmost reaches but though norn itself is gone it has lived on in the Shetland dialect I'm lived here in Vin all my life and I dragged her here all the way the was it it's so different from anywhere else in the country and has so many unique words that shetlands often call it a language rather than a dialect do you think it's more of a language or a dialect butter ball the butter ball but yes the sh the language is understood all over the island be it different but but it's definitely a Shetland language there words that's used in chetland that's I don't think used other places no I don't think there there certain words here and ha for things that's never ever heard or any other what kind of words would you find here that you wouldn't find anywhere else well for that's what's ah okay broad Shetland is so hard for Outsiders to understand that shetlander change the way they speak when talking to them they call it knapping and many do it without even realizing knapping that's when you switch right that's when you talk properly so that people can understand it's just an automatic thing when you're speaking to somebody that's new Shetland Shetland you just go into it automatically to be try to be understood a few hundred years ago there were three languages in Scotland there was Scots Scottish gelic and NN after that arranged marriage drama when Shetland came under Scottish control more Scot speakers began moving to Shetland so now the Shetland dialect is a fusion between Scots and the remnants of no a kind of Scottish Norse hybrid but it is now in Decline there for a qu that uh folk didn't appreciate just how special the language was when I was at school when I was a young boy I was reprimanded for using my own language I had to use English and that now disappoints me because the sh the language is being lost I can mind getting a ruler on me knuckles for using [Music] dialect beyond the language shetland's fortunes have always been tied to the Sea originally through wailing and fishing and more recently the vast North Sea oil and gas reserves in shetland's waters never near than 3 m for the sea any warrior in ch it's in you okay you just surrounded because of that Shetland has always had people coming and going and despite being very isolated it's used to Outsiders I know a lot of places have a sort of intolerance to to incomers but sh's the opposite it's a a Melting Pot of people from All Nations due to its history with the fishing in the wh and um traditionally people have always been welcomed just like in the aisle of man though there is a specific name for Outsiders there is a term in Shetland for incomers it's called the S muther uh and it actually means um coming in the South mouth because most people who come to Shetland come in on the ferry in the South mouth of larck Harbor but to be honest um I felt I was accepted pretty much um you know straight away this is the most remote part of the UK the northern islands are 430 mi from the Scottish English border because of that not many people in the rest of the UK know much about Shetland and even fewer have ever been here a lot of people don't know exactly where it is just that it's far north this map is illegal in Scotland sort of you see Shetland is in this little box and that's part of the reason a lot of people don't know where it is it was put there to save space which which might not sound like a big problem but inaccurately portraying it meant people in the rest of the UK often had no idea of the challenges faced by communities on a cluster of islands 150 Mi north of Scottish Shores so the Scottish government banned public organizations from producing Maps This Way new ones made here have to show shetland's location accurately the box is no more being so remote that they weren't even displayed cppy on maps for a while a lot of shetlands seemed to feel more Shetland than Scottish and certainly more so than British do you feel Scottish or do you feel more just Shetland I would say just Shetland really know that I'm against being included in Scotland I look were uniqueness I like to think about that and I like to be more connected in a way to Norway and places like that we are so different really um because we're so far away lot of people don't even know where Shetland is yeah and it's like yeah we are Scottish and I don't have a problem with that but for me we're closer to Norway than we are Scotland mainly Shetland but also Scottish before British yeah yeah defin I'm AEL first and for shiters before on it's no wonder people feel that way London is over 800 M away and Edinburgh is almost 400 there's not even a direct ferry to Edinburgh you have to fly from shetland's airport or get a 14-hour ferry to abedine and then a train so it's easy to forget you're in the same country and the way of life is very different here you have to be Hardy to survive in Shetland I have known a lot of people that have come to Shetland and then really couldn't hack it right so in the summer it's beautiful we get basically 19 nearly 20 hours of daylight and it never actually gets properly dark it's a thing called the simmer dim in the winter we get less than 5 hours of daylight especially at this time of year it's getting darker and darker and it never really gets fully lighted um we get a lot of Atlantic storms coming flying in that kind of thing so so the weather is probably what sends more people back who come to Shetland than anything else and the Dark Nights Dark Nights take a lot getting getting used to um the light nights take a lot getting used to as well a lot of people find they you know when they move up here they just can't sleep during the summer because it's just a get dark so shetland's unique blend of North and Scottish history and its extreme isolation is unlike anywhere else I've been in the UK but with Norwegian Heritage myself it felt half familiar the landscape the dialect the attitude to community Spirit or hardiness when it came to the weather and being outdoors it wasn't the same but you can definitely see The Echoes of Scandinavian culture even though it's been part of Scotland for hundreds of years the raw power of nature here is humbling but it's a reminder that wherever you are civilization finds a way and often with harsher conditions and greater isolation comes a stronger sense of community since neighbors have to look out for one another we see it's the community aspect and the the the actual spirit that people have and the fact that everybody's happy to help everybody else and everybody just gets almost stuff together uh fantastic place in that sense it's kind of like in your hair to to be here it kind of draws you back there's just a feeling a Island community kind it's a good feeling our time in lock came to an end and we were getting nervous we had one chance to get to outs scaries and the schoolhouse Cinema if our Ferry was cancelled because of the weather which it had been for the previous 5 days then that was it we'd have to turn back at the final hurdle so we set off from shetland's Capital crossed our fingers and prayed that the wind and the waves would subside enough to see us through [Music]

Channel: Tieran Freedman

Views: 57,406

Keywords: Shetland, Shetlanders, Shelty, The Shetlands, The Shetland Islands, Norn, Norse culture, Scotland, Shetland Islands, Island communities, Nordic culture, Celtic culture, Lerwick, Shetland Dialect, Vidlin, Old Norse, Norse language, Norse dialect, Scandinavian culture, Scottish culture, Celtic, Vikings, Shetland history, history, Shetland in winter, North sea, UK, United Kingdom, British Isles, Celtic islands, Viking islands, Broad shetland, Knapping, Auld, cycling Shetland

Id: OaiQiiyNito

Length: 16min 10sec (970 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 17 2023