From The Shetland Times, Friday 11th July, 1958

Institute’s creditable year

The Anderson Institute rector, Mr Wm. Rhind, was able to report a creditable list of achievements at the school’s closing ceremony last Wednesday morning. He could rightly claim the year had been a successful one, and had cause for satisfaction.

Last year, he recalled, he suggested the school would have a roll of over three hundred for the first time. In fact 317 pupils were enrolled, and the first class was one of the largest they had ever had.

The larger number taxed the available accommodation to the limit, …

The emigration question

On several occasions recently it has been noted that Shetland has something of an emigration problem. In particular, attention has been drawn to the very large number of the islands’ young people who leave home to attend university or college elsewhere and then choose not to return.

A letter to The Shetland News by Keith Gray a couple of months ago outlined the results of his own enquiries: from his class at the Anderson High School, which graduated in the late 1990s, around two-thirds were no longer living in Shetland. He described this, quite understandably, as “an …

It is the country that defeated the Norsemen; where ice dominates the land. Malachy Tallack goes West, to Greenland

One thousand years ago, Narsarsuaq was a significant place: the political centre of Greenland, Europe’s westernmost frontier. When the first 14 ships of Viking colonists arrived from Iceland in AD985, most chose this south-western region – the mildest and most fertile part of the country – to settle. Their leader, Eirik the Red, made his home at Brattahlíð, just three miles up the fjord. For a couple of centuries at least, it was a thriving community.

Today Narsarsuaq is an international …

Adam Grydehøj finds parallels with Shetland in the islands of Åland, and discovers how political autonomy has benefited the archipelago.

This June, I was in the Åland archipelago for a conference about island branding. It was only when Shetland Life’s editor mentioned it to me that I realized these islands are located at 60° North, the same latitude as Shetland. Åland is poorly known in these parts, which is a pity because, even disregarding their relation to the equator, Åland and Shetland have a lot in common. Åland lies between Sweden and Finland, both politically and geographically. The archipelago is …

A sense of loss

There is no doubt that the most chilling hours in life are when we are reminded that, like the rest of us, the lives of the young are fragile.

It is easy to recall the time when this first – really – occurred to me. It was the hour when I discovered that Angus Smith, a boy who had been in my year in school and hostel had been killed. Startling as this news was, the way in which the event had taken place was even more shocking. My friend had died as a result of …

From Shetland Life, July 1983, No. 33

Shetland Fiddling: New life for old tradition

by Hugh Nolan

Far be it for me to decry the giant advances made by science on society’s behalf during the past 60 years; but although our lives have been enriched in numberless ways, in one or two notable areas we are poorer than was our grandparents’ generation.

The American poet, Richard Brautigan, writes of a time not so very long ago “before television crippled the imagination … and turned people indoors and away from living out their own fantasies with dignity. In those days people …