SOUNDING OFF: Shetland’s roots are Norse - and always will be
We often hear that Shetland, or by our uncorrupted name Hjaltland, has a “Norse influence”.
It may sound harmless, but it’s actually very damaging. It makes it sound like we just picked up a few outside customs along the way. That’s not the truth.
“Influence” means something external that touches what’s already there - something temporary or partial. It’s never the core, only an effect. That’s why it’s wrong to call our Norse roots an “influence”, because they are the core itself.
I believe it has been used deliberately to undermine our historical and cultural reality, and even if it hasn’t been deliberate, the effect is the same. Now it even slips out of us natives because the wording has been drilled into our subconscious.
Here are the facts:
• Law: We followed Udal law, our Norse legal system, for over 800 years.
• Language: Old Norse, evolving into Norn, was our native tongue for around a thousand years.
• Place-names: Over 95 per cent of Shetland’s names come directly from Old Norse.
• Folklore: Trows, Nykr (Njuggle), Finnfolk — all Norse.
• Traditions: Our weddings, where guns were fired to ward off evil spirits. Our naming system, where Shetlanders used patronymics, son and dóttir, a tradition that lasted about a thousand years. Disguise at Yule — an Old Norse custom of masking.
• Superstitions: Shetlanders feared trows (from the Old Norse troll) and placed iron beside or inside a cradle to keep them from stealing infants. A glowing peat was carried around homes, boats, and animals to guard against trows and the evil eye. And milk was poured out as an offering to the trows — the same practice is found across Scandinavia.
And that’s only the start. We have so many Norse traditions and superstitions it would take a whole letter of its own to cover them all.
• Boats: Our boatbuilding techniques are Norse, using the same clinker-built method as Viking ships.
• Music: Our native instrument, the Shetland gue, is Norse.
• Archaeology: Unst has the highest density of Viking longhouses in the world.
• Governance: Our þing (Thing) at Þingvöllr (Tingwall) was Shetland’s Norse parliament, working in the same way as the assemblies in Norway, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands.
• Economy: Shetlanders were Udal freeholders, holding their land outright while paying fair dues (skatt) to Norway. Others worked land belonging to Norwegian lords or the church, but they were not tenants in the feudal sense. All lived under the same Norse law, upheld by the þing assemblies that settled disputes and maintained local justice.
When Scotland took control through corrupt means, those dues were twisted into oppressive rent. Freeholders and occupiers alike were stripped of their rights, and the feudal system turned Shetland’s free people into tenants of distant landlords, stealing the very rights our ancestors had lived by.
• Knitwear: Shetland knitwear - often labelled “Scottish” - is not Scottish. The patterns are Nordic in style, made uniquely Shetland by our own wool and skill.
• Traditional foods: Our authentic Shetland foods like reestit mutton and sookit fish are Norse to their core.
• Accents: Although our native language was replaced, studies show folk still speak with Norse sounds in their voice — in the rhythm, timing, and vowels. Whalsay’s øy sound isn’t random, it’s a clear trace of Norn, a sound with no place in Scots or English, yet native to Norway. (Auður Dagný Jónsdóttir, Norn Elements in the Shetland Dialect, University of Iceland, 2013).
To call all that an “influence” is an insult to our culture, our history, and our identity.
Scotland may have claimed us without right, but our roots never snapped. Even when our culture was suppressed, Shetlanders held on - protecting and preserving our customs. That resilience should be honoured, not forgotten.
And let’s not forget what Scotland’s own ministers and scholars said about us.
John Brand, a minister, wrote in his A Brief Description of Orkney, Zetland, Pightland-Firth & Caithness: “When I speak of Orkney or Zetland, as not in Scotland, tho depending thereupon, I express myself, as the Countrey do”. In plain words, he said that the islanders themselves said they were not in Scotland, though ruled by it. I say the same thing - Scotland is across the sea.
Sir Robert Sibbald, a scholar and the King’s Geographer, oversaw the publication of Description of the Islands of Orkney and Zetland, which recorded that Shetlanders’ patronymic names, language, and nature prove Norwegian “extract”.
George Low, a minister, documented in his A Tour through the Islands of Orkney and Schetland that “most or all of their tales are relative to the history of Norway”.
When the media and official institutions reduce our roots to a “Norse influence”, it isn’t just wrong, it rewrites our history. It feeds the myth that Shetland is naturally Scottish, when the unfortunate truth is that we were colonised by Scotland.
Occupation isn’t heritage. Heritage can’t be imposed.
We owe it to ourselves, our ancestors, and those yet to come to protect the truth of who we are, and never let it be written out of existence.
Shetland’s roots are Norse - and always will be.
By Magnus Hutchison