Section V.
The Orkneys and Shetland Isles—Natural
Features.—Population.—Oppression.
We might expect that the most northern isles of Scotland, which lie exposed in a stormy sea, should possess the same wild and mountainous character as the Faroe Isles and Iceland. Such a belief gains strength when, for the first time, in passing from Scotland, we obtain a view of the southern Orkneys, especially the considerable mountain heights of the Isle of Hay. Indeed Hay obtained its name (originally “Haey,” or the high island) from the old Northmen, on account of the mountains which distinguish it from the rest of the Orkneys; for on sailing farther northwards, past Hay and the adjacent South Ronaldshay (formerly “Rögnvaldsey”), we soon discover that the Orkneys are in general flat and sandy, although with cliff-bound coasts. Their heath-covered hills scarce deserve the name of mountains, though here and there called by the inhabitants “fjolds,” or Fjelde (mountain rocks). The islands are destitute of wood, and exhibit frequent ling moors and desert tracts of heath. But there is also much, and by no means unfertile, cornland to be found; and an improved system of agriculture has made such advances, that the stranger is sometimes surprised, in these distant isles, by the sight of luxuriant fields of wheat.
The waves of the sea, and the powerful currents, have intersected the Orkneys with innumerable winding bays, or sounds. Besides Mainland, the chief island (first called by the Norwegians “Hrossey,” and afterwards “Meginland,” or the continent), the archipelago includes a great number of islands of different sizes, which spread themselves in a north-east direction from the north coast of Scotland. The farthest of the Orkneys is Fairhill, or Fair Isle (formerly “Friðarey”). It lies almost midway between the Orkneys and the Shetland Islands, in the midst of the rapid current now called Sumburg Roost, but which the Norwegians in former times called Dynröst (from “röst,” a maelstrom, or whirlpool); whence, again, the most southern promontory of the Shetland Islands has obtained the name of Dunrossness (Dynrasternes). The Shetland archipelago (the old Northern “Hjaltland,” “Hjatland,” or “Hetland”), like that of the Orkneys, forms a long-extended line, but differs from it in consisting principally of one large island, Mainland (“Meginland”), surrounded by a great number of proportionately small and insignificant ones.
The most southern point of Dunrossness, on Mainland, forms the promontory of Sumburg Head (“Sunnbœjar-höfði”), which, however, is of no very great height; indeed the highest mountain in Shetland is only about fifteen hundred feet above the sea. Although the Shetland Islands, with regard to mountains, are not to be compared with the Faroe Isles, still they exhibit a sort of transition from the flatter Orkneys to the mountainous character of the Faroe group. Before the coasts of Shetland stand many high and ragged rocks, called “stacks” (old Norsk, “stackr”). The coasts themselves are steeper, and the mountains larger than in the Orkneys. On the other hand, however, the valleys are both longer and broader than the mountain valleys of the Faroe Islands. Heath and moorland abound, whilst the corn-fields are small, and the corn harvest in general very uncertain and difficult to gather. Fishing is the most important source of profit for the inhabitants.
The Orkneys and the Shetland Isles were, as is well known, completely colonized by Norwegians in the ninth and tenth centuries. They were, however, known and inhabited much earlier. It is possible that the Shetland Islands were the “ultima Thule” spoken of by Roman authors in the first centuries after Christ; but it is certain that the Romans at that time knew the Orkneys by the name of “Orcades:” whence it appears that the primitive root Ork, in the later Norwegian name of the islands, is very ancient, and probably of Celtic origin. Before the arrival of the Norwegians, both the Orkneys and the Shetland Islands seem to have been inhabited by the same Pictish or Celtic race that was settled in the rest of Scotland. Of these older inhabitants memorials still exist in different kinds of antiquities of stone and bronze that are dug out of the earth, as well as in numerous ruins of castles, or Pictish towers, originally built of flag-stones laid together, without any cement of loam or mortar. There are also cairns and stone circles; the most prominent amongst which are the “Stones of Stennis,” on each side of Brogar Bridge, in Orkney. They are, like Stonehenge and Abury circle in England, surrounded with ditches and ramparts of earth; and, after Stonehenge, must be regarded as amongst the largest stone circles in the British Islands. The immense masses of erect stones are remarkable evidences both of the strength and of the religious enthusiasm of the old Celtic inhabitants; and it is no wonder that they made in ancient times such an impression on the Norwegians, on their arrival at these islands, as to induce them to call the promontory on which the largest circle stands “Steinsnes” (Stones-naze) and the adjoining firth, “Steinsnesfjördr” (Stones-naze Firth, now Loch of Stennis).
No sooner had the Scandinavian Vikings settled themselves, in the ninth century, securely in these islands, than they became a central point for the Northmen’s expeditions not only to the British Islands, but also to Iceland and Greenland. Thus when Floke Vilgerdesön, or “Ravnefloke,” went on a voyage of discovery from Norway to Iceland, he landed on Hjaltland, or Shetland, in a bay which obtained from him the name of “Flokavágr.” This bay must probably be sought on the east coast of Mainland, about Cat Firth (Kattarfjörðr); for in its neighbourhood lay the Loch of Girlsta (originally “Geirhildarstaðir”), which is said to have obtained its name from the circumstance of Floke’s daughter, Geirhilde, having been drowned in it during her father’s short visit to the country. By degrees the islands became the rendezvous of a great number of discontented Norwegian emigrants, who, to avoid the new order of things, had withdrawn themselves from their old paternal home, and from this distant place of refuge continually harassed the coasts of Norway.
This induced King Harald Haarfager to undertake an expedition against the Orkneys and the Shetland Isles, as well as against the Hebrides, on the west coast of Scotland; all of which he succeeded in subjugating. He gave the Orkneys and the Shetland Isles, as an earldom under the crown of Norway, to Ragnvald Möre-Jarl’s family. This family produced some great men, who extended their dominion over large tracts in the adjacent kingdom of Scotland. The islands continued, however, to be the resort of many malcontent and fugitive Norwegians. The renowned Ganger-Rolf, the founder of the royal Norman house, is said to have dwelt a long time on them before he undertook his expedition against Normandy. When King Erik Blodöxe, Harald Haarfager’s son, was driven with his queen, the atrocious Gunhilde, from Norway, he fled to Orkney, whence he carried devastation far and wide. Subsequently he obtained a kingdom in Northumberland; but, after his fall, his sons again sought the Orkneys; where they remained till they succeeded in obtaining the kingly power in Norway. Snorre Sturlesön states, that after the fall of this dominion, Gunhilde again fled to Orkney, where her daughter, Ragnhilde, had married a member of the Earl’s family. Ragnhilde trod entirely in her mother’s footsteps by occasioning dissension, and even murder, in the family of the Earl. Somewhat later the Orkneys were visited for a time by Kalf Arnesön, so well known in the more ancient history of Norway, who, at the battle of Stiklestad in 1030, was one of the chief leaders of the peasant army against King Olaf, the saint. He came to the Orkneys just in time to take part in a severely-contested naval battle, fought in the year 1046, near Rödebjerg (Rauðabjörg) in Pentland Firth, between the Jarls Thorfin and Ragnvald Brusesön. Kalf supported Thorfin with six long ships, and thus decided the victory in his favour.
The older history of the islands exhibits an almost uninterrupted series of bloody combats between members of the Norwegian Jarl’s family. This, however, did not prevent them from making violent inroads on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Long after the Vikings’ mode of life had ceased in the Scandinavian North, it continued to be preserved in these islands. This was not only owing to their remote situation, opposite hostile coasts, and to their characteristic independence, but also to the population having inherited the old Viking spirit, and carefully preserved the ancient Norwegian institutions. As long as Norwegian jarls ruled, Norwegian laws, customs, and habits, as well as the Norwegian language, were absolutely paramount in the islands. The connections which the jarls and other powerful leaders maintained with Scotch and Irish chiefs, and which often resulted in intermarriages between their families, do not seem to have had much effect on the Scandinavian national character of these island colonists. It was not till the beginning of the fourteenth century, when the male line of the old Norwegian jarls had become extinct, and when the Scotch Lord Saint Clair, who had married a daughter of Magnus, the last jarl, had obtained possession of the earldom, that the ancient liberties, customs, and manners of the inhabitants, began to be seriously threatened; nor did it suffice to protect the islands against the progress of Scottish influence, that they continued to be under the supreme authority of Norway. When, at length, the Danish-Norwegian king, Christian the First, on the occasion of the marriage between his daughter Margaret, and the Scotch king, James the Third, in the year 1469, pledged to Scotland the Orkneys and the Shetland Isles as part of Margaret’s dowry, the last tie was severed that bound those countries to their Scandinavian friends. The Scottish kings and their successors, who also ascended the English throne, acknowledged indeed the right of the Danish-Norwegian kings to redeem the islands; but they continually found subterfuges to prevent its being exercised. The lawful claims of redemption, repeatedly urged by Denmark in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were perfectly fruitless. The islands were too important, and far too conveniently situated with regard to Scotland, for Great Britain to give them up, without being compelled by the last necessity. The undoubted right of the Danish-Norwegian kings was forced to give way to the superior power and political influence of the British sovereigns.
The conduct observed towards the Norwegian population of these islands after their union with Scotland was quite as unjust as their separation from Norway and Denmark, and assuredly far more revolting to all proper feeling. A large part of the inhabitants had till then been in the free possession of their lands as freeholders, or “udallers” (Odelsmænd), and had likewise possessed their old Norwegian laws and privileges, which should of course have been respected when the islands were pledged to Scotland. But the Scotch nobles, who, partly as vassals, partly as royal lessees, obtained the government of the islands, took care to destroy all traces of the ancient liberties and Scandinavian characteristics of the people. The resistance of the islanders was fruitless. In the year 1530 they took up arms under the command of their governor, Sir James Sinclair, in order to oppose the appointment of a crown vassal over the islands. The Earl of Caithness himself, who had been dispatched against them, fell, with five hundred of his men, in a sanguinary action near the “Stones of Stennis.” But though the islanders thus asserted their rights for a short period, the Scotch regents soon afterwards succeeded in establishing crown-vassals in the islands.
Among these vassals none has left behind him a more despised or hated name than Earl Patrick Stuart, who from 1595 to 1608, or about thirteen years, oppressed the islands in the most shameful manner. He violently deprived the holders of allodial farms of their right of possession, and converted almost all the freeholders into leaseholders. He arbitrarily changed the weights and measures, so that the taxes and imposts became intolerable. Law and justice were not to be procured, for the Earl’s creatures everywhere occupied the judgment-seats. To appeal to Scotland was no easy matter, as Lord Patrick’s soldiers guarded all the ferries. In the Orkneys the Earl compelled the people to build him a strong fortress at Kirkwall, and in Shetland another at Scalloway; from which places armed men ranged over the country, to punish and overawe the malcontents. The ruins of these castles form a still-existing memorial of “the wicked Earl Patrick,” who, for his tyranny, was at length recalled to Scotland, accused of high treason, and beheaded.
The Scottish kings, it is true, now promised the islanders that they should have relief in their need, and that no vassal of the crown should be placed over them. But this promise was not kept; and so far from the islanders again recovering their lost freedom, the feudal system of England and Scotland continued to take firmer root in the islands. Oppression stalked on with regular and steady step until it arrived at such a pitch that not only did the Norwegian laws and liberties disappear, but the islands themselves, with some few exceptions, became the private property of a few individuals. The successors of the mighty Vikings, descended from kings and jarls of Norway and the North, who in winter dwelt as chiefs, or at least as freemen, in roomy mansions, whilst in the summer they gained glory and booty in their long ships, are now in general obliged to content themselves with inhabiting as leaseholders, or rather as annual tenants, a poor cottage on a small piece of land, where, by hard labour, they are able to gain, at best, a very frugal subsistence. Their dwellings, particularly in Shetland, are of the most wretched description. The walls are formed of small unhewn stones, with turf and sea-weed thrust into the interstices, and, instead of a chimney, the smoke escapes by a hole in the roof. Within the house there are generally sleeping-places in the thick stone wall; but men and cattle live together in friendly harmony in the same apartment. The fire burns freely on the floor, and envelopes all in a dense smoke. If the people seek their living on the sea by fishing, it is usually in boats belonging to the proprietor of the estate, who consequently receives a large share of their profits. The condition of the common people in the Orkneys, and in the Shetland Isles, is certainly not at all enviable, even in comparison with that of their Scandinavian kinsmen on the poor and more remote Faroe Islands and Iceland; although commerce is still limited and oppressed there by a monopoly which was soon abolished in the Orkneys and Shetland Isles after their separation from the united Norwegian-Danish kingdoms. But in spite of all their calamities, the inhabitants of the Faroe Isles and Iceland have for the most part preserved to our times that freedom of landed property which they inherited from their forefathers.