The Country of Sir Walter Scott

by Charles S. Olcott

Burgh-Westra, the home of Magnus Troil and his daughters, is purely fictitious. It was supposed to be twenty miles from Sumburgh Head, which would make it seven miles south of Lerwick. We passed numerous voes, as the long arms of the sea are called, any of which would have answered the description of the one upon which the Udaller's residence was situated, and we could have found many sheltered places among the rocks, corresponding to that in which Mordaunt Mertoun secretly met Brenda, or to the beach of white sand beneath a precipice, where Minna offered to pledge her hand to the pirate, Cleveland, by the mysterious 'promise of Odin.'

Ten miles below Burgh-Westra was Stourburgh, where Triptolemus Yellowley and Mistress Baby took up their residence. This, too, is fictitious. Sumburgh Head, on the contrary, is very real. It is a rocky promontory, three hundred feet high, at the southern extremity of the Mainland, as the largest of the Shetland Islands is called. Conflicting tides, sweeping around the rugged headland from two oceans, make a dangerous current, called the Roost of Sumburgh, from the Icelandic word, röst, signifying a strong tide. It has been a menace to navigation for centuries and the scene of countless shipwrecks. The novelist, quite naturally, therefore, made it the scene of the wreck and rescue of Cleveland. Such a place would appeal strongly to Scott, whose visit to the islands was made on a lighthouse yacht, the business of which was to inspect just such points of danger. He climbed the grassy slope to the top of the head, where he could look down from the loftiest crag upon a wild mass of rocks below, and said it would have been a fine situation in which to compose an ode to the Genius of Sumburgh Head or an elegy upon a cormorant or to have written and spoken madness of any kind. Instead of doing this he gave vent to his enthusiasm by sitting down on the grass and sliding a few hundred feet down to the beach! Whether the performance was voluntary or involuntary, he did not see fit to inform us.

A short distance north of Sumburgh Head, and in full view of it, we found the ruins of Jarlshof, the abode of Basil Mertoun and his son. It was a poorly built house of rough, unhewn stone, and even at its best must have been desolate enough. Its age and history are not definitely known. Robert Stewart, a son of James V, who received the earldom of the Orkney and Shetland Islands from Mary Queen of Scots in 1565, may have been the builder. He is known to have dwelt in the house, as did his son, Patrick, who abandoned Jarlshof after building the Castle of Scalloway.

When Scott visited Sumburgh he saw nothing in Jarlshof more interesting than a ruined dwelling-house, partly buried by the sand, and once the residence of one of the Orkney earls. But directly beneath his feet, though he knew it not, was an object that would have delighted his antiquarian instincts more than anything else in the islands. He gave great attention to the old Pictish castles or brocks, especially to a small one on the shores of a lake near Lerwick, called by him Cleik-him-in (Clickimin), and later to the larger tower on the island of Mousa. Here at Jarlshof, though the fact was unknown to the inhabitants at the time of Scott's visit, there was once a series of brocks, as old as Mousa or Clickimin, and far more extensive.

SUMBURGH HEAD, SHETLAND

This interesting discovery was made in 1897. Mr. John Bruce, the principal landowner in the parish of Kinrossness, upon whose property the ruin of Jarlshof stands, noticing the encroachments of the sea after a storm, began to suspect the existence of masonry beneath the old castle. Two friends who were visiting him saw what seemed to be jutting ends of walls. They threw off their coats and began to excavate, continuing with enthusiasm until they discovered, to their great surprise, evidences of a far more extensive building than they had suspected. Mr. Bruce then engaged labourers and continued the work of excavation for five years.

The Castle of Jarlshof was erected on top of an older structure, the existence of which was evidently entirely unknown to the builder. The excavations reveal a circular tower sixty-three feet in diameter, similar in design to the other Shetland brochs, but larger at the base. Its main wall is pierced with a passage three feet wide, evidently leading to a staircase, and it has, within its thickness several chambers. Half of the broch has been swept away by the sea. On the west are portions of three smaller buildings, resembling beehives in form, the largest of which is oval in shape with a length of thirty-four feet and a width of nineteen. Outside of this structure was a great wall, varying from ten to twenty feet thick. It has been uncovered for a distance of seventy feet. Its shape suggests that it may have been part of a great circular wall surrounding the whole group of buildings, of which the central tower was the strongest and most important. Away back in the eighth or ninth century, some Pictish ruler may have constructed this immense fortress at the southern end of the islands, to repel attacks by sea, and to afford a refuge to the inhabitants in case of danger. Had Walter Scott known of its existence, he would have fairly revelled in the discovery, and perhaps the plot of 'The Pirate' might have been different.