THE HARBOR OF KIRKWALL, ORKNEY ISLANDS
To-day the two archipelagoes, Orkney and Shetland, form one British county, with a representative in Parliament. Of the sixty-seven Orkney Islands, seven are inhabited by fewer than thirty thousand persons. Populated once by the Picts, whose rude memorials are seen almost everywhere, these islands became part of Norway and Denmark, and constituted no portion of the Scottish realm, until America was discovered. It was when James III—as in our time Edward VII—wed the “sea-king’s daughter from over the sea,” that the Danish sovereign, by bestowing these storm-swept isles as the marriage portion of his daughter, made them part of Scotland. James III was son of the Dutch Queen, Mary of Gelderland. He married Margaret of Denmark, in 1469. Pomona is the largest island and Kirkwall its chief town, with which not a few involuntary American tourists have made themselves acquainted in the war years.
The Pentland Firth, stormiest of any and all firths in Scotland, is eight miles wide. What are its peculiarities of behavior, during centuries, when hectored and goaded by the winds, may be realized from the great storm of 1862. Then the waves ran bodily up and over the vertical cliffs, two hundred feet in height, lodging portions of the wrecked boats, stones, seaweed, etc., on their tops. This attrition, continued during ages, effecting the destruction of the cliffs and heaping up torn rock masses by sea action, proves, say the geologists, that many of Nature’s ruins along the coast of Scotland are the work of the sea when agitated by storms, rather than that of icebergs. The spring tides of the Pentland Firth run at the rate of over ten nautical miles an hour, and are probably by far the most rapid marine currents around the British Islands. When aided by powerful winds, these undersea forces lend incredible force to the breakers in the northern sea.
Still farther north, beyond the Orkneys, are the Shetlands, on which are bred the little ponies, known by the name of “Shelties.” With Americans born in a city, among the first childish impressions of any other animals than the average city horse, cat, and dog, are those of Shetland ponies, with which they are enraptured when a visiting circus company makes a street parade.
In old days the ponies were regarded, on the island on which they were born, as common property for all. This primitive stage of communal society having long ago passed away, the hardy little creatures are reared in large numbers, chiefly for export into England. There most of them have to leave the sunlight and live down in the darkness, being made very useful in hauling coal in the narrow galleries of the mines underground.
The Shetlands, or Zetland group of islands, are the most northerly British possessions in Europe. The name “Shetland” is supposed to be simply a modernized rendering of the old Norse “Hjalt-land,” the meaning of which is given as “high-land”; or, “Hjalti’s land,”—after a man whose name occurs in ancient Norse literature; or, “Hilt-land,” in allusion to an imagined resemblance of the configuration of the archipelago to the hilt of a sword. Many remains, in the form of stone circles and “brochs,” are still to be seen. The people were converted to Christianity in the sixth century by Irish missionaries, but the Norse language and customs survived in Foula till the end of the eighteenth century. Besides the remains of old Scandinavian forts, there are ruins of twenty ancient chapels. Fitful Head is the Ultima Thule of the ancients. Unst is the most northerly island of the group. Near Lerwick is the largest and best-preserved of the old Pictish towers, so numerous along the coast and which long served for beacon fires and signals.
The scenery is bleak and dreary, consisting of treeless and barren tracts rich in peat and boulders. The summer is almost nightless, print being legible at midnight; but in winter the days are only six hours long, though the nights are frequently illuminated with brilliant displays of the aurora borealis. As for visitors, the whales, of various species, are perhaps more numerous than human outsiders, being from time to time captured in the bays and sounds. The natives are daring cragsmen, and hunt the waterfowl, which live in immense variety and numbers on the cliffs. In one place is Gallows Hill, where they used to hang witches and criminals.
It was probably in this region, so long subject to the incursions of the Danes and Norsemen, that the story of the thistle, now the national emblem, arose. A Danish army was moving at night to surprise the Scots, when one of the invaders in his bare feet stepped on a thistle and felt something not pleasant. His howl of pain awakened the sleeping host and the Scots, seizing their weapons, drove off the enemy. Later the emblem was stamped on coins and the Order of the Thistle, or Order of St. Andrew, was established.
The Shetlanders are famous for their skill with both needles and looms. It is interesting to note that knitting is quite a modern invention; yet what an addition to the resources of civilization and what an asset of the sedentary life it has become! How handsomely it supplemented the æon-old art of weaving! In the Shetlands knitting has helped notably to enrich life and supplement industry in a region where existence is hard. To these islands the gift came from Spain, the original country of Santa Claus, in which many of our air castles lie. It was through Holland that the red robe and ecclesiastical associations of St. Nicholas came first to us, but it was by way of Norway that his fur-trimmed cap and coat, somewhat shortened, and his reindeers, arrived later in America; but to the Shetlands the Spaniards came in a ship direct.
From the survivors of a vessel in the Armada of Philip II, which went ashore in 1588, the Shetlanders are said to have acquired the art of knitting the colored hosiery for which they are noted. The shipwrecked Spanish sailors taught the people how to prepare dyes from the plants and lichens, and many of the patterns still show signs of Moorish origin.