Shetland literature is literature written in

Shetland Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the no ...

, Scotland, or by writers from Shetland. The literature is often written in

Shetland dialect Shetland dialect (also variously known as Shetlandic; broad or auld Shetland or Shaetlan; and referred to as Modern Shetlandic Scots (MSS) by some linguists) is a dialect of Insular Scots spoken in Shetland, an archipelago to the north of mainl ...

or its parent language,

Norn Norn may refer to: *Norn language, an extinct North Germanic language that was spoken in Northern Isles of Scotland *Norns, beings from Norse mythology *Norn Iron, the local pronunciation of Northern Ireland *Norn iron works, an old industrial co ...

, and often depicts the

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

and

folklore Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...

of Shetland. Common themes include reflections on island life and proximity to the sea, it is fishing and

crofting Crofting is a form of land tenure and small-scale food production particular to the Scottish Highlands, the islands of Scotland, and formerly on the Isle of Man. Within the 19th century townships, individual crofts were established on the bette ...

traditions, the weather and seasons as determined by Shetland's climate, Shetland's unique landscape, its flora and fauna, and the influence of the people's

Viking Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

heritage. Folklore often displays features seen similarly in Scandinavia and some Celtic traditions.

Norse literature

The earlier

Norse language Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

faded slowly, taking at least three hundred years to die out in certain isolated parts of Shetland such as

Foula Foula (; sco, also Foola; nrn, Fuglø), located in the Shetland archipelago of Scotland, is one of the United Kingdom’s most remote permanently inhabited islands. Owned since the turn of the 20th century by the Holbourn family, the island wa ...

and

Unst Unst (; sco, Unst; nrn, Ønst) is one of the North Isles of the Shetland Islands, Scotland. It is the northernmost of the inhabited British Isles and is the third-largest island in Shetland after Mainland and Yell. It has an area of . Unst ...

, as first Lowland Scots and then English became the language of power. The Norn language influences the variety of Lowland Scots spoken in Shetland today, in lexicon and grammar. This unique mix has come to be called either

, or simply "Shetland" by Shetlanders. Little remains of the old Norse tongue,

, in script form, and what is extant (such as the ballad "

Hildina "Hildina" is a traditional ballad thought to have been composed in Orkney in the 17th century,#norn-hnolt, The Language of The Ballad of Hildina (2006–2014) but collected on the island of Foula in Shetland in 1774, and first published in 1805. ...

", The "Unst Boat song" and various Norn fragments collected by Jakob Jakobsen) is often corrupted. These works have been studied in depth, and scholars have notionally fixed the old Shetland Norn as kin to Faroese and Vestnorsk. The oral tradition for which Shetland was famed in the Norse era (when it was known as a land of bards) died with the language, though it may well be that some of the old folktales and ballads were translated into the oral tradition now known in Shetland dialect, and that the continuing proliferation of writers in Shetland could be considered an ongoing form of that tradition of 'bards', even across the difficult cultural shift from Scandinavia to Britain. Shetland is mentioned, however, in sources from the surrounding countries. For example, the '' Orkneyinga saga'', mainly about

Orkney Orkney (; sco, Orkney; on, Orkneyjar; nrn, Orknøjar), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, situated off the north coast of the island of Great Britain. Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north ...

talks about the archipelago on a number of occasions.

British Period

In the British era, which properly began for Shetland with the

Napoleonic Wars The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...

, Shetlanders developed a literature in variant written forms of the spoken Shetland dialect, as well as in English. The first widely published writers were two daughters of the

Lerwick Lerwick (; non, Leirvik; nrn, Larvik) is the main town and port of the Shetland archipelago, Scotland. Shetland's only burgh, Lerwick had a population of about 7,000 residents in 2010. Centred off the north coast of the Scottish mainland ...

gentry,

Dorothea Primrose Campbell Dorothea Primrose Campbell (4 May 1793 – 6 January 1863) was a poet, novelist and teacher from the Shetland islands of Scotland. She wrote a novel, ''Harley Radington: A Tale'' (1821), and had poems and short fiction printed in London periodica ...

and Margaret Chalmers, who wrote for the most part in a rather formal English. Subsequent Shetland dialect writers such as

Haldane Burgess James John (J.J.) Haldane Burgess (28 May 1862 – 16 January 1927) was a Shetland historian, poet, novelist, violinist, linguist and socialist, a noted figure in Shetland's cultural history. His published works include ''Rasmie's Büddie, So ...

, James Stout Angus, George Stewart and Basil R Anderson helped forge the written form of the native tongue. There are now a number of titles that might be termed Shetland dialect classics, in the sense that they found a ready market among Shetlanders when first published and became definitive of some part of the islands' culture. These works are not always the works of natives – incomers and visitors to Shetland have made considerable contributions to literature about Shetland, as in the cases of

Jakob Jakobsen Jakob Jakobsen (22 February 1864 — 15 August 1918) was a Faroese linguist and scholar. The first Faroe Islander to earn a doctoral degree, his thesis on the Norn language of Shetland was a major contribution to its historical preservation. I ...

and

Hugh MacDiarmid Christopher Murray Grieve (11 August 1892 – 9 September 1978), best known by his pen name Hugh MacDiarmid (), was a Scottish poet, journalist, essayist and political figure. He is considered one of the principal forces behind the Scottish Rena ...

for instance. Much of this literature is currently out of print and has been, in some instances, for a very long time. As a result, subsequent generations of Shetlanders have grown up unaware of this tradition – and specialist readers, the scholars beyond the islands who might be interested, remain oblivious to the work.

Modern writers

These include: *

Rhoda Bulter Rhoda Bulter (15 July 1929 – 1994), Shetland author, is one of the best-known Shetland poets of recent times. Biography Born Rhoda Jernetta Ann Johnson, in Lerwick, she was the daughter of Jeremiah Johnson, seaman, from West Houlland in th ...

* James W. Clarke *

Christine de Luca Christine De Luca (born 4 April 1947) is a Scottish poet and writer from Shetland, who writes in both English and Shetland dialect. Her poetry has been translated into many languages. She was appointed Edinburgh's Makar, or poet laureate from 2 ...

* John J. Graham *

Lollie Graham Laurence I. "Lollie" Graham (1924–2008) was a Scottish poet and author Born in Stromfirth, Shetland, in 1924. The Graham family moved to one of the new croft holdings at Veensgarth, Tingwall, Shetland, Tingwall and Graham lived there until he ...

Robert Alan Jamieson Robert Alan Jamieson (born 1958) is a poet and novelist from Shetland, Scotland. He grew up in the crofting community of Sandness. He works as a creative writing tutor at Edinburgh University, having been co-editor of the '' Edinburgh Review'' ...

* Laureen Johnson * Jim Mainland * John (Jack) Peterson * Paul J. Ritch * T. A. Robertson (

Vagaland Vagaland (6 March 1909 – 30 December 1973), was a Scottish poet from Shetland. Biography Born Thomas Alexander Robertson at Westerwick at the southern tip of the parish of Sandsting, his mother's home. He was the second son of Andrina Joh ...

) * Stella Sutherland * Christian S. Tait * William J. Tait

References

{{Reflist Shetland culture