Walter Sutherland (died 1850) was a Scottish man who was reportedly the

last native speaker Within the linguistic study of endangered language, endangered languages, sociolinguists distinguish between different speaker types based on the type of Linguistic competence, competence they have acquired of the endangered language. Often when a ...

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 ...

, a

North Germanic language The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also r ...

which had once been spoken throughout

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 ...

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 ...

and

Caithness Caithness ( gd, Gallaibh ; sco, Caitnes; non, Katanes) is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. Caithness has a land boundary with the historic county of Sutherland to the west and is otherwise bounded by ...

. Sutherland was from Skaw, on the island of

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 ...

and lived in the northernmost house in the

British Isles The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles, ...

, near the present-day Unst Boat Haven. Sutherland may, however, have been merely the last native speaker of Norn on Unst. Some unnamed Norn-speakers of the island of

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 ...

were reported by

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 ...

to have survived much later than the middle of the 19th century.P. Sture Ureland, George Broderick, eds., ''Language contact in the British Isles: proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on Language Contact in Europe, Douglas, Isle of Man, 1988'' (M. Niemeyer, 1991), p. 455

Notes

Last known speakers of a language History of Shetland Norn language People from Unst Year of birth missing Year of death missing {{Shetland-stub