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IMAGE BILLY PICKET


VIEWPOINT


Norway or the


highway


Shetland’s future lies outside an independent Scotland


WORDS MAGNUS RENDALL A


t the end of January 2014, thousands of people in Shetland celebrated the annual Up Helly Aa fire festival. An


impressively hirsute Guizer Jarl, Ivor Cluness, presided over a huge torchlit procession, the burning of a galley boat and a night of drink- ing and revelry. Invented in the late nineteenth century by


local men who believed the Norse sagas were superior to the Greek and Roman myths idol- ised by the Victorians, Up Helly Aa pays homage to the islands’ Viking past. Until 1469, Shetland was part of Norway-


Denmark. When Christian I’s daughter Margaret married James III of Scotland, he effectively pawned the islands as part of her dowry. All subsequent attempts to have the islands returned to Norway have failed. In Unst, the most northerly of Shetland’s


100 or so islands, you can see the remains of a Viking longhouse and your children can play on a full-sized replica Viking longship. At Shetland’s southern tip the magnificent Jarlshof site gives a real insight into the daily lives of the Vikings. When you go into a bar or a shop the person


who serves you will most probably be a descend- ant of the Norsemen. They will proudly tell you that they are a Shetlander, not a Scot.


Independent islands Walk the streets of the island capital Lerwick and the signs and sounds of Shetland’s Norse heritage are everywhere. In the street names – St Olaf ’s Street, King Haakon Street, King Harald Street. In the sing-song dialect – replete with scores of words with their roots in Norn – Shetland folk will be blyde (glad) to see you. They will sound more Scandina- vian than Scottish. But this Scandinavian past means that the islands are a culturally unique part of Scot-


26 WWW.SCOTTISHFIELD.CO.UK


land and they will not be blyde to follow the rest of the country in voting for independence in September. In fact, they’d probably rather remain part of


the UK, rejoin Norway or gain their own inde- pendence. And we should let them go. The Yes campaign can hardly argue for independence for Scotland and then deny self-determination to any part of Scotland that wants it. Ah, I hear you say, but the islands would


struggle financially. On the contrary, Shetland has shown more


Above: Shetlanders celebrate their Viking roots.


savvy than any other part of the UK in the last 40 years. When the oil companies first arrived in the 1970s they secured an Act of Parliament – the Zetland County Council Act (1974) – which forced them to operate together on one site and secured large disturbance payments and harbour dues. These revenues were put into investment


funds which were used to build leisure centres, community halls and care homes. In short, while the UK squandered its oil revenues on unemployment benefit, Shetland’s money


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