Shetland
I feel like I’ve been away for ages doing the British staycation travelling through Scotland up up to the Islands of Shetland. I wondered whether staycation was a real word, so I looked it up and apparently it appeared in the early 2000s and was added to the Oxford English dictionary in 2010 being described as, 'staying at home during your holidays due to lack of funds or fear of danger.' I guess this may need to be expanded to include domestic tourism due to travel restrictions.
I just want to talk about one place that caught my artistic imagination, where the crowds and queues did not exist. We took a 14-hour ferry from Aberdeen, halfway between Norway and Scotland we landed at Lerwick on Shetland’s mainland.
The Shetlanders do not consider themselves Scottish, in the 15th century, Christian I, King of Norway, pledged Shetland and the Orkneys as security against the dowry for his daughter Margaret to marry James III of Scotland. Apparently Christian I then raised the funds to get the islands back and James III said no thanks, I’m keeping them! The Scottish lairds arrived, raped and pillaged and force the people of Shetland to work for them. A wrongdoing that will take more than a few hundred years to clear.
It sounds like I am about to head into a travel/history blog but that is not the case. I have less than three months before I finish my oil painting programme where for the past two years I have been working, predominantly, on painting exercises to further my painting skills. I need to start asking myself, what am I going to paint when I finish? In some ways this is an easy question for me as my most intense feelings lie within the experience of travel, culture and people. Thankfully everything in my life is coming into alignment where I can work as an artist who travels. It was whilst on Shetland, a most out of this world magical place, that I realised this potential more clearly.
When we arrived I found myself instinctively gathering snippets of information and thinking about how I would paint about these people and their culture, the light and the landscape. We have two good friends, Jane and Mike, who live on the island of Hamnavoe, they showed us around and introduced us to friends. We were only there for 4 days which was enough to know we need to go back but these are the things that aroused me so far:
We drank tea and ate custard creams with the most beautiful Shetlanders, Wilbert and Christine, on the cliffs at Eshaness. As a retired couple they often take their caravan as little as an hour away from home on Hamnavoe, park up and enjoy the walks and isolation, this is common Shetlander practice, there are no trespassing laws, you can pretty much park up and walk anywhere. Whilst drinking tea, that was cooling rapidly, their daughter was messaging Christine to tell her she was watching us on the lighthouse webcam, everyone knows your business over here! Wilbert told me, ‘Every time we go to Scotland, I look forward to coming home as I don’t really like trees, they just get in the way of the view! I had never really thought of trees as view blockers, but I guess it makes sense, Shetland has expansive views, very few trees and has always been this way.
Within the first day I could see common threads in bone structure, facial features. This investigation needs more time, but I started to see a slim taller build with high protruding cheek bones, more pointed nose, and a particular clustering of teeth, others with a shorter thicker set stature but the same cheeks, smile and laughing eyes even when not laughing! Summer skin like well brewed tea, the kind that tans easily.
It is difficult to find a café, let alone good coffee, apparently the concept of a ‘flat white’ has only arrived in Shetland in the last year and I would say, as yet it is more of a word than the real thing. Despite this Shetlanders have humorous, quirky ways of providing sustenance. In the middle of nowhere you may find a repurposed bus shelter, a random ornaments placed on the roadside, a miniature house with a pop-up lid filled with cakes or a fridge on the harbour with an extension lead running to a nearby house. It all relies on honesty, put your money in the box.
We were invited to a barbecue by some friends of Jane and Mike, they were renovating a Kirk (Church) on the edge of a loch. If this was my bbq I would have cancelled or retreated indoors to use the oven, but not this lot, they are a hardy bunch.
Whilst the Shetland women produce knitwear with the most beautifully elaborate designs and colours the houses are simple functional and neutral. A lady on Hamnavoe decided to paint her house blue and has been told quite categorically by her grandfather to turn return it to white the way a house should be.
It may sound ridiculous, but the people seem to blend into their environment. Their blonde hair with strawberry orange tones like the rock, sand and the seaweed. Their teeth have a not unattractive, jaggedness like the rocks of the coastline. They have a clear complexion and healthy glow that could be explained by the clear waters and hairy lichen that thrives on clean air. The light is not harsh but soft and long, I found it difficult to work out the time of day. The sun would shine the vistas broaden then the sea mist would roll in with an eeriness that conjured the tales of ghosts and smugglers, then black skies would appear out of nowhere.
This was just a slice of my experience in Shetland, we have our eye on a house renovation project happening in Unst, the northernmost island. They are looking for volunteers to help out so maybe we will find ourselves there next year which will give me an opportunity to experience more of this thoroughly intriguing place and think more clearly about how I would paint about this culture. But for now, it’s back to school!