Shetland Islands, Lerwick
Today, we began our journey of the British Isles with our first stop in Lerwick, the capital city of the Shetland Islands. Here, we begin to see the transition of being in a land from a traditionally Norse culture to that of a Gaelic culture. The wind was high and the clouds loomed overhead, yet the weather stayed dry and didn’t keep us from a terrific exploration of the mainland island rich with history.
The first particular highlight of our visit was an excursion to the recently opened Shetland Museum. This was a perfect way to get a taste for the varied history and cultural expressions of the Shetland people. Here, we saw artifacts dating from the Stone Age all the way to the present, including tools, jewelry, fishing boats, stories, and music from the various time periods of Shetland history.
From the museum, some of the guests took walking tours of the small city filled with quaint homes and stone-made buildings. The rest of the group hopped back into buses for a ride south across the island to a particularly special destination called Jarlshof. Along the way, we bounced through a treeless, grassy landscape interspersed with especially purple slopes of heather flowers and areas harvested for peat. We passed many little homes, farms, and fields of sheep.
Jarlshof is a remarkable site with its archeological excavations revealing different inhabitations that date all the way back to the Neolithic Stone Age, some 4500+ years ago. The earliest remains of the site are Stone Age round houses with midden heaps and remnants of old cooking hearths. The next structure to be developed here was the circular, twin-walled Broch of the Iron Age (~100 BC) and the similar wheelhouse that was built a few centuries later. Following that settlement were homes of a Norse farm from 850-1275 AD, and then the more recent dwellings of the Sumburgh House or “Jarlshof” dating from 1590-1700. It was a real treat to meander our way through such a deeply rooted historical place, and it touched our imaginations to wonder how each and every group of people may have lived there.
After a warm up of some coffee inside, we hit the road to visit a small farm with the famous Shetland Ponies. The little ponies walked right up to the fence to say hi, and it was neat to see this distinct icon of the Shetland Isles.
