Photos and the City

Category: Travel

Saturday in Lerwick

I left my car parked near Loch Clickimin and walked along the coastline to the city centre of Lerwick. Today Lerwick is the capital and biggest city of Shetland, but until 1830 Scalloway used to be the capital and sheep used to graze the land that is today’s Lerwick.

The name Lerwick comes from the Old Norse word “Leirvik”, meaning muddy or clay bay. In 1625 the back then small settlement of Lerwick was burnt down after an edict from Scalloway, because

of the lawlessness seen in the area, including, drunkenness, theft, prostitution, assault and murder… (Northlinkferries.com)

The town was built on smuggling (like many other places in Shetland). Danish fishermen started to arrive from the 1600is in the summertime for the summer herring fishery. Locals started to trade them fresh goods, wool and other goods.

In exchange, brandy, gin and tobacco were bartered and smuggled ashore in a series of underground tunnels that ran the length of Commercial Street. As a result, small trading booths sprang up along the shore for both legal, and illegal trade. (Northlinkferries.com)

The Lodberrie – the home of the fictional Detective Jimmy Perez from the TV show “Shetland”. But this house is also connected to the smuggling trades.

This building, dating to about 1772 was one of 21 lodberries that lined the foreshore in Lerwick by 1814. The word lodberry comes from the Old Norse hladberg and means ‘a landing place, or a landing stone’ and describes the type of use these utilitarian – yet beautiful – buildings were designed for. (Northlinkferries.com)

These houses used to be trading booths, their foundation built in the sea, boats were offloaded, legal goods sold right there on the streets and the illegal goods were taken in the tunnels under the town.

No one planned the old town it just grew organically until the Victorias tried to get some order into the maze of alleys and close. They also laid out a new town with spacious villas and public parks beyond the Hillhead.

28/12/2021
Mousa Broch

Turning towards Shetland Mainland my walk around Mousa was at half point. Following a stone wall, the home of many storm petrels, tiny birds who were flying around and suddenly stopping mid-air, I got a first glimpse of the former houses in Mousa.

Mousa has been populated from earliest times through until mid 19th Century. At the north end of the loch there are Brunt Mounds dating from the Bronze Age (c1500BC). The ruins north of the loch are the abandoned croft houses and the ruin on the hill to south-west was the house of a Lerwick merchant. The stream from the loch once powered a Norse mill, the ruins of which can also be seen. (Shetland-Heritage)

A former farmhouse on the right and the broch on the left. The farm (Knowe House) supported the big house (Haa) next to the broch.

The 1841 Census states that Erasmus Jameson, Farm Servant, age 40, lived there with his wife and five children. We know the Jamesons left Mousa on 4 May 1842, and Andrew Jameson, the eldest son then aged 13, left a memento of this poignant event when he inscribed his name and date on a north gable corner stone. (Mousa.co.uk)

View of the broch and the big house (Haa) next to it along the shoreline). The Haa was built in 1783 and was the home of the merchant James Pyper from Lerwick. He bought the island and built this house for his first wife.

James married first Janet Gray of whom it is said he built the home on Mousa to keep her from drink, and secondly he married Anne Linklater. James died in 1828 and Anne lived on in the Haa until her death in 1852. (Mousa.co.uk)

Anne didn´t live alone, but with three female servants and one male lodger.

Mousa Broch is the best-preserved broch in the British Isles, it was built between 300 and 100 BC and dates from the Iron Age. You find a lot of these fortified towers (homes or lookouts) on the British Isles. But I this one is actually the only one with still intact stairs and pre-pandemic it was possible to walk on top of the tower and to enjoy the view.

The stairs were closed due to being very narrow and it wouldn’t have been possible to keep a distance.

It is one of a pair guarding Mousa sound and probably a part of a chain of brochs all through Shetland. Many brochs were surrounded by a settlement but this didn´t seem to be for the Mousa broch.

It is a small broch, about 12m high and 15m wide, this probably helped it to survive. And as the settlement in Mousa was sparse there wasn´t too much need to reuse the stones.

It was a short walk back towards the landing and the last small house.

Back on the boat we took another look at the broch and were told how smugglers used to store their goods in the broch before selling them in Shetland. One day soldiers came to the Laird whose home is right next to the pier on Mainland Shetland to stay the night and make an early morning crossing to Mousa to confiscate the goods. But one of the Lairds servants alerted the fishermen and during the night they ferried all the smuggled goods to the mainland and hid them here.

The next morning the soldiers hired the same fishermen to ferry them over to Mousa where they, to their surprise, didn´t find anything.

Almost back at mainland Shetland.

The Lairds house

07/12/2021
Mousa

Even when you are already on an island there are still so much more islands to visit. I´ve already seen the Island of Mousa lying next to mainland Shetland while driving from Lerwick to my lovely Airbnb and on day two it was time for a visit.

The Mousa boat was just a shirt drive away and I arrived early enough to see some seals having a little nap right on the historic Sandsayre pier. Some people even walked right to them to take some pictures, I wanted to gíve them some space. And there was also a little museum about the Mousa boat in the old boatshed.

During the summer the boat crosses the short distance to Mousa once a day and leaved enough time to explore the island before going back three hours later.

Mousa is 1,5 miles long and around 1 mile wide, there is a lovely circular path following the coast line. Mousa Broch is the best preserved broch in the British Isles. A broch is a Iron Age fortification, a kind of tower to live in, often surrounded by a village.

Upon arrival we were greeted by some lovely dogs and lots of very loud sheep, who were in the middle of getting sheared and seemed not too happy about that.

Besides all the sheep Mousa is a known breeding ground for little birds called storm-petrels who live in stone walls and also for grey and common seals, black guillemots and Arctic terns.

The circular coastal and moorland walk around the RSPB reserve starts right by the landing and shouldn´t be left to not disturb the breeding birds.

My first “sight” was the lighthouse and the East Pool where the path continue around. Lots of the other visitors had already stopped for a picknick or little break and I almost felt as I was the only person on the island.

To be continued…

16/11/2021