Part 6

Among explorers two Orcadians stand high, John Rae and William Balfour Baikie, both explorers of the highest scientific type, while Baikie was in addition a good naturalist and a distinguished philologist. John Rae the famous Arctic explorer, of the Hall of Clestrain, near Stromness, entered the service of the Hudson Bay Company, under whose auspices he in 1846 commanded an expedition which linked up the coastline between the discoveries of Ross in Boothia and those of Parry at Fury and Hecla Strait. In 1847 Rae joined the first land expedition in search of Franklin, and performed important exploration and scientific work. In 1850 he himself commanded a fresh expedition, which mapped a large part of the coast of Wollaston Land, and examined to about 100° the south and east coasts of Victoria Land. For the geographical results of this expedition, and for his earlier survey work, he in 1852 received the Founders’ gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society. His final Arctic expedition, organised by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1853, put the cope-stone to his fame, for on that expedition he at last succeeded in obtaining definite information regarding the fate of Sir John Franklin, and in purchasing relics of that hapless explorer and his party from the Eskimos. He died in London in July 1893, at the age of eighty, and was at his own request buried in the churchyard of St Magnus Cathedral at Kirkwall. John Rae was a man of splendid physique and persevering will, and a consideration of his work as a whole places him among the greatest of Polar explorers.

William Balfour Baikie, M.D., was born at Kirkwall in 1825. After serving for some years as a surgeon in the Navy and at Haslar Hospital, he obtained the post of surgeon and naturalist to the Niger expedition of 1854. On the death of the captain of the exploring ship “Pleiad” at Fernando Po, Baikie succeeded to the command, and this voyage, which penetrated 250 miles higher up the Niger than had yet been reached, he described in his _Narrative of an Exploring Voyage up the Niger and Isadda_. In 1857 Baikie left England on a second expedition. In the course of five years he opened up the navigation of the Niger, made roads, established markets, collected vocabularies of various African dialects, and translated parts of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer into Hausa. Baikie died at Sierra Leone, while on his way home on leave, on 17th December, 1864. The loving-care of his fellow-islanders has erected a fitting and touching memorial to him in that great fane of the Isles which holds, or ought to hold, the memorials of all distinguished Orcadians.

Orkney has been the birthplace of many men of high scientific attainments. Murdoch MacKenzie (d. 1797) was a distinguished hydrographer, who from 1752 to 1771 performed an enormous amount of professional work as surveyor to the Admiralty. His _Treatise on Marine Surveying_ is still esteemed. James Copland, M.D., a native of Deerness, was one of the leading medical men of his day (1791-1870). After picking up a knowledge of tropical diseases in West Africa, and travelling in France and Germany, he settled in London. His once famous _Dictionary of Practical Medicine_, however, with its 3509 double-column, small-type pages, a book by one man on every branch of medical science, soon degenerated into one of the curiosities of literature. Thomas Stewart Traill (1781-1862), son of a parish minister of Kirkwall, was professor of medical jurisprudence at Edinburgh University. Himself a man of almost universal learning, he fitly edited the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Matthew Forster Heddle, a son of Robert Heddle of Melsetter, was professor of chemistry at the University of St Andrews, and a mineralogist of great distinction. His great collection of Scottish minerals, now in the Royal Scottish Museum at Edinburgh, is one of the finest things of the kind that any country possesses. To these names we would add those of the Rev. Charles Clouston, minister of the parish of Sandwick, a distinguished meteorologist and naturalist, and of Sir Thomas Smith Clouston, the late distinguished specialist in mental pathology.

Sir Robert Strange, highly renowned as an engraver, was a son of David Strang, Burgh Treasurer of Kirkwall. Strange joined the Jacobites in 1745, engraved the Prince’s portrait and the plate for his bank-notes. He escaped alive from Culloden and evaded the search for him. Settling in London, he became the foremost in his art. One of his works is the engraving of West’s Apotheosis of George III’s children, Octavius and Alfred.

The most celebrated literary man whom the Islands can lay claim to is Malcolm Laing (1762-1818), the Scottish constitutional historian and protagonist in the Ossianic controversy. A friend of Charles James Fox, and a class-fellow of Lord Brougham, Laing sat in Parliament for the county in the Whig interest from 1807 to 1812. In 1808 he withdrew from the literary circles of Edinburgh to his home in the Islands, and here in 1814 he was visited by Sir Walter Scott. Malcolm Laing’s younger brother, Samuel, was the author of _Travels in Norway_, _A Tour in Sweden_, and _Notes of a Traveller_. A greater work, however, was his translation of the _Heimskringla_, the old Icelandic history of the early Kings of Norway, by Snorri Sturlason, a performance which had an important bearing on the hero-worship gospel of Carlyle. High literary ability appears to run in the blood of the Laings. Samuel Laing’s son, of the same name, was the author of those popular compendiums of nineteenth century science and thought, _Human Origins_, and _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, which are still in wide circulation.

David Vedder (1790-1854), an almost self-taught miscellaneous writer, of large output and considerable excellence, was born in the parish of Deerness. In 1830 he conducted the _Edinburgh Literary Gazette_, supported by De Quincey and others. The various works of Vedder, which include _Orcadian Sketches_, and _Poems, Legendary, Lyrical, and Descriptive_, have fallen on an undeserved oblivion. Vedder is the Orcadian poet _par excellence_. Perhaps the once highly popular novels of the amiable Mary Balfour, or Brunton, _Self-Control_, 1811, and _Discipline_, 1815, would not now be considered a passport to fame; but a later member of the family to which she belonged, David Balfour of Trenabie, has in his _Odal Rights and Feudal Wrongs_ written of the Scottish oppressions of Orkney in the sixteenth century in such fine limpid English as makes one regret the purely local interest of his subject. Walter Traill Dennison, who in his _Orcadian Sketch Book_ has given his fellow-islanders some light fiction of a high quality, unfortunately elected to write in the strictly local dialect of the North Isles of Orkney, using a phonetic spelling which is a stumbling-block to many readers who are quite at home in ordinary Scots literature. Traill Dennison, like Vedder, is a humourist, and Orkney gifted to the outside world a greater humourist than either when she sent the father of Washington Irving across the sea.

Orkney has produced scarce a churchman or a lawyer who has distinguished himself _as such_. The great Robert Reid, founder of Edinburgh University, was perhaps the most celebrated of her pre-reformation bishops, while James Atkine, a native of Kirkwall, was bishop of Moray in the seventeenth century. William Honyman, of the Honymans of Graemsay, sat on the Scottish bench as Lord Armidale in the early part of the nineteenth century, but his marrying Lord Braxfield’s daughter was perhaps his doughtiest feat. The list of Orkney Sheriffs, however, includes the famous names of Charles Neaves, Adam Gifford, and William Edmonstone Aytoun. Aytoun kept house at Berstane, near Kirkwall, and his humourous sketch _The Dreep-daily Burghs_, is supposed to make covert allusion to the climatic and other amenities of the group of parliamentary burghs of which the Orcadian capital at that time formed one. His connection with the Islands also inspired his poem of _Bothwell_; and contact with the surrounding seas moved the lively Neaves to verse of nigh as dolorous strain.

21. The Chief Towns and Villages of Orkney

(The figures in brackets after each name give the population in 1911, and those at the end of each section are references to pages in the text.)

=Finstown= is a small village in the parish of Firth, the half-way house between Kirkwall and Stromness. The village has a pier, an inn, and a monthly cattle fair. (p. 27.)

=Kettletoft=, a small village on a bay of the same name, on the east side of Sanday, is the business centre of the island, and a minor herring-fishing station.

=Kirkwall= (3810), is situated at the northern end of a low isthmus dividing the Mainland into two, and has a harbour on two sides, that at Scapa Bay to the south being the port of call for the daily mail-steamer to Caithness. The harbour of Kirkwall proper, facing to the north, was designed by Telford, and is the place of general traffic. The town takes its name, in Norse _Kirkjuvágr_,[1] churchbay, from the old parish church of St Olaf, supposed to have been erected by Jarl Rognvald I, _c._ 1040, but it only became the capital of the Islands after the foundation of the cathedral in 1137, and the consequent transfer of the seat of the Bishopric from Birsay. Kirkwall received its earliest charter as royal burgh from James III, in 1486, and was visited by James V, in 1540. Of several later charters the governing one is that granted by Charles II, in 1661. The population consists mainly of professional men, tradesmen, artisans, and labourers, there being no manufactures of consequence, although fish-curing is prosecuted to some extent, and there are two distilleries adjacent to the town. The volume of trade is very considerable, however, as the town shares with Stromness the position of shopping and shipping centre for a large and comparatively well-to-do agricultural community. The ancient Grammar School of Kirkwall, now housed in a spacious modern building and styled the Burgh School, has given the rudiments of education to many distinguished sons of town and county. The institution dates at least from Danish times (1397-1468). Owing to the narrowness of the streets, and the many old buildings both public and private, the general impression created by the town is one of quaint antiqueness; while the Oyce, a miniature inland sea on its north-western outskirts, imparts an additional touch of picturesque individuality to the place. Two weekly newspapers, _The Orcadian_ and _The Orkney Herald_, are published at Kirkwall. (pp. 16, 27, 41, 42, 50, 53, 55, 58, 68, 77, 79, 81, 84, 85, 86, 90, 95.)

[1] _Kirkjuvágr_ softened into Kirkwa, and Scots mistook the final syllable for their own _wa’_ = wall; hence Kirkwall.

=Longhope=, in Walls, although it contains no village, has scattered along the lower coasts of its splendid bay a Customs House, a good hotel, two post offices, and a few shops. Two martello towers, one on each side of the entrance to the bay, attest the importance of the anchorage at the period of the Great War, when as many as 200 sail of merchantmen at times lay there awaiting convoy. The bay is now a coaling station and much appreciated harbour of refuge for steamers, especially trawlers on their way to and from the northern fishing grounds. It also constitutes a sort of headquarters for the naval vessels which now annually visit Scapa Flow for exercise. (pp. 26, 27, 43.)

=Pierowall= is a small village on the bay of the same name, on the east side of Westray. The bay is a port of shelter for trawlers, and the village the trading centre for the island.

=St Margaret’s Hope= (400) is a picturesque village situated on a bay of the same name at the northern extremity of South Ronaldshay. The bay, named from an early church dedication to St Margaret of Scotland, was known to the Norse as Ronaldsvaag, and was the rendezvous of King Hakon’s fleet in the expedition of Largs. The village is after Kirkwall and Stromness the chief trading centre in Orkney. (pp. 27, 84, 85.)

=St Marys= is a fishing village situated on Holm Sound, 6 miles S.S.E. of Kirkwall. From here Montrose sailed to Scotland on his final venture in 1650.

=Stromness= (1653), one of the most picturesquely situated towns in Scotland, skirts the W. and N.W. sides of a beautiful bay in the S.W. of the Mainland, which for years was the last port of call for outward bound Greenland whalers and the vessels of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and also a touching point both outwards and homewards for the ships of many Arctic expeditions. As a burgh of barony Stromness dates from 1817, but as a village it had already made history. In the early part of the eighteenth century the vessels engaged in the American rice trade having made the safe little bay the depôt for unloading their cargoes for the various ports of Britain, the growing commerce of the place attracted the jealousy of Kirkwall. The magistrates of the Orcadian capital, founding on two obscure Acts of 1690 and 1693, which appeared to confine the right to such trading to freemen inhabiting royal burghs, and to such other communities as agreed to pay cess to a royal burgh, tried to tax the trade of Stromness out of existence. The people of Stromness, after submitting to these imposts for many years, between 1743 and 1758 fought their oppressors in the Court of Session and the House of Lords, both of which tribunals decided that “there was no sufficient right in the burgh of Kirkwall to assess the village of Stromness, but that the said village should be quit therefrom, and free therefrom in all time coming.” As the case was a test one, the courage shown by this little Orcadian community freed all the villages of Scotland from the exactions of the royal burghs. Stromness was visited by Sir Walter Scott in 1814, and by Hugh Miller in 1847, the latter of whom exhumed from the neighbouring flagstones the specimen of asterolepis which he deals with in his _Footprints of the Creator_. Interesting natives or inhabitants of Stromness were John Gow, or Smith, the original of Scott’s Cleveland in _The Pirate_, a man whose true history has been told by Defoe; and George Stewart, the “Bounty” mutineer, of whom Byron writes in his poem _The Island_:

And who is he? the blue-eyed northern child Of isles more known to men, but scarce less wild, The fair-haired offspring of the Orcades, Where roars the Pentland with its whirling seas.

Stromness is a place of considerable trade, and has the advantage over Kirkwall of direct communication with Liverpool and Manchester. There is a good museum in the town. (pp. 11, 27, 41, 42, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87.)

=Whitehall= (200), a village on the shores of Papa Sound, near the northern extremity of the island of Stronsay. (p. 41.)

SHETLAND

By T. MAINLAND

PREFACE

The author begs to acknowledge his indebtedness to Messrs Peach and Horne (in Tudor’s _Shetland_) for the notes on Geology in Chapter 5; to Mr John Nicolson author of _Arthur Anderson_, for the Notes and photograph in Chapter 18; and to Goudie’s _Antiquities_ for historical information.

1. County and Shire.[2] Name and Administration of Shetland

[2] See p. 1.

_Shetland_ or _Zetland_ is derived from the Norse _Hjaltland_, variant spellings being _Hieltland_, _Hietland_, _Hetland_. The Norse word is of doubtful origin.

Like Orkney, Shetland cannot be regarded as strictly a Scottish county till the seventeenth century. During that century various County Acts were framed for the better government of the islands. These lasted till 1747, when heritable jurisdiction was abolished and the judicial administration of Shetland was assimilated to the general Scottish system.

Shetland has the same Lord-Lieutenant as Orkney, but separate Deputy Lieutenants and Justices of the Peace. It shares a Sheriff-Principal with Orkney and Caithness, but has a Sheriff-Substitute of its own. The County Council, the Education Authority, Parish Councils, and Town Council of Lerwick are the administrative bodies. The civil parishes are: Unst, Fetlar, Yell, Northmavine, Delting, Walls, Sandsting, Nesting, Tingwall, Lerwick, Bressay, Dunrossness.

In Parliament one member represents both Orkney and Shetland.

Ecclesiastically the parishes are divided into three presbyteries, Lerwick, Burravoe and Olnafirth, which make up the Synod of Shetland.

2. General Characteristics

The county of Shetland is entirely insular, and its characteristics are varied. The coastline is generally broken and rugged, and in many places precipitous; while the larger islands are intersected by numerous bays and voes stretching far inland, which form safe and commodious places of anchorage and easy means of communication. No point in Shetland is more than three miles from the sea. Detached rocks and stacks, some high above the water and others below the surface, present a forbidding aspect to the spectator, and increase the dangers of navigation round the coast.

To be near the sea—their chief source of food—the early settlers made their homes close to the shore, where also they generally found the soil better than further inland. Accordingly most of the houses and crofts are situated along the coast, and in particular at the heads of voes, where often townships and villages have been formed. One striking feature is the bold contrast between the green cultivated township and the dark background of moor or hill, sharply marked off from each other by the ancient “toon” dykes. Still more noticeable are the large tracts of permanent pasture, where one may still see the ruins of cottages, once the homes of crofters who were evicted to make room for sheep.

The principal fuel in the islands is peat, the cutting of which, carried on for centuries, ever since the time of Torf Einar, who is said to have taught the natives the use of “turf” for burning, has denuded the surface, and left it blacker than it otherwise would be. That, and the practice of “scalping” turf for roofing purposes, have laid bare great stretches of what might have been fairly good pasture ground.

The proportion of arable land is very small compared with the whole land surface of the islands. For this reason Shetland has never figured as an agricultural county; and other causes may be mentioned, such as divided attention between the two branches of industry—fishing and crofting; indifferent soil; variable climate; antiquated methods of cultivation; and want of markets for agricultural produce.

Being far removed from the centres of commerce, and having few natural resources in themselves, the islands are almost entirely lacking in manufactures. Fishing and farming are the chief industrial pursuits, while the rearing of native sheep, ponies and cattle form a considerable part of the rural economy. Along with every croft or holding goes the right of common pasturage in the hills and moors, called “scattald.” Crofts would be of little value without this common grazing, which is a remnant of the old Norse odal system of land tenure, and is peculiar to the islands of Shetland and Orkney. The word _scattald_ is from _scat_, a payment, akin to _scot_ in “scot and lot.”

3. Size. Position. Boundaries

In size, Shetland ranks fifteenth among the Scottish counties; but in population only twenty-seventh. The total area (excluding water) is 352,319 acres or 550½ square miles. The group consists of about one hundred islands, of which twenty-nine are inhabited. The largest is Mainland, which embraces about three-fourths of the whole land-surface; and the others, in point of size, are Yell, Unst, Fetlar, Bressay and Whalsay. Yell measures 17½ miles by 6½, Unst 12 by nearly 6. The smaller islands include East and West Burra, Muckle Roe, Papa Stour, Skerries, Fair Isle and Foula; the remainder consisting of islets, holms, stacks and skerries. From Fair Isle, which lies about mid-way between Orkney and Shetland, to Sumburgh Head, is 20¼ miles; and from that point to Flugga in Unst, in a straight line, is 71 miles. From Sumburgh Head to Fethaland, the most northerly part of the Mainland, is 54 miles; and the greatest breadth, from the Mull of Eswick to Muness, is about 21 miles.

Including Fair Isle and Foula, the group lies between the parallels of 59° 30´ and 60° 52´ north latitude; and between 0° 43´ and 2° 7´ west longitude. The general trend of the islands is north-easterly, and their position in relation to the mainland of Scotland is also in that direction; Sumburgh Head being 95 miles north-east of Caithness and 164 miles north of Aberdeen.

The North Sea washes the eastern sea-board, and the Atlantic Ocean the western; sea and ocean join forces between Sumburgh Head and Fair Isle to form that turbulent tideway called the “Roost.” They also meet north of Yell and Unst, where the Atlantic sets strongly through Yell Sound and Blue Mull Sound for six hours during flood tide, and the North Sea, in its turn, in the opposite direction for the other six hours.

4. Surface and General Features

The surface of the larger islands is hilly, and the general direction of the ridges is north and south, corresponding to the length of the islands. The inland parts present an undulating surface of peat bogs and moorland, dotted here and there with fresh-water lochs, which accentuate, rather than relieve, the monotony of the landscape. The hills are round or conical in shape and of moderate height, ranging from 500 to 900 feet. Unlike the rounded hills of the Lowlands of Scotland, which are often grassy to the top, most of the Shetland hills are brown and barren, being covered with heather and moss or short coarse grass. Neither have they the rugged grandeur of the Highlands, for the sides are generally smooth and rounded, the result of intense glaciation.

The highest in the Mainland is Ronas Hill, Northmavine, a great mass of red granite, rising to a height of 1475 feet, forming the culminating point of the North Roe tableland, and having the hilly ridge of the Björgs on its eastern side. A long range of hills extends through the parish of Delting, from Firth Ness to Olnafirth; and from the south side of that inlet it extends southward to Russa Ness on the west side of Weisdale Voe. This is the loftiest range, and the southern ridge forms a complete barrier between the east and west side of that part of the Mainland. The highest hill in this chain is Scallafield, 921 feet. Other two parallel ridges lie east of this, the one from the east side of Weisdale Voe to Dales Voe in Delting; and the other from near Scalloway in a north-east direction to Collafirth. There are breaks in these hilly ridges, notably where the county road crosses over near Sandwater, and again between Olnafirth on the west and Dury Voe on the east. The other range worthy of note extends from the Wart of Scousburgh in Dunrossness, with intervening breaks, to the east of Scalloway, where it divides into two ridges, and stretches onward to the east and west sides of Dales Voe. Fitful Head in the south, 928 feet; Sandness Hill in the west, 817 feet; the Sneug in Foula, 1372 feet; the Wart of Bressay, 742 feet; and the Noup of Noss, 592 feet, are conspicuous land-marks round the coast. The island of Yell is hilly, with parallel ridges running north-east and south-west—highest point, the Ward of Otterswick. A range of hills extends along the west side of Unst—highest point, Vallafield, 708 feet. In the extreme north is Hermaness, 657 feet; while on the opposite side of Burrafirth is the still higher hill of Saxa Vord, 934 feet.