When finding out a map of the UK, you may not discover them at first. However up and off to the appropriate is an archipelago of about 100 islands midway between Scotland and Norway. Collectively these kind Shetland, a largely treeless land first settled within the Neolithic age round 6,000 years in the past. Shetland’s inhabitants of simply 23,000 underlines its remoteness as the UK’s northernmost boundary.
But from a flourishing Viking Age tradition to its clandestine particular operations in opposition to Nazi-occupied Norway, Shetland has all the time punched above its weight. Even as we speak, when Shetland evokes ideas of wool, ponies, sturdy winds, fierce winters, and a long-running tv detective collection, it’s the hardiness of its folks and their collective-minded tradition, set amidst a rugged, resplendent nature, that remind us that isolation needn’t imply deprivation.
With 1,700 miles of shoreline, it’s no shock that fishing stays Shetland’s principal trade, though aquaculture (salmon and mussel farms) pop up in protected bays all through the islands. The invention of North Sea oil within the Sixties, and the financial increase it triggered a decade later, introduced new wealth…
