The Frayed Atlantic Edge: A Historian’s Journey from Shetland to the Channel

Once I was beyond the geological spectacles of the north, I made my way towards a world of small, fertile islands that were long smattered with settlements but are now home only to sheep. The day I set out through these islands was my first experience of the infamous Shetland haa and so the first time I really had to navigate. After ten minutes on the water, I tore my new compass from its plastic packaging and checked I could read it as I rocked. The conditions were haunting. Sometimes the haa sat flat against the gentle, three-feet swell. At others, it hung just inches from the water and tendrils of grey-white cloud seemed to stroke the surface of the waves. I had intended to spend the night on the island of Havera. But this, I’d since heard, was a place without streams: its community had been sustained by two wells that, a century later, I couldn’t afford to rely on. So I aimed first to find my way between the Peerie Isles (peerie being Shetland dialect for small) to the outside tap at the local Outdoor Centre.

Mist is an excellent ally in wildlife watching. Today, not much after 4 a.m., an otter stood and watched as I drifted quietly by, while several red-throated divers, known here as rain geese, left it late to sidle off. Conditions, landscape, wildlife and atmosphere had all changed dramatically since St Magnus Bay. After landing and stocking up on water I set off for Havera, a place I’d long been intrigued to see. Slowly, the mist rose, wisps clinging to the moors east of the island, so that Havera gradually brightened from the west. Soon, it was stranded in a wedge of weak light beneath dark and silent skies. Clouds still licked the feet of the rough pewter cliffs long after their brows were clear. As I entered the mile of open water between mainland and the island, the swell was slow and gentle. On this day more than any other, the strange sensation of movement in multiple dimensions was something my body would retain: when I slept, many hours later, the cliffs seemed to undulate beneath me.

Havera is surrounded by richness. Nories and tysties surfaced laden with sand eels; forests of green-brown kelp seemed to grasp towards the surface. I’d planned this day and the next to give me time on the island. Here, if anywhere, I could begin to comprehend the lost communities of Shetland and the ruins that line the shores. The Havera folk left behind an archive, including recordings describing life on the island. A collaborative project of photography, research and writing used these to build a beautiful book, Havera: The Story of an Island (2013). I’d saved this to read in situ, where I could follow up each reference to a hill, promontory (taing) or rocky inlet (geo) by exploring it myself. Later, I’d spend a day on the Shetland mainland listening to recordings of the people of Havera and contextualising the extracts in the book. This was my best chance so far to explore the ‘archive of the feet’.

Travelling south, I reached the island at the deep clefts of Stourli Geo and Brei Geo on its north side, and used a dialect poem, Christina de Luca’s ‘Mappin Havera’, to guide me towards a landing. This poem begins with a warning:

Havera’s aa namit fae da sea.

We could box da compass

o wir isle; hits names markin

ivery sklent da sea is med,

da taings an stacks an gyos.

If on your wye ta Havera

an mist rowled in,

ivery steekit bicht spelt danger;

you had ta ken dem, ivery een.

The poem then provides the necessary ‘kenning’, tracing the aids and obstacles encountered by fishermen at the island’s edge, until spying safety at ‘Nort Ham,/wir peerie haven/Mak for dere if you can’.

Having followed these directions, I pulled into Nort Ham at the island’s south-east corner (figure 2.6) and was met with an onshore sea of wildflowers and grasses. I pulled my boat up among the buttercups, where I found the egg of a wheatear (sten-shakker), plundered by a neater and more precise predator than the bonxies who might ordinarily be culprits. But there were also sten-shakker fledglings, less cautious and more curious than their chattering parents. Without this pretty sheltered inlet at Nort Ham, Havera might never have been inhabited. Over centuries, the people and goods that entered or left the island came through this tiny gap: the community’s single link to the world beyond.

I packed myself a bag of food and warm clothes, since new weather seemed to blow in by the hour. Havera has several landmarks I wanted to investigate. The most substantial is the abandoned village packed tightly into the corner known as Da Yard, which was the last place in Shetland’s small isles to sustain a population. In 1911 it boasted twenty-nine occupants from five families. Inland, there are two outlying buildings. One is an old schoolhouse, the other the imposing trunk of a huge ruined windmill: a meed (sea mark) visible from many miles away. I decided to take my bearings according to the landscape before investigating the ruins. This proved trickier than expected since most headlands were colonies of terns: to disturb them is not just harmful to a threatened species, but also draws a volley of intense and committed dive-bombing far more likely to cause injury than the infamous attacks of great skuas (a bonxie attack is never conducted in such numbers or with such frenzied persistence).

When I finally found a spot to sit and read, I was gazing out onto Havera’s satellite, West Skerry. Each spring, island sheep and cattle were swum here, across the hundred-yard sound, to protect the Havera crops. This ridge of rough pasture, completely separate from Havera’s arable land, was key to the success of the island community. But it is arable richness that was Havera’s greatest asset. The island is less than a square mile in size, yet its interior is not the rock- and wrack-strewn waste found on many islets of similar area. It’s an unlikely idyll of well-drained, fertile earth, perpetually replenished by soft limestone that intrudes in veins through the region’s granite bones. From the era of Neolithic field boundaries (still sometimes traceable), to the moment when the crofters left, this limestone made Havera a fine place to grow grain. Indeed, its name is probably derived from hafr, the Old Norse for ‘oats’.

The island was generally presented by its last inhabitants as a plentiful and perfect home. Gideon Williamson died in 1999, seventy-six years after he left Havera; he remembered his birthplace as unique in Shetland because its fertile land was not ‘just bits a patches here an dere’ but one great expanse of rock-less, weed-less loam: ‘you could tak a ploo an ploo da whole lot up … Hit wis entirely clean.’ Shetland tradition accords to tilled Havera earth pest-repelling tendencies that verge on the magical.

Yet the topography did have drawbacks. Wells were no substitute for streams because running water had uses beyond cleaning and quenching thirst. The most common ruins I’d passed along other Shetland coasts were small, simple watermills built where rivers met the sea. But the people of Havera had to row their grain to Scalloway (a five-mile crossing) or Weisdale (eight miles) and pay for its grinding. This added labour, cost and risk to the challenges of island life. In the 1860s, a solution was dreamed up: the only windmill ever built in this storm-ravaged archipelago. The innovator might have been Gifford Laurenson, a skilled mason who was entrusted by the Society of Antiquaries with repairing the Iron Age Broch of Mousa (then ‘mouldering into dust’). Between 1848–52, the Laurensons married into Havera families twice, and Gifford’s sister and father (also a mason) moved to the island.

The significance of Gifford Laurenson’s link to the Broch of Mousa is that the Havera mill evokes ancient Shetland more than modern. It stands like a round Iron Age edifice in a region where circular buildings are rare. It is a landmark that, like an ancient fort, puts Havera on the map: the most instantly recognisable of the small islands and, according to one local seafarer, ‘a kinda lodestar for whaar you wir’. That incidental function is all well and good. But so many compromises were made with the mill’s design, in order that it might withstand the Shetland weather, that it was useless for grinding grain: Havera folk quickly quit and resumed their mainland journeys.

The large, ill-fitting stones make the mill easy to climb, so I edged my way carefully up the green and golden lichen to an exceptional vantage on its walls. From here the world of which Havera was the centre could be surveyed. The rough low hills of the southern mainland, with their scattering of small white houses, occupied the eastern horizon, the shores becoming ever sandier as the hills sank and stretched south. These were the coastlines that Havera folk traversed on calm summer days. But beyond the southern extremities of the mainland, thirty miles distant, Fair Isle stood out on the horizon. From there, sweeping west, a long stretch of ocean was punctured only by the mad cliffs of Foula, frequently referred to as the wildest inhabited spot in the British Isles. These two islands signalled a remoter world to which, in certain weathers, Havera most certainly belonged.

I wandered downhill to the village, where small buildings are packed into a narrow isthmus with surprising neatness. This order is a product of the history of habitation. Although Havera had long been lived on (this is probably its first period of abandonment in millennia), the population was increased, and several new crofts built, during a sudden enforced settlement in the eighteenth century when landlords aimed to increase rents from every part of their domain. When the island was abandoned, it wasn’t because of clearance, but was an after-effect of the overpopulation engineered by the lairds. A few Gaelic place names round the coast suggest that some incomers might have been Scots, not Shetlanders; two very different cultures forced together.

The overwhelming impression amid the ruins was of how communal life must have been. Doors and windows of the small neat houses look onto one another, while amenities such as the single village kiln suggest prominent shared spaces (in most of Scotland at this time each croft had a kiln of its own). Inside houses, outlines of two rooms, the but and ben (living room and bedroom), are often clear, although the interiors of some have been converted into well-crafted winter sheep pens. A single habitable house stands on the inland edge of the village. It is used by those who tend the island’s sheep but its occupation seems irregular: a faded chess set and 1990s magazines accompany a toy animal that stares incongruously from a window.

This building shows that the village is not entirely abandoned. But nor is it entirely uninhabited. As I walked around its eastern edge I realised that the honking of fulmars was not just coming from the precipice below, but also from the ruins of crofts: the birds use the village walls as crags. Despite the healthy human population shown in the 1911 census, the last residents left the island in 1923. Jessie Goodlad, born on Havera in 1903, explained why:

Dey left becaas dey wir naeboady left ta geeng back an fore wi da boat … becaas da young menwis aa laevin … weel, dey wirna laevin exactly, dey wir aa gyaain tae da fishin … dey wir naeboady to steer dis boat, dis saily-boat, back an fore.

Fulmars spread across Britain’s Atlantic coasts in the early decades of the twentieth century. The first of these birds may well have begun to nest here after the Havera folk had left (there are still retired Shetland fishermen who recall the time they were told, as children, to come and see this strange bird, the maalie). There is as much social change in nature, and as little permanence, as there is among people. Few events demonstrate this more fully than the sudden and unforeseen expansion of the fulmar across the North Atlantic world; this might even be called the most dramatic conquest of Britain since 1066.

Fulmars are the most characterful of seabirds. They seem to be constantly at play, especially in high winds, and appear to demonstrate an inexhaustible curiosity in humans, quietly approaching any boat at sea. Many photos from the kayak can be filed under ‘Photobombed by Fulmar’. These birds are often written about as though they possess an unflappable mastery of the winds, but much of their personality comes from clumsiness. As they misjudge a gust and lose their poise, a huge webbed foot is thrust into the air; after a split second of feather-ruffling slapstick they’ll be balanced on the breeze again.

The arrival of thousands of fulmars has transformed the experience of Havera from anything its crofters would have recognised. But fulmars are not the only change to the island’s avifauna: the hilltop rigs where crops were grown have also been conquered. These thin strips of rich land were known and named in detail: responsibility for rigs called things like Da Peerie Wirlds, Da Hoolaplanks and Da Kokkiloori was circulated round crofters every season. Now, the space where kale, oats and bere (the traditional four-rowed barley of the Northern Isles) were grown is barely traceable beneath the same foliage that would be there had the island not been farmed. Ruling this feral domain is another victor in the struggles between species: the bonxie. Every rocky vantage, whether a corner of the old schoolhouse or a chunk detached from a long-flattened dyke, is now a watchtower for a bulky skua.

This two-century legacy of change is a profound demonstration of the entanglement of human and natural worlds. The Havera way of life was transformed – ended – not only by the ill-judged whims of distant landlords but by the movement of fish offshore, while many differences between Havera today and in the past are a result of the changing social lives – the histories – of birds. At the end of my Shetland journey, I spent a night in the shadow of the Havera windmill’s twin, the fourth-century Broch of Mousa. This is a domineering monument to human belligerence, yet now its walls reverberate with the gentlest purring. Storm petrels nest in the cracks between stones, and as I settled down to sleep, hundreds of tiny stormies fluttered across my sight line. Masons making ready for war had unwittingly built the perfect hive for these sparrow-sized seafarers.

It is tragic to see abandoned places that were once filled with people, especially when (as in the case of Havera) their magnetic personalities – their pleasures and regrets – shine through recordings of their voices. Yet in a world where humans wage wars of conquest not just among themselves but on almost every species on the planet, it might be heartening to see the agency of animals reshaping realms to which humans are, more than ever, peripheral.

At about 3 a.m. on my night on Havera, heavy rain set in. As I paddled south, soaked to the bone and (for the first time in this journey) truly cold, the windmill remained on my horizon, only briefly hidden by the heaviest downpours. Both the red cliffs of the north and the fertile, low-lying isles were now left behind. A diverse geology, including complex whorls of multiple rocks, had taken over. Drongs were no longer the square-edged towers of St Magnus Bay, but rugged grey wedges like spittle-wreathed teeth. Few mishaps had occurred so far, but I’d now misjudged the battery level of my phone and was left unable to check tides and weather. I knew such accidents would happen quite often, but with the tidal challenges that lay ahead, this was not a time I would have chosen. Momentarily I thought there was a virtue to this failing: that it made my journey more ‘authentic’ (not a word I’d ever usually trust). But I quickly realised that every seafarer of the pre-digital age had resources to judge tides that I lacked. I had some familiarity with what to expect, built up over the last two weeks (I knew, for instance, to expect ebb tides in the afternoon) and I also had time: if I confronted hostile tides or weather I could, in theory, sit them out and consume the ample food and reading still stowed in my boat.

The sky began to clear as I passed St Ninian’s Isle, linked to the mainland by its tombolo beach. This pretty strand of sand, lapped gently by the sea on either side, is perhaps the most famous landmark in Shetland. Like many of Shetland’s spits and bars, it indicates an alarming reality: a drowned coastline that has not stopped sinking. Shetland may have sunk as much as nine metres in 5,000 years, in contrast to most Scottish coasts that follow a more usual post-glacial path of continuing ascent (‘isostatic rebound’ once freed from the weight of their Ice Age glaciers). The scale of this change, over so short a time, explains some of the extraordinary transitoriness of this coastline. This would be driven home even more strongly as I continued towards the final tidal barriers in my path.

The first challenge was Fitful Head. Yet again, the wind was low as I reached a point where any breeze would have spelled trouble, and yet again, this was enough to draw the sting from a possible threat. I bounced fast enough through the tidal overfalls at the Head to consider tackling the second challenge before dark. But Sumburgh Head was worth waiting for: it offered the possibility of whales and the chance to see one of Britain’s most spectacular tidal runs, da roost, in action.

As the sun rose over another subdued sea – the fading swell preserving the memory of long-departed breezes – I launched. Porpoises, closer than any I’d seen so far, edged along the coast ahead. I soon passed the largest stretch of sand on Shetland. There is no hint when paddling past that this was once the thriving village of Broo. Landowners and tenants in the early eighteenth century began to note deterioration in the quality of their land. Soon, it was ‘declared valueless’. By the mid-eighteenth century, the once-wealthy village had been obliterated beneath ‘a small dusty kind of sand, which never possibly can rest, as the least puff of wind sets it all in motion, in the same manner as the drifting snows in winter’.

Caused by the climatic cooling of Europe’s ‘little ice age’ (the 1690s were one of the coldest decades in the last millennium), this tragedy was the most dramatic evidence I had seen so far of the scale and unpredictability of transformation on these coasts.

Passing this eerie site, I soon found myself sandwiched between tides, and forced to make split-second decisions about my route. At the first asking, I got it wrong, choosing not to go round the island of Horse Holm but to tackle the straits between the island and the mainland. This felt like taking a bike without suspension down a steep road of huge cobbles: the powerful tide was with me, but at times I was afraid the huge overfalls might bury or even break the kayak. My spare paddle was strapped to my deck in two pieces, but it was clear, as overfalls wrenched at the one I held, that a second without a paddle would be disastrous. I’m frequently surprised by how short these infamous tidal runs tend to be: I thought I was at the start of a long and harrowing ordeal when I found myself spat out into placid water. After this, Sumburgh Head itself was straightforward. The sun appeared as I made my way out to sea, south of the whole of Shetland, and for the first time in my journey I could see people gazing down, bird-watching binoculars raised to assess the small yellow form scraping across the sea. They were there in numbers, I soon discovered, looking for orcas that had been sighted the previous day.

I landed at the launch of the tiny Fair Isle ferry and crossed the narrow neck of land behind Sumburgh Head. This took me to a spot rich in historic remains, including Shetland’s most dramatic Viking tourist-draw: Jarlshof. The Norse traditions of this southern tip of Shetland are nearly as rich as those of Unst. Even the tidal stream I’d just swept through is rich in story. The Orkneyinga Saga is a tale of competition between Norwegian earls for the coasts and archipelagos of the North Atlantic; like most such sagas it is gripping and evocative but fiercely elitist, with barely a glimpse of perspectives beyond those of its entitled male protagonists. In 1148, the saga says, Earl Rognvald Kali Kolsson, ruler of the Northern Isles, was travelling between Orkney and Norway. With breakers all around, he was forced to run ashore at the south of Shetland. Rognvald wandered local settlements, enjoying anonymity and frequently (as was his habit) breaking into verse. One day, he met a poor elderly man near Sumburgh Head. Learning that the man had been let down by a rowing companion, Rognvald (disguised in a white cowl) offered to help him fish. The two rowed out to Horse Holm making for the ‘great stream of tide … and great whirling eddies’ that I’d just swept along. As the old man fished, Rognvald’s task should have been to skirt the tidal stream by rowing the boat against the eddies. Instead, he guided them deep into the turbulence where the fisherman began to draw up enormous fish, but soon cried out in terror ‘Miserable was I and unlucky when I took dee today to row, for here I must die, and my fold are at home helpless and in poverty if I am lost.’ Shouting ‘Be cheerful man!’, Rognvald rowed like a man possessed, eventually drawing them clear of the chaos and back to shore. Still incognito, he gave his share of the catch to the women and children preparing the fish on land, but then slipped on the rocks, provoking howls of mocking laughter. Rognvald muttered one of his verses, rendered here by the Orkney poet George Mackay Brown:

You chorus of Sumburgh women, home with you now.

Get back to your gutting and salting.

Less of your mockery.

Is this the way you treat a stranger?

Think, if this beachcomber

Hadn’t strayed to this shore by chance

Your dinner tables

Would be a strewment of rattling whelkshells today.

Sumburgh women, never set staff or dog or hard word

On the tramp who stands at your door

It might be an angel,

Though here, with the Sumburgh querns grinding salt out there,

It was only a man in love with the sea,