Coming Home to a Far Off Place

This post was written by our guest blogger Marsali Taylor,  the author of the Shetland Sailing Mysteries series. Here she shares the story of how she came ‘home’ to far away Shetland.

I didn’t expect to spend my life as a foreigner.

I came to live in Shetland by chance. I did my teacher training year in Edinburgh and our tutor warned us, ‘There aren’t many jobs about. Apply to every authority and take what you can get.’ We duly applied across Scotland, and a couple of weeks later I got a friendly letter from the Director of Education for the Shetland Islands, saying that there was a post teaching English/French in either Brae or Aith. Brae was a town school with 500 pupils, Aith was in a village and had 200 pupils. Both were junior high schools, taking primary pupils in their immediate area and secondary pupils to age sixteen for their catchment area: in Aith’s case, the whole westside of Shetland.

After a year in central Edinburgh, I wanted to be by the sea again; I wanted a country childhood for my daughter, Marnie, then aged two. I’d never been to Shetland, but I’d loved family summers in the remote Highlands. I’d give it a go.

I accepted the job in Aith without even having visited, and was flown up for a belated interview. It was a sunny June day. The minibus-with-wings landed on a strip of tarmac in the middle of a heather valley. The single-track road twisted up a low hill, turned a corner, and suddenly there was a dazzling vista of blue sea between red-rock cliffs topped by soft green hills. A three-shelved island (Foula, as it turned out) floated on the horizon. When we came alongside a shingle beach, a seal on a rock lifted its tail in greeting.

My new headteacher had a slightly reserved air (he admitted twenty years later, once we were good friends, that he didn’t think I’d stay); the school was an old building, but a large, muddy hole surrounded by diggers marked the spot of the new one, to be opened a year later. I’d get his classroom (he’d been teaching French) with view straight down the voe … and that word was my first warning that I was in a different world here. ‘Loch,’ he corrected himself.

Voe is one of the many dialect words I now use without even thinking about it, along with peerie (little), shargin (complaining), a stour o’ wind (a lot of wind) and bow for a buoy. Shetland, you see, is Norse territory. It may officially be part of Scotland – though that’s disputed, as the original 1469 treaty specifies that it was only pawned to Scotland until Christian of Denmark could redeem it, and there were clauses about retaining udal law – the Norse system, which included every man or woman owning their own land. The Scots lairds sent up by James III to take over his new territory were the worst sort of colonial oppressors, trampling over the local law and despising the language, but the formerly free Norsemen and women clung fiercely to their old ways and the Norn language, which developed into modern Shaetlan. If you heard two Shetlanders speaking at speed, you might well think they were talking Norwegian, and if you asked them whether they’d prefer to be part of an independent Scotland or be returned to Norway, they wouldn’t hesitate before plumping for Norway.

It took me a while to understand the dialect. My pupils all talked Shaetlan at home, and several boys from further west used it in the classroom too. I encouraged them to both speak and write in their own tongue. Once we starting putting on plays, I found that if I wanted them to speak Shaetlan on stage, I had to write in it; my first published book was two of those plays.

Soon I was seeing the differentness of Shetland everywhere. The houses: there were some new harled (white pebbledashed) housing schemes, but most of my pupils lived in crofthouses like Viking longhouses, with house, byre and barn all in one line, probably built over Viking foundations, and still with the names Norse ancestors had used: Stiva, Kirkidale, Scarvataing. They were crofters’ children who spent their weekends with sheep, ponies and cows; fishermen’s sons who couldn’t wait to join the crew full-time. They were as used to handling a boat, a small double-ended skiff, as town children were to getting on buses – and when regatta day came, I realised that these mini Viking boats still had the traditional square sail, hoisted up the mast on a yard, and dropped again to tack.

My pupils were deep-rooted: almost all had double Shetland parentage, and at least one first cousin in their class. That was hard on my daughter; though she had all the fun of a country childhood, roaming about the village in a gang of six to sixteen year olds, fishing from the pier, charging about on ponies, and taking part in adult activities from casting and raising peats to herding cows from one park to another, she was still an incomer. When she fell out with her best friend, the friend’s brothers and cousins joined in not speaking to her, and sooth-moother (outsider) was the taunt used.

I arrived in 1981, when the isles folk were still reeling from the impact of oil. Over the centuries they’d gone from being the North Sea crossroads for the Vikings, the set-off port for Arctic whaling vessels, the heavily-guarded back door to Britain once Hitler invaded Norway, and then, in the late sixties, an oil boom town, with eight thousand workers building the Sullom Voe terminal. Houses in any state of repair were worth a fortune; local women of all ages earned ridiculous money as cooks and chambermaids.

Local folk were understandably on the defensive against incomers. They’d had ten years of being a wild west town, and they’d had enough of it. They’d made enough money to give a fantastic standard of living – our gleaming new school was repeated all over the isles – but they feared that they would lose what had made Shetland special. Also, incomers came and went; no point in becoming especially friendly with someone who’d be gone again soon. I was welcomed with kindness; when people were rattling away in the dialect to each other, they’d stop and turn to English, and conversely that act of courtesy made me feel more of an alien than ever. Several folk warned me, in the nicest way, against trying to speak dialect.

It was hard sometimes. My circle of friends tended to be fellow sooth-moothers. Part of that was a shared background, but they also tended to do the sort of socialising I’d done at University: inviting each over for meals, going to the theatre, starting a reading group. Shetland folk were very sociable, but in the form of a single man dropping in on a pal , or family visiting each other; I was outside that circle. Once the summer came, I started working in the garden after my daughter was in bed, and chatting to people over the wall. We joined a drama group together – that was how I met my London husband, Philip, but that’s a tale for another time. I trained as a sailing instructor, and met fellow enthusiasts. I liked my pupils, and did my very best for them; they knew it, and the parents appreciated it. ‘My bairns’ still give me a cheery hello when we meet, or stop and reminisce about their schooldays.

It was writing that started to get my name known in the wider community: articles for a local magazine. I researched stories from history and interviewed people doing interesting things, like rowing to Norway or keeping alpacas. Then I got a publisher for my series of Shetland-set crime novels. My neighbours read and enjoyed them. Now I’m one of the library’s most-borrowed authors, and local folk are rather proud of me; they point my house out to visitors.

I’m still an outsider, though I’ve lived here for over forty years, but I don’t mind that; I’m proud of being Scots. I recently discovered that in spite of my odd ways, I’m not only accepted, but loved. It took an accident to show me that: I was crushed by a yacht at the local regatta. I was very badly injured, to the extent that my family was warned that I might not make it. I was flown to Aberdeen. Here, at home, church folk all over Shetland were praying for me; Philip was overwhelmed with messages of support, two neighbours took over the cats, another kept an eye on my boat in the marina. When I came home, there were beautiful flowers and so many cards I ran out of shelves to put them on… and kind neighbours had brought our peats from the hill and stacked them by the door. Each time Philip went to the shop, there was another person asking after me, and sending good wishes, and when I was finally wheelchaired into church again, I got a welcome from the pulpit. I will never, never forget such kindness.

My life would have been completely different if I hadn’t taken that job in Aith, but I’m very, very glad I did.

Illustrations are all taken from Marsali’s website, with permission.