Tuesday March 13th: Shetlands: The title picture shows a very ‘Long House’
I woke to a view of Lerwick harbour, slightly annoyed that they had found us an along-side mooring – as I had hoped to be ferried ashore in one of the lifeboats! Here’s the harbour, deceptively blue, summery and clear, it was freezing cold really! Oh that bitter easterly wind!
Just as I thought, lots of tiny little horses here. I started the day with a coach trip around mainland. apparently on the wrong side of the road, until I remembered that I was back in the UK. Saw a modern equivalent of a Norse Longhouse – a long straight bungalow that ended in a garage door, so that the owners shared the building with the car, as did their ancestors with their animals. The coach took us to “Shetland contrasts” different parts of the main island, never far from water, of course. Lots of stops for photo opportunities, which meant awkwardly shuffling up and down the narrow coach gangway, bundled up in layers of heavy clothing. The views were
worth it all, though.
We stopped for coffee at small crafts-and-coffee shop, full of local woollen goods. I have more than enough clothes, but I did buy 2 CDs of local music, in order to get a real taste of the Nordo-Celtic culture: the accent is Scottish but the place-names are Scandinavian.
There was a coffee break here: The Sumburgh Hotel
And then on to the Archaeology! Near the hotel and the busy airport is wonderful site of Jarlshof, where dwellings from the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Viking Age lie side by side.
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- Iron age
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- Viking Longhouse
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- Stone age Broch
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- Bronze age?
In the afternoon, I joined the walking tour of Lerwick (“Lerrick”). It actually felt warm! The first part of this was a quick short-cut through a builders’ yard to the Shetland museum.
Here, we stopped for 50 minutes to gain extensive knowledge of the geology, geography and history of the islands (Those Vikings again- they obliterated a Pictish Christian agricultural civilisation, and made the islands a base for their vile murder/robbery/slaving expeditions).
Here are some pictures I took as we continued our tour of this ancient Celto-Nordic town
So that was Shetland, a lovely group of islands with friendly people.
The rest of my many pictures can be found Here
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Change of plan: today is Catch-up day for all the small things I put off last week and restoring my main computer, that caught a virus on Saturday night and had to returned to its “Factory Settings”. Tuesday and Wednesday are now “Blog Update and nothing else” days. I’ll look at the picture then.
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