The Shetland Whalers
For two weeks, Elizabeth Boardman and I explored the Shetland and Orkney Islands, off the NW coast of Scotland, in great detail. Planning for some 2022 tours, we had to . For me, one of our most intriguing discoveries was this stone built house standing alone on a pebble ridge, in a beautiful protected cove, way up on the NW of Shetland.
Islands littered the ocean around us, and they were magnificent, but this single house struck me as being a poignant reminder of a way of life that has now vanished.
There were no information boards, no place names….. nothing to tell us what it was, what it represented, so I had to do a bit of research.
The pebble beach encompassed St Magnus Bay, and a tiny island fronting it was called Little Minn. the larger island adjacent to it is called Stenness.
Once upon a time, back in the 1800s, there were several stone built cottages lined up on this pebble ridge, and there were also a number of upturned whaling boats ( sixers and eighters, called this because of the number of men needed to crew them), that were used as temporary shelter during whaling season. This small cove and beach would have been the temporary home of up to 300 men….. hard men…. Men who lived for the sea.
When whales were sighted, these men would put out into the North Atlantic, navigate the very dangerous seas around these islands and coral large numbers of whales in one sailing. They would surround these large creatures and drive them onto the rocks or other beaches before moving in for the final kill. It upsets us today to think of this, but it was essential to these people.
Life would have been very hard for these men. The weather during whaling season would have been brutally difficult and they would have been apart from their families, enduring the cold and the wind and the harsh seas.
Whaling was a way of life and it was what sustained the inhabitants of the islands for centuries. The meat, the oil…. Both a valuable commodity, although it was the Shetland lairds and landowners who benefitted most from this trade.
Echos of these men’s voices now reverberate through my mind as I remember that small stone built house, that has no name, standing in desolate isolation on that beach.
The whales have almost gone and the men have gone to the mainland.