Month: June 2026
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Muness Castle: Power, Corruption and Impunity. Sound Familiar?
Two Shetland ponies graze in front of Muness Castle, Unst, on a grey June afternoon. The castle has looked like this for quite some time. Laurence Bruce built Muness Castle in 1598. He was half-brother to the Earl of Orkney, sheriff of Shetland, and by most accounts an absolute tyrant. The Privy Council found him…
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Uyea: The Disappearing Isthmus
Plan A had sounded brilliant on paper: an 8.5 km cycle along a rough farm track to the abandoned farmstead of Uyea, followed by a wander round the headland. A local on the ferry had tipped us off after we mentioned a preference for solitude over selfie sticks. Then we woke up. The morning was…
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Fethaland: Where Sixty Sixareens Braved the Atlantic
The name means “fat land.” Which is rather good, given what happened here. For roughly five centuries, up to sixty sixareens, open wooden boats with a crew of six, launched from this beach and rowed — or sailed, when the wind was kind — eighty kilometres into the open Atlantic, well past the continental shelf,…
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Da Drongs
Four granite pillars rise from the North Atlantic about a kilometre off the Shetland coast. They have no inhabitants, no practical use, and no plans to go anywhere. But they are, in a word, magnificent. These are The Drongs — and they have been earning their keep as a spectacle for a rather long time.…