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 guilty of replacing elected officials with his own men and taxing people well beyond reason. They banned him north of the Tay.1Information board, 4 June 2036
He went back anyway. And built a castle.
It is a good castle, too. Z-plan, whatever that means, with gunholes covering every wall. Inside, painted ceilings, panelled rooms, silver tableware. Furniture brought by sea from the Continent, through Bremen and Leith.
Above the door, Bruce carved a plea to his descendants. Look after this place, he asked. Do not wreck it.
They wrecked it.
A Norse raider called Hakki of Dikkeram burned it in the seventeenth century, possibly after the abduction of Helga, an islander’s daughter, who escaped a tower room by knotting torn sheets into a rope and rowing away into a storm with her lover.2Cluness, Andrew T. THE SHETLAND ISLES. Page 195. 1956. Robert Hale Limited.
Nobody knows what became of her.
The ponies are unbothered by all this history.
- 1Information board, 4 June 2036
- 2Cluness, Andrew T. THE SHETLAND ISLES. Page 195. 1956. Robert Hale Limited.