McDonald's loves the little children: as part of the multinational munchy corporation's millennium magnanimity, every Shetland Island child visiting the British mainland on a school trip is currently eligible for a free dose of fast cholesterol with extra fries.
Which is a fine piece of blinkered, well-burgered patronage for the poor island bairns reared, as everyone knows, on a diet of stewed puffin and salted mackerel heads. Except that the nearest McDonald's to Shetland is not in Britain, but in Norway.
Bergen, to be precise, which also hosts our local railway station. That TV weather map placing the Shetland Islands about ten miles east of Hull is a matter of fatuous on-screen convenience. Think 200 miles from Aberdeen, 190 from Bergen. Think 14 hours by ferry, a £330 flight from Glasgow.
Shetlanders like to wallow in their Viking heritage, which is genetically defensible, as research shows that the islanders' gene pool is identical with that of Bergen's McDonald's-scoffers. In fact Orkney was more popular with the Norsemen as it offered a less rugged topography and the possibility of less labour-intensive agriculture: soil, for example, is present in Orkney.
But Shetlanders, since late-Victorian times, have celebrated their Viking heritage in a florid, romantic manner calculated to appeal to tourists and gullible anthropologists. Up Helly Aa was once a rabid, end-of-winter near-riot involving violence, guns, flaming tar barrels and fiery vengeance against exploitative merchants in the island capital, Lerwick. Now, it is a rigidly controlled, all-male parade of sentimental Vikingness, as all eyes turn to Scandinavia for a day and a night of carousing.
Since 1469, when Shetland was dumped in Scotland's lap as part of James III's dubious and doomed dowry for taking on King Christian's daughter, Margaret, attempts to eradicate the Norse influence have been only partially successful. Udal law is still an influence on many aspects of local existence; the widely used Shetlandic dialect retains many elements of Old Norn. As Scotland begins a new period of responsibility for at least some of its own affairs, those glances across the North Sea are becoming less restricted to Up Helly Aa.
Last summer, the Norwegian coastal steamers began regular trips to Lerwick, and the town's flagstoned streets were awash with tourists seeking . . . well, drink, mostly. Alcohol in Bergen is expensive. There is still a minor smuggling trade between Shetland and Scandinavia; whisky-loaded yachts lurch and wallow to sober-sided Faroe or ludicrously overpriced Stavanger, the Safeway malt carrying a massive premium on arrival.
One day last summer, though, the weekly steamer was accompanied by a warship. Not one of the fisheries protection vessels that the Royal Navy sends to harass our fisherfolk, but a dark-grey destroyer exuding belligerence. Guns and missiles were in evidence, but it was the ship's shape - long, vicious, utterly threatening - that sent a shiver down this spine.
And suddenly I was back a thousand years, watching a dragon-headed galley round the Bard of Bressay, wondering what the warriors on board were planning for my family, my land, my life.
The moment passed. The destroyer, on a goodwill visit, departed. But the thought remained: why not Norse rule? What has Edinburgh, far less London, to do with our existence here at what the Romans called ultima Thule - the edge of the world? Don't we have more in common, and not just genetically, with our North Sea neighbours? Think what a powerful nation Norway would be if it had control of the entire North Sea oil reserves. Think of the improvements to our health service, our standard of living generally.
Once there was a phenomenon called the Shetland Movement, which sought a kind of Faroese status for the islands - as Faroe is, loosely speaking, a semi-autonomous Danish dependency, Shetland would enter a similar relationship with an independent Scotland. The movement has crumbled, but who knows? Should the Scottish Parliament, currently a kind of Strathclyde regional council with an image problem, turn into a playing field for some serious nationalist hardball, Shetland's status will become a matter for consideration. We have, you see, virtually all the oil. At that point, the Norwegians could start looking at those old dowry documents with a wild surmise. And our bairns could be looking east, instead of south, for their free Happy Meals.
