Fair Isle

When I began writing these short pieces for the New Statesman a year ago, I was reacting in part to what I felt were misrepresentations and misunderstandings of life in the Northern Isles that were appearing with some regularity in the national media.

The islands, and Fair Isle in particular, were portrayed as somehow old fashioned – relics of an era long since forgotten elsewhere. The people who ... read more

I am in Glasgow this weekend, visiting friends and attending the annual Celtic Connections festival. This event, lasting several weeks, and spread across numerous venues in the city, attracts artists and visitors from all over the world.

This year, as part of the festival, a special “Shetland night” took place in the Royal Concert Hall, attended by around 2000 people. The concert, which included an impressive line-up of acts ... read more

The stamp on the wood identifies the maker, and in the centre of the stamp is printed its number: 100. Stewart Thomson turns the spinning wheel carefully with his hands, explaining what each part does, and how it is made. This particular one, beautifully constructed from spotted sycamore, is the hundredth that he has built.

Around the room are six or seven other wheels, made from sycamore, beech, walnut, ... read more

As I write this, Fair Isle has been cut off from mainland Shetland for about ten days: no boats, no planes. In part this has been due to a festive break for the ferry and flight staff, but the weather has also done its bit, serving up a severe easterly gale that lasted several days, and which made off with my neighbours’ poly-tunnel, among other thing.

I was lucky. Having ... read more

During these long winter nights, one of the things I find myself noticing more are the island’s lighthouses. Fair Isle’s South Lighthouse is less than half a mile from my house, and lying in bed I can see the beam against the walls: four flashes, one after the other, repeated every 30 seconds.

There are two lighthouses on the island, one at the north end and one the south, ... read more

Traditional cultures have always sought, and found, balance within the natural world, and in their relationship to the lands and landscapes that have sustained them. And winter, it seems to me, is the time when we are reminded most forcefully of that balance.

Here in Fair Isle, as in other northern places, winter is the most animate and aggressive of seasons. To imagine it as lifeless or inert is ... read more

Okay, so I gave in to temptation. I admit it. But what’s wrong with that, tell me? What shame in that? After all, it’s only a jumper.

Yes, after some days of deliberation, hesitation and procrastination, I finally sat down at the knitting machine and made myself a jumper. And I have to say, I’m rather pleased with myself. And it.

I had forgotten how much work was involved in ... read more

A strange and unnatural urge has come over me this week . . . I am thinking about knitting a jumper.

For the past two years, a knitting machine has occupied the corner of our kitchen, and I have barely looked at it for most of that time. But suddenly I find myself compelled to create something on it; a desire that is neither sensible nor entirely explicable. Particularly ... read more

While Shetland can, at times, feel remote and separate from world events, the wars of the past hundred years have affected these islands no less than anywhere else.

During the First World War, Shetland lost more than 600 people – a higher proportion of the population than any other part of the UK. Fair Isle itself saw eight men fail to return home, which, in a population of ... read more

There are those who argue that anyone who is willing to eat meat should also be willing to kill it themselves, and I can certainly understand the logic of that statement. There is a huge degree of pretence in much of the food that is consumed today.

The supermarkets are filled with pre-prepared and packaged meat, to which everything possible has been done to try and disguise the fact ... read more

Having been in England touring for the past three weeks, it felt good to be on the way home again.

I took the nine o’clock train on Wednesday morning from London King’s Cross and gazed out of the window as we rolled northwards towards Edinburgh. The clutter and bustle of the city soon gave way to green, and the urban interventions grew increasingly infrequent the closer to Scotland we became. ... read more

For most places in the UK the end of summer means the end of the tourist season; for us this is not the case. Late September and October are high season for birds and, consequently, high season for birders.

The island feels full of life at this time of year. Small clusters of people wander endlessly around the roads and fields, with an identical look of quiet, concentrated optimism ... read more