My last entry here, not counting my command performance as a drummer, was from Heimaey, Iceland. Since then we stopped in a place called Djúpivogur, Iceland (population 404). It was another tender port and bitterly cold because of the strong wind blowing. Once again I decided to stay on the ship and enjoy some of the activities here instead. Some friends went ashore and told me the two major sights to see were the Eggin í Gleðivik sculpture along the waterfront and a converted grain silo now used for concerts. The Eggin sculpture is a granite representation of the eggs from the 34 local bird species. I borrowed this photo from one of them.
After our last stop in Iceland we had a sea day with the usual activities including some interesting talks about the travels and exploits of the Vikings across the North Atlantic. Of course we had trivia and my new team ran away with first place in the cumulative game. We’ll have one more cumulative two game trivia session today and tomorrow. I’ve given away all the prizes I’ve won to crew members who have taken such good care of me.
Yesterday we stopped in Lerwick, Shetland. This is the main island of the Shetland Archipelago, a string of 100 islands of which only 16 are populated with a total population of about 33,000. Like the Orkney Islands which I visited a week and a half ago, evidence of human habitation as long ago as the Mesolithic period has been found. The history of ownership claims for these islands is similar to that of the Orkneys. Like that island group, the Shetlands came under Scottish rule when in the 15th century a king of Norway failed to pay the dowry he’d promised to a king of Scotland upon his daughter’s marriage to the latter. As payment the Scots took the islands and so they have remained since.
Lerwick is the main town and port of the Shetlands and it is the northernmost major settlement of the British Isles with a population of around 7,000. I am a huge fan of the British TV series Shetland (whose characters are based on those in some of Ann Cleeves’ books) so of course I had to take a tour which brought us to various places around the island where some episodes were filmed. Our guide was a delightful Shetlander named Ingrid who was about my age and was very laid-back and very informative. Just as an aside, she had a detailed itinerary typed out with times we were supposed to be here, there, and everywhere. Occasionally she would ask Martin our driver what time he had (she wasn’t wearing a watch) how we were doing time-wise and he would say “oh we’re about 15 or 20 minutes behind” and they would both just shrug and say, “that’s alright; they’ll wait for us.” And so the tour went. We saw everything but on our timetable.
The island is quite beautiful. It’s mainly green, but unlike Orkney where the green was grassland and barley, here there are few arable fields. The green is mainly peat. The principal businesses here are fishing and servicing of the offshore oil and gas industry in the North Sea. One sixth of the United Kingdom’s fish supply comes from the Shetlands. From Lerwick there is ferry service both to mainland Scotland and to the other Shetland islands. Additionally there is year-round air service from the airport to several places in Scotland, and for the not faint of heart occasional flights in an 8-seater to a couple of the other islands, like Fair Isle, but not on a regular basis.
We traveled out of Lerwick to see some of the beaches and villages featured in various seasons and episodes of the series. We visited Brake, Meal, and Peerie Spiggie beaches (great names, n’est-ce pas?). We passed the ruins of the croft house in Clavel and we stopped to take photos of “The Cake Fridge,” an honor system refrigerator filled with cakes and other sweet treats and drinks. How would that work back at home, I wondered. We stopped for tea and biscuits at the Busta House Hotel which was the Skellwick Hotel on TV. It was an interesting building. The parlor where we had our tea was originally built in the year 1588, the year the Spanish Armada got blown north and some ships were wrecked in these islands and other places along the North and Irish seas. We traveled through the little village of Voe and could see up on a hill Sandwater House which in the series was known as Halfway House and where a character kept a lot of dead animals stashed in his freezer. We also passed the little church and parsonage where Ruth’s (she’s the newest character in the show) brother is the vicar and lives in the house next door.
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| This old bathtub was in the field opposite the Cake Fridge and I guess it's used for the sheep in the field to drink from |
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| Parlor of the "Skellwick" Hotel (so-named in the series |
Finally we drove back into Lerwick itself. We stopped at the Gothic style buildings which were the police department and town community center. The former does house the police among other things and the latter is actually the town hall. I half expected to see Jimmy, Tosh or Sandy coming out. We then drove down the hill to the street running along the waterfront and there it was! Lodberrie House! Jimmy Perez’s home right on the water and right next to Bain’s beach where he would often be found drinking whiskey and giving advice to his daughter Cassie or to other characters. The houses along the waterfront are all old stone buildings built probably in the early 17th century that at one time were used to store things being shipped into or out of the harbor. They back right up to the water and thus were easy to load or unload ships that came in. There are lots of windows low down in the buildings and since there can be a tidal swing of more than nine feet, some of those windows must be perilously close to being underwater. We walked along the street and saw the Market Cross and Commercial Street where in one of the latest episodes there was a bomb scare. Just one aside here, for a small place the series makes it seem like they have per capita more murders than many big cities and more other kinds of scary things. But without those there wouldn’t be a TV show, would there?
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| The Police Station where so many murders have been solved |
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| "Jimmy Perez'" Star in the pavement |
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| The town Hall which is a community center in the show |
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| Jimmy's House |
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| Many words of advice were given sitting on rocks on this little beach next door |
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| A Viking ship anchored right off the beach there |
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| Another of theold stone former warehouses along the waterfront. This one is a hotel now |
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| The main street |
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| Market Cross and Commercial Street |
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| Two more views of the waterfront downtown |
After we finished our walk it was time to head back to the ship. It was a lovely day! I had dinner with some friends and after the show I went to the Club where I danced a lot, but I didn’t play the drums again. I think one time was probably enough, but boy was it fun!
I have to add that I absolutely loved Lerwick! If it were 500 miles further south where it wouldn't be as cold and would have the same kind of daylight/nighttime hours as I'm used to (instead of 20 hours of daylight in summer and the reverse in winter), I think I could live there. It had, for lack of a better way of putting it, a really nice vibe. The Shetlanders seemed laid back and not in a particular hurry; they were more interested in enjoying their lives. That's a nice thing to see and feel.
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