Against the Odds: Out Skerries, Whalsay and Papa Stour Grand Tours of the Scottish Islands

These are the Shetland Islands.

Lying over 100 miles north of mainland Scotland,

this archipelago is made up

of dozens of separate islands and skerries.

Only 16 are inhabited,

and, for those who live on them, life can be challenging.

These are places shaped by the elements,

where the history of whole communities

is bound up with a rugged environment

and linked to the ever-restless sea.

In this series,

I'm on an island-hopping tour that explores the Northern Isles,

sails to the Hebrides,

and discovers the secrets of some of the remotest places in Europe.

No-one is really sure about the total number of islands

that cluster around Scotland's beautiful coast -

but, for my island-bagging purposes, it's well over 250.

So far, I've been to over 80 of them,

so there's quite a lot still to go.

For this Grand Tour, I'm travelling across the Shetland Islands,

from west to east.

My journey starts on Papa Stour,

to the west of the Shetland mainland,

hops east to Whalsay, and ends on a tiny, remote group of islands,

known as Out Skerries.

For centuries, the Vikings famously held sway over Shetland,

and their legacy is everywhere,

especially in the names they gave the islands where they settled.

My first destination, Papa Stour, lies just ahead of us, over there.

Like nearly all the islands in Shetland,

it has a thoroughly Viking name.

From my own rather hazy knowledge of Norwegian,

I know that "stour" means "big" and "papa" is "priest".

So, Papa Stour is the big island of the priest.

The fact that the pagan Vikings named the island Papa Stour

suggests that Christian holy men were there before them.

I doubt that the monks hung around for long,

but the Vikings certainly made an impression.

Their influence is woven into the landscape and folklore

of Papa Stour.

That is the maiden stack.

So-called because, long ago,

an evil Viking lord imprisoned his daughter in a tower

that he built on the summit, to protect her valuable virginity.

Now, just as in the Rapunzel story,

her lover turned up and spirited the lass away.

The coastline is a striking feature of this rugged little island

and its surprisingly fertile soils

attracted Viking settlers in the eighth century.

Under their rule, Papa Stour became an important outpost

for a man who would live to become King of Norway.

Before King Hakon IV ruled over his Viking empire, he had land here.

This partially reconstructed building once belonged to Hakon

and it's called the Stofa,

the name the Vikings gave to the great hall of the estate.

This is where all the important decisions would have taken place.

Significantly, it's actually made of timber -

great logs that have come all the way from Norway.

You can imagine, on a treeless island like Papa Stour,

this was a rare, high-status building.

Fit for a king, the Stofa

was designed to impress.

The Stofa visibly demonstrates the importance

of Papa Stour to the Vikings -

but when Norse rule ended in the 15th century,

the fortunes of the island's population fluctuated.

Traditionally, these were people who combined crofting with fishing.

Everyone, it seems, had a boat, and training began early.

Hi, George!

To find out more about the ups and downs of life on Papa Stour,

I've come to meet George Peterson, the island's most senior resident,

whose croft is bursting with the first signs of spring.

We call this the Voar,

which means the springtime.

-Right!

-I think it's a Scandinavian word.

-It is.

-Yeah.

-If I remember my Norwegian,

it's the Norwegian for spring.

-Spring, yes.

-There you go.

I know, George, you've got connections to this island

that go back years and years.

Well, my mother was a powerful wife.

My father was from Sandness across the sound.

They were here for many, many generations, I'm sure.

George remembers a tight-knit crofting community on Papa Stour

when he was growing up in the 1930s and '40s.

There was a post office, a school and a church.

It was an idyllic island to be brought up on,

but sadly things have changed dramatically

since those halcyon days,

when the population was much greater than it is now.

I remember over 90.

-Over 90 folk stayed here?

-On this island, yes.

What's the population now, would you say?

I think around eight or ten. I'm really afraid to think.

Eight or ten? It's really clinging on, isn't it?

-Yes, yes.

-Are there any children on the island?

-Er, no.

-No?

-No. Not now.

George puts the decline down to economics.

The income from a traditional croft is never likely to be enough to

satisfy the expectations of a modern lifestyle.

You see, the croft

really wasn't enough to live off.

-Right, it was subsistence.

-Subsistence, yes.

But there were big families and many of them left,

there were just too many people on the island.

There were too many people?

-90 was too much?

-Yes.

But the real hammer blow came when the school closed.

I think 1962 or '63,

the educational system demanded that children of 12 years of age

-had to leave and go to a secondary school.

-Uh-huh.

And they were obliged to do that and,

well, few ever came back.

Morale plummeted.

It never quite recovered.

But it's sad, though, that the population has declined

-and the community is just clinging on.

-Oh, yes.

Oh, it is very sad.

But it's inevitable.

I mean, you can't blame anybody.

Despite the sad story of decline,

George is proud to be a Papa man,

and has been instrumental in keeping the old traditions alive.

I've come to meet the custodians of one such ritual -

an ancient dancing tradition with its own fancy moves.

This is the famous Papa Stour sword dance.

It's considered by connoisseurs to be a classic of the genre

and quite unique.

It's deeply symbolic, representing the victory of Venus,

the goddess of love, over Mars, the god of war.

I have to say, it's not quite what I expected.

More like morris dancing than a sabre-rattling sword dance.

Today it's kept alive by enthusiasts

on the neighbouring island of Muckle Roe.

There's a family connection here, too.

Leading the dancers is Danny Peterson,

whose grandfather, George Peterson,

saved the dance from extinction.

He's been responsible for training up

quite a number of dancers

in mainland Shetland,

and luckily we've got a nice big pool to pick from

when it comes to the dancers.

That's brilliant. So your grandfather rescued the dance?

Yes, absolutely. It would have been long gone if it wasn't for him.

-Amazing.

-Yeah.

-And it's such a hit, as well!

-Absolutely.

-Yeah.

-Do you tour with it?

-We're open to invites.

We've been away at several times in the last couple of years.

We've been to Aberdeen in 2010,

we've headed across to Norway and Denmark in the past,

we're actually hoping to go to London next September

for a tour, as well.

So all these guys in the background

are auditioning for their spot to London.

-So we'll see how they go.

-Right, right!

So do you think I'd be able to have a shot?

Absolutely, Paul. Yes, we'd be more than delighted to have you in.

Right. I've got two flat feet and no sense of rhythm.

No problem at all. No problem at all.

No, we've got lots of strapping gents

that'll help you out, I'm sure.

Just drag me round or give me a prod with the sword.

That's it. That's it!

Donning a coloured sash, I grip my sword and join in.

Almost immediately I discover that it's not as easy as it looks.

It's like playing Twister,

but with dangerous weapons and a ceilidh band backing -

nothing like morris dancing.

All I can hope for is to avoid an unpleasant encounter

with anything sharp and pointy.

Take it.

A star is born!

Not wishing to push my luck any further,

I return to the green fields of Papa Stour,

which are resounding to a different tune.

It's lambing time.

Jane Puckey has lived and crofted on Papa Stour for many years.

This morning she's feeding two recently orphan lambs -

Jacob and Ina.

It's a great time of year, really, isn't it, spring?

When you see this new life.

It's extraordinary.

I bet you never get tired of it.

Never.

And these are Shetland lambs?

Yes. Pure Shetland.

-Indigenous sheep to the island, aren't they?

-Yes.

-Yes, to Shetland.

-Do you know much about the background of the breed?

Well, I had heard that they'd come down from Iceland.

-Uh-huh?

-Yes.

So, that's why they are hardy. They're used to the cold.

And they're used to it - they are a hill sheep.

In another lifetime, Jane was a teacher and then a radiographer

in Gloucestershire until she discovered the charms of Papa Stour.

But she's unsentimental about the good life.

You not only do... I do lambing,

but I also do everything else with the sheep,

including slaughtering and butchering.

Uh-huh. How do you feel about that?

Because you're living very close to them -

I mean, that's a very intimate scene there.

It's all par for the course.

It's all, you know, that's why you have them.

On that practical note, I join Jane and her assistant Finn

at the business end of a heavily pregnant ewe.

You can feel the lamb in there.

Oh, my goodness, my hand is over the head.

-Is it, really?

-Yes.

It's like Call The Midwife, really, this, isn't it?

And once you've got the head and shoulders out,

the rest of it will fall out by gravity.

Look at that.

There's a lamb's leg.

-That's it.

-Little lamb!

The whole head's there.

Look at that.

Wow, it's a huge lamb. Look at that!

Wow.

Look at that. He's opening his eyes.

Seeing light for the first time.

Yeah - looking straight up into the camera.

-Look at that.

-Wow.

Is it quite a stressful business?

-Who for?

-For you.

-No...

-Cos it must be quite...

Cos you're responsible for making sure it goes well.

Yes, you're right.

No, I wouldn't say it was stressful,

but obviously in the back of my mind,

or, really, right at the forefront of my mind,

I'd like to... I want to be able to deliver a live lamb,

and it is a disappointment if you don't -

but then it's no good blaming yourself.

You win some and you lose some.

Hopefully you win most of the time.

Yes, well, we do, actually.

If delivering one large lamb weren't enough,

Jane discovers there's another on the way -

it's twins.

Wow.

There's another whopper!

Right, go and see Mummy.

It's such a wonderful sight, isn't it?

-It is, isn't it?

-It's renewal.

-It goes on every year.

-Absolutely.

Year by year, all over the country at this time of year.

Having witnessed the cheering sight of new life coming into the world,

it's time to leave Papa Stour,

its lambs, Viking heritage and strange dance moves.

The next destination on my odyssey is Whalsay -

which, in the language of the north, means whale isle.

To get to Whalsay these days is pretty straightforward -

there are several ferries a day -

but in the past there was no pier big enough

to take the steamer from Lerwick.

In those days, passengers had to disembark using small craft

called flit boats.

Some more important passengers were even carried ashore.

Rather disappointingly,

there doesn't appear to be anyone here to carry me ashore...

..so I comfort myself at the thought that on this modern ferry

I wouldn't have got my feet wet anyway.

Once on dry land,

the first thing that strikes me is just how busy Whalsay is.

Unlike Papa Stour, Whalsay has a growing population of over 1,000,

and nearly everyone here depends in some way on the sea and its riches.

Island life is always precarious,

especially in the past,

when every aspect of it was controlled by the laird,

who lived in the big house up there,

known hereabouts as the Haa.

The Haa was home to the Bruce family.

They owned the entire island

and dominated the lives of everyone in an almost feudal way.

Fishermen were first to sell their catch to the Bruce laird,

who fixed prices in his favour.

He also owned the only shop,

where islanders were forced into debt slavery.

Failure to settle outstanding accounts

created an excuse for the laird to evict his tenants from the island.

Things got so bad that a curse was put on the entire Bruce family

for the laird's hard-heartedness.

The curse was made 150 years ago,

after two brothers defied the Bruce laird

and signed aboard a Greenland whaling ship.

Instead of working like slaves for the landlord, they made good money.

The laird was furious, and he refused absolutely

to let the brothers ever set foot on Whalsay again.

Now, this broke their mother's heart

and she pleaded with the laird to relent,

but he turned his back on her and she in turn cursed him,

saying that it would come to pass

that no Bruce will ever live on Whalsay,

that the proud mansion will stand empty,

and that children will play freely in the grounds.

Local folk believe her curse came true.

The last Bruce laird died without an heir in 1944.

The Haa deteriorated, but was saved from ruin in the 1960s,

when it was converted into the island's school,

where children play freely in the grounds.

The Bruces' grip on Whalsay had come to an end.

Speaking your mind in the struggle to survive

is something of a tradition on Whalsay.

During the 1930s, the island was the home

to the communist-inspired poet Hugh MacDiarmid,

who lived here with his wife, Valda, and their son.

Jacqueline Irvine takes me to the house

where MacDiarmid spent the best part of a decade

living in poverty and obscurity.

-Hugh MacDiarmid was the pen name of the poet.

-Yes.

What was his real name?

Christopher Murray Grieve,

but he was always known in Whalsay as Auld Grieves.

-Auld Grieves.

-Yeah.

-What does that mean?

-Old!

-Old!

-Old Grieve!

-Old Grieves!

MacDiarmid wasn't as old as he looked,

but alcoholism had taken its toll on his health.

Being a dry island,

Whalsay was considered a good place for him to recover.

And this is where they stayed, then?

Yes, for nine years.

What's the address of this place?

-Sudheim.

-Is that the "south home" in the dialect, is it?

I think it probably is, yes.

It's also known as Sodom, is it not?

Yes - spelt "Sodom".

Much to the mirth of some people, I imagine.

Yes.

When MacDiarmid arrived here in 1933,

he perhaps thought that Sodom was an appropriate place to be for a poet

whose moral reputation was frequently questioned.

With no electricity or running water,

life was hard for a man more used to the hustle and bustle of city life -

yet I'm surprised to learn that the revolutionary poet

liked to make social calls on the island's gentry.

The laird would invite them for dinner, and they would play bridge.

They were also invited to the manse, by the minister,

although we have been told

that him and the minister didn't really see eye to eye.

They wouldn't have done, if he was an atheist and a communist.

Yeah, yeah.

Interesting that he somehow wanted to get close to the upper classes.

It's perhaps ironic for an avowed communist

to prefer the company of his ideological enemies

to mingling with the proletariat,

but MacDiarmid did join a fishing boat on a couple of occasions -

not to earn money, but to research the Shetland dialect.

His shipmates would also teach him a thing or two

about the Shetland sense of humour.

There was one of the crew members

who liked to have a bit of a joke, fun,

and one day he came down and he shouted, "Skara ma dubh!"

and Auld Grieves shot his head out of the bunk

and said, "What was that, what was that?"

Well, it was just a joke, I think, yeah.

It wasn't a word at all.

-No, no.

-It was a made-up word.

-Yeah, just pulling his leg, yeah.

It would have been wonderful if he'd used that word in one of his poems.

Yeah.

-A great "skara ma dubh" of Sodom.

-Yeah, mm-hm!

Looking at the number of boats around the harbour,

it's pretty clear that fishing remains a big part

of the local economy,

just as it was back in MacDiarmid's day.

It's what makes the island tick, and always has done.

Heading along the quayside,

I make my way towards one of Whalsay's biggest

and most up-to-date fishing boats -

the deep-sea pelagic trawler, Charisma.

Jimmy John Tulloch, owner and fisherman,

has kindly offered to take me to my next destination, Out Skerries.

I just hope he doesn't ask me to split the fuel bill.

Jimmy, I imagine you must go through quite a lot of fuel on this boat.

-What's the consumption like?

-Yeah, it's...

When we're going pretty fast,

-you're probably speaking about a tonne of fuel an hour, yeah.

-Right!

That's a lot of juice,

which could make this the most expensive ride I've ever hitched...

..but it's hardly surprising Charisma is a bit of a gas guzzler.

She's 71 metres long and weighs 2,500 tonnes -

and she's not the only big boat operating from Whalsay.

There are six more like her, in addition to a fleet of small craft,

making fishing the backbone of the island's economy.

Probably have 150 men employed by the Whalsay boats,

and out of a population of 1,000 on the isle,

it's a big proportion of the workforce.

It just depends on the fishing.

The heart of the community is fishing.

Oh, yeah, it's all... it's all fishing, yeah.

Charisma goes after pelagic fish,

a word that comes from the ancient Greek for open sea.

She catches mostly herring and mackerel,

and, to find them, uses an amazing array of hi-tech equipment.

You can see the shoal of...the shape of the shoal of fish on the sonar

and you can tell that it's a big lump of fish

or a smaller lump.

If it's a big lump of fish, how big would that shoal be?

-Any idea?

-Sometimes they can be as big as five or six miles, maybe.

Five or six mile shoal?!

Yeah. That has the potential to burst the net,

especially when it's rough weather.

Charisma sails the seas of the north

in the hope of a good catch,

just as Whalsay boats have done for generations.

It's an enduring tradition.

You're one of the few hunter-gatherers left, really,

when you think - that's what human beings used to do.

You're out getting the catch.

Yeah, that's what fishing is, yeah, and Shetland,

Whalsay and Shetland depends on the fishing.

And that's the Skerries out there.

That's the Skerries, yeah.

That's where I'm hoping to get to.

Da Skerries, as they're known hereabouts,

are a group of islands and reefs

that lie 24 miles east of the mainland of Shetland.

Covering an area of just two square miles,

they look almost too small to be habitable -

but the hardy breed of folk who live here

have a great reputation for hospitality.

Stepping ashore here on Da Skerries,

I'm following in the illustrious footsteps of royalty -

and the Queen, no less.

Now, she came here in 1960 -

but I suspect that her reception committee

was marginally more impressive than mine.

This film was made almost 60 years ago,

when the Queen came to open the new pier.

Back then, over 100 people lived on the Skerries.

There are three principal islands, Housay, Bruray and Grunay.

As well as lots of smaller rocks and skerries.

Only Housay and Bruray are inhabited today, connected by a small bridge.

There is only a mile of road,

and it leads me to the door of a Skerries woman

whose family have lived here for generations.

Alice Arthur,

who made a brief appearance in the film starring the Queen.

I was four months old at the time,

so I don't remember, obviously,

but, yeah, it was a huge day in the history of Skerries.

That's not the only time you met the Queen though, was it?

In fact, it's part of a long and continuing relationship,

-it seems to me.

-Yeah.

In 2006, Alice was invited by Buckingham Palace

to receive an MBE from the Queen.

Just six years earlier, her father was honoured with the same award.

So, I'm telling my kids the pressure's on now,

because it's a family tradition. One of them has to get an MBE.

Alice's award was in recognition of her services

to the local fire brigade

and to the community on Da Skerries...

..but that wasn't all she did.

Alice also worked in the fish factory,

at school as an art teacher, and on the family croft.

That's a lot of different hats.

A lot of different hats, yes.

But sadly, things have changed a lot since then.

It seems like it's all happened very suddenly.

It's been just in the last two years that's really gone downhill fast.

We've lost the secondary department of the school,

we've lost the salmon farm,

we've lost the flights coming into the isle,

we've lost the fire brigade.

We're really struggling at the moment to survive.

That's a terrible loss, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-Because those are the very important components,

the fabric that holds the community together.

-Yeah.

-To survive and to look to the future.

-It's all vital.

-If you don't have that, life's going to be a struggle.

Yes, it really is - but we'll struggle on.

All this adversity hasn't diminished Alice's love for her home.

It's a place to treasure - quite literally.

For as long as anyone can remember,

sunken treasure has been continually washed ashore

from ships wrecked long ago on the harsh coast.

Well, that came from a Dutch East Indiaman.

My dad found this one stuck in a crevice in a rock.

Ah, right.

And this silver one has got an inscription

running around the side in Latin.

It says, "Concordia res parvae crescunt",

which I think is Latin for, "In harmony small things grow."

-Really?

-I think, yeah.

I think for a small group of islands with an uncertain future,

-it's a wonderful talisman.

-It's amazing.

That could be our motto for Skerries.

I think it should be, Alice, I think it should.

As I head to journey's end,

I reflect on what has been a fascinating Grand Tour,

where I found island life to be both robust and fragile.

Da Skerries may have been having a hard time in the 21st century,

but, like each of the three islands I've explored,

it has its own voice made proud and distinctive

by the determination of the islanders

to keep their communities alive.

So, here we are - journey's end

on an island that I like to think of as Scotland's eastern frontier,

because if you keep sailing that way,

the nearest landfall is the coast of Norway,

about 200 nautical miles away.

But to be honest, on an evening like this,

I really wouldn't want to be anywhere else

than right here on the Skerries.

The Isle of Skye is the destination for my next Grand Tour,

where I'll be exploring a land of giants and fairies.