0:00:26 > 0:00:28What a fantastic place to start our journey -
0:00:28 > 0:00:31on Unst, the most northerly inhabited island
0:00:31 > 0:00:33in the British Isles.
0:00:37 > 0:00:41I already know a few things about Shetland - it hasn't got any trees,
0:00:41 > 0:00:45it's had an oil boom, and its history is more Scandinavian
0:00:45 > 0:00:46than Scottish.
0:00:48 > 0:00:50But when you get here, you find this.
0:00:50 > 0:00:53An early warning station.
0:00:57 > 0:01:02Saxa Vord used to track German U-boats and Soviet aircraft.
0:01:02 > 0:01:08But it's not on red alert anymore. Now, the island's going green.
0:01:18 > 0:01:22This tiny car runs on hydrogen gas.
0:01:22 > 0:01:26It's the brainchild of Unst man Ross Gazey.
0:01:26 > 0:01:29- Ross.- Hi, Neil.- How you doin'?
0:01:29 > 0:01:34- Not too bad.- What is a hydrogen-powered car doing on Unst?
0:01:34 > 0:01:38Well, I had this idea for hydrogen power, and all the things
0:01:38 > 0:01:42it could be used for, and this car has become part of that.
0:01:42 > 0:01:47And where do you get hydrogen from? You don't see a lot of that in the cold counter at a supermarket.
0:01:47 > 0:01:50We actually make our own hydrogen from wind power and tap water.
0:01:50 > 0:01:52You're pulling my leg.
0:01:52 > 0:01:53No, not at all. Not at all.
0:01:53 > 0:01:57We take the electrical power from the wind turbines that we have,
0:01:57 > 0:02:01and we use it to generate hydrogen from tap water.
0:02:01 > 0:02:04You do that just by passing your electrical current through water,
0:02:04 > 0:02:07and it breaks water down into hydrogen and oxygen.
0:02:07 > 0:02:10- Couldn't give us a lift, could you? - No problem. Jump in.
0:02:10 > 0:02:12Excellent.
0:02:13 > 0:02:17This car's got no harmful emissions. The only thing that comes out
0:02:17 > 0:02:19of the exhaust is water.
0:02:22 > 0:02:24What is the top speed of the vehicle?
0:02:24 > 0:02:2645 mph.
0:02:31 > 0:02:34Hi-tech hydrogen cars might be the island's future,
0:02:34 > 0:02:37but right now, this one's taking me on a journey back in time.
0:02:41 > 0:02:45I'm travelling down the east coast of Shetland, to Baltasound.
0:02:49 > 0:02:53This is exactly the sort of scene I was expecting. Just a few houses
0:02:53 > 0:02:57and buildings dotted about, there's not a soul to be seen,
0:02:57 > 0:02:59it's very peaceful and quiet.
0:03:00 > 0:03:03But I know for a fact that here at Baltasound,
0:03:03 > 0:03:05it wasn't always this way.
0:03:09 > 0:03:15This was once a boom town. In its heyday, the prize was silver.
0:03:15 > 0:03:18The silver darlings of the sea - herring.
0:03:23 > 0:03:26Ian Napier knows the story.
0:03:26 > 0:03:31What would this bay have looked like at the height of the herring boom?
0:03:31 > 0:03:34It would have been a real hive of industry,
0:03:34 > 0:03:37there's a record of as many as 16,000 people being here for
0:03:37 > 0:03:41- the herring season.- So this place would just have been crowded?- Yeah.
0:03:41 > 0:03:45I mean, you hear stories about being able to cross the bay
0:03:45 > 0:03:48without getting your feet wet. There were more than 2,000 fishing boats
0:03:48 > 0:03:52based in Shetland for the season. All along the foreshore
0:03:52 > 0:03:55there would have been a series of piers, each one would have had
0:03:55 > 0:04:00a little huddle of buildings with it. When the fleet was in, it must have been very crowded.
0:04:03 > 0:04:08At its peak in 1905, almost a quarter of a million barrels
0:04:08 > 0:04:12of cured herring were packed here and dispatched to Eastern Europe.
0:04:13 > 0:04:15It created opportunities.
0:04:15 > 0:04:19The gutting and the packing of the herring, the emptying of the barrels
0:04:19 > 0:04:23was all done by women. There would've been thousands of women working here.
0:04:23 > 0:04:30It was perhaps the first time that they had the opportunity to earn cash.
0:04:30 > 0:04:34The boom was inevitably followed by bust.
0:04:34 > 0:04:38By the 1930s, bigger, faster ships started to bypass Baltasound,
0:04:38 > 0:04:42and this small harbour fell silent.
0:04:52 > 0:04:56Shetlanders have to live with the ebb and flow of opportunities.
0:04:56 > 0:05:01The history of their struggle is written around the ribbon of this coast.
0:05:03 > 0:05:06Remarkable secrets of an ancient civilization are beginning to emerge
0:05:06 > 0:05:08at Sandwick Bay.
0:05:12 > 0:05:18When coastal erosion revealed curious stones, the foundations of a 2,000-year-old settlement,
0:05:18 > 0:05:22the islanders got together with a team of archaeologists
0:05:22 > 0:05:24to unearth their Iron Age past.
0:05:27 > 0:05:30It's the discovery of a virtually-intact skeleton
0:05:30 > 0:05:34that makes this dig so exciting. Who is this?
0:05:34 > 0:05:39And what can their burial tell us about this ancient society?
0:05:43 > 0:05:48It's a mystery that bone expert Dr Alice Roberts hopes to solve.
0:05:50 > 0:05:52Now, this dig is quite special to me,
0:05:52 > 0:05:56because it's a chance to find out more about prehistoric Shetland,
0:05:56 > 0:06:00and to find out specifically about the lives of people in the Iron Age here on Unst.
0:06:00 > 0:06:02But also to meet one of those people.
0:06:07 > 0:06:11'The islanders are working with Dr Olivia Lelong and her team
0:06:11 > 0:06:15'to investigate this community and their unusual buildings.'
0:06:15 > 0:06:20- It is literally right on the shore, isn't it?- Yeah. You can see the wall,
0:06:20 > 0:06:25standing up here. And it would've carried on up, probably curving around like that,
0:06:25 > 0:06:31- with the slabs forming the walls and the roof.- And all of this construction is going on in stone.
0:06:31 > 0:06:34Which is very weird, isn't it, compared with the rest of Britain,
0:06:34 > 0:06:38where you've got a lot of timber roundhouses and things being built in the Iron Age.
0:06:38 > 0:06:42Here you've got buildings with stone floors, stone walls, stone roofs.
0:06:42 > 0:06:46Yup. They're just using what they had and in very clever ways.
0:06:46 > 0:06:50They didn't have trees, so they used the materials they had.
0:06:50 > 0:06:53The discovery of hearths, fish and animal bones,
0:06:53 > 0:06:58and pottery, suggests that these are homes. But who was living here?
0:07:01 > 0:07:04I've been asked to put my skills as a bone expert to the test,
0:07:04 > 0:07:08and examine the remains of this ancient islander.
0:07:12 > 0:07:16The bones have been carbon dated at 1,800 years old,
0:07:16 > 0:07:18but that's all that's known.
0:07:18 > 0:07:22It is quite unusual to have bones this well preserved.
0:07:22 > 0:07:26So this means the better preserved they are, of course, the more they can tell us.
0:07:26 > 0:07:33We can tell whether this person's male or female, how tall they were, how healthy they were in childhood...
0:07:33 > 0:07:40and that's somebody who lived... 1,800 years ago. On Unst.
0:07:43 > 0:07:46If you just take one of these pelvic bones and just look at it,
0:07:46 > 0:07:50and the narrowness of that would very much lead me to the conclusion
0:07:50 > 0:07:52that this is likely to be male.
0:07:52 > 0:07:56In terms of what you can look for on the skull, there is a ridge
0:07:56 > 0:08:00above the ear hole just here. So that's masculine.
0:08:01 > 0:08:05And quite a nose. I'm gonna say on balance I think it's a male.
0:08:05 > 0:08:08And it's a male with quite a nose on him!
0:08:08 > 0:08:13Now I know the sex, I can calculate his height from his bone measurements.
0:08:13 > 0:08:17Five foot seven. So he's the same height as me.
0:08:17 > 0:08:21There's no evidence of disease or malnutrition here.
0:08:22 > 0:08:26This coastline provided a rich, varied diet for these Iron Age people.
0:08:26 > 0:08:31The teeth are in pretty good condition, actually.
0:08:31 > 0:08:33There's no tooth decay. So this is a young adult who,
0:08:33 > 0:08:37if they were alive today, wouldn't need to have any fillings.
0:08:37 > 0:08:42'We're gradually piecing together what life was like for this ancient community, but there's more.'
0:08:42 > 0:08:46- Are these some of the artefacts that were buried with it?- Yes.
0:08:46 > 0:08:51That's amazing that it was actually found in the excavation - it's so tiny!
0:08:51 > 0:08:55It's a little spiral of copper alloy bronze,
0:08:55 > 0:08:59- with two little rings of what might be glass.- That's amazing.
0:08:59 > 0:09:02This was placed just beside the mouth.
0:09:03 > 0:09:08There are various theories about what they were. The most popular is they were mirrors, or a picture
0:09:08 > 0:09:12- of the moon.- It almost looks like it's got little craters on it, doesn't it?
0:09:12 > 0:09:17- It's one of those things we'll never know, isn't it?- Yeah, probably not.
0:09:17 > 0:09:22This coast once nurtured a people who didn't just survive here - they had an appreciation of beauty,
0:09:22 > 0:09:28they made exquisite things, and they shared a culture where respect for the dead was important.
0:09:30 > 0:09:361,800 years ago, a young man was buried on this beach looking out to sea.
0:09:36 > 0:09:38And this burial, and in fact the whole excavation,
0:09:38 > 0:09:44has brought together the community to uncover its own heritage,
0:09:44 > 0:09:49and to find out what it really means to be an islander on Unst.
0:09:49 > 0:09:52E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk