by Ann Cleeves
In this scene from the book Evelyn, an island woman, is working as a volunteer on the excavation with two young archaeologists and has come across a piece of bone. Mima, Sandy’s grandmother, is watching:
An archaeological dig on Unst.
When Evelyn went back to work on the practice trench, the older woman stood watching. Mima was wearing black Crimplene trousers and wellingtons that flapped around her knees. She’d thrown a threadbare grey fleece over her shoulders. Hattie thought she looked like a hooded crow standing there watching her daughter-in-law work. A hooded crow ready to snatch at a fragment of food.
‘Well, Evelyn, what do you look like?’ Mima said. ‘On your hands and knees like some sort of beast. In this light you could be one of Joseph’s beasts, grubbing around in the soil there. You be careful or he’ll be slitting your throat and eating you as bacon.’ She laughed so loud that she coughed and spluttered.
Evelyn said nothing. She knelt up and glared. Hattie felt sorry for her. She’d never known Mima be so cruel. Hattie jumped into the trench beside Evelyn. The bone was protruding from the earth now, largely uncovered. Hattie took her own trowel from her jeans pocket. With intense concentration she stripped away more of the soil then took a brush. The shape of the bone became more defined: there was a pleasing curve, a sculptured hollow.
‘Pars orbitalis,’ she said. Shock and excitement made her forget her earlier resolve not to show off, to keep her language simple so Evelyn would understand.
Evelyn looked at her.
‘The frontal orbit,’ Hattie said. ‘This is part of a human skull.’
‘Oh no,’ Mima said. Hattie looked up at her and saw that her face was white. ‘That cannot be right. No, no, that cannot be.’
The ferry approaching Toft, Mainland.
Val Turner, the archaeologist, appears as herself in the novel. I offered to change her into an elderly man, but she insisted that she wanted to stay just as she was! She also helped create the dig on-set – on Mima’s land – for the BBC adaptation of the story. The first trench dug by the crew apparently looked nothing like the real thing. I’ve become relaxed over the years about the changes that take place in character and story in the adaptation process. This is especially true of location, and while locals are puzzled when island locations jump to shots obviously filmed on the Scottish mainland, I’m beginning to appreciate why this has to happen. The production team of the Shetland pilot Red Bones decided that Bressay (an island with a direct and very short ferry service into Lerwick) was a more convenient location for filming than Whalsay; and the place they used for Mima’s house was actually in Whiteness to the west of Shetland Mainland, and was the home of the then head of Shetland Arts. Then they had to decide how to describe Shetland Mainland and distinguish it from the Scottish mainland. While every Shetlander and visitor understands that when islanders talk about ‘Mainland’ they mean the largest Shetland isle, it was felt that might not be clear to an overseas audience, so the rather clumsy phrase ‘the main island’ was used instead.
The partially restored settlement at Old Scatness Broch.
Archaeology is important in the islands. Shetland is believed to hold several thousand prehistoric sites. There are Bronze Age burnt mounds and Iron Age brochs, and from later periods Pictish wheelhouses, Viking and Norse longhouses and post-medieval fortifications. The best example of an Iron Age settlement is at Old Scatness, where excavations undertaken by Bradford University and Shetland Amenity Trust have revealed a broch surrounded by a whole Iron Age village. Today it’s possible for visitors to see the re-created roundhouses and to feel that they’re experiencing the period, by taking part in the guided walks and living-history demonstrations.
Law Ting Holm.
The 1604 Old House at Jarlshof is the newest building at the site: the earliest dates from before 2500 BC.
There is evidence of Viking and Norse settlements throughout the islands. Shetland was ideally placed as a stepping stone for North Atlantic travel from Norway. The most impressive and most visited site is at Jarlshof, a multi-period settlement close to Sumburgh airport in South Mainland. There has also been an excavation at Law Ting Holm, the site of the parliament in the Ting Loch, inland from Scalloway. Debate took place on this promontory at the northern end of the loch until the 1570s, when the parliament was moved to Scalloway Castle.
The replica longship and longhouse at Haroldswick, Unst.
Unst, the most northerly of Shetland’s islands, was one of the first landfalls for Vikings coming from Scandinavia and has fantastic evidence of their presence. More than thirty Viking longhouses have been discovered so far, and the Unst Viking project has enabled access to three: Belmont, Hamar and Underhoull. A replica longhouse and longship can be found at Brookpoint, Haroldswick, which is said to represent the first footfall of Vikings in Shetland.
In the sixteenth century landowners built castles at Scalloway in Mainland and at Muness in Unst. Fort Charlotte was built in Lerwick, during the Second Dutch War in the seventeenth century. Visitors can explore an array of twentieth-century military remains too.
Australian singer and song writer Frank Yamma, performing in Islesburgh at the Shetland Folk Festival 2015.
Music weaves its magic throughout Shetland life. It’s a major part of the festivities at family celebrations, weddings and hamefarin’s; and dances in community halls still bring communities together. Music charts the history of Shetland life: there are tunes to mark special events and to keep old legends alive. You hear live music in bars, and often on the NorthLink ferry from Aberdeen to Lerwick. And that’s certainly true in the run-up to the Shetland Folk Festival, which takes place every year in late spring – the festival seems to start on the boat and doesn’t stop until the early hours of the last day.
The Folk Festival was born in 1981, and the format that was decided on by the founding committee is still followed today. The event celebrates the islands’ unique fiddle tradition and rich musical heritage, but local artists share the stage with performers from all over the world. Among the artists at the first festival were Kathryn Tickell from Northumberland, my own part of the world; the late Sean McGuire; and Dick Gaughan, whose verdict after the four-day event was: ‘This Festival should carry a Government Health Warning – nobody sleeps.’ This, too, seems to be a tradition that continues to the present day.
The festival has always been run and organized by a committee of volunteers, whose aim is to take the music and musicians to venues throughout the islands. The long weekend features music from many traditions – from American bluegrass to Scandinavian progressive folk rock. The visiting artists are accommodated in local people’s homes, and volunteers run the bars and drive the musicians to the community halls where they will be performing. The special mix of fostering local talent while welcoming the new, the exotic and the unusual provides a unique Shetland experience.
Folk Festival concert at Clickimin.
The lights of Scalloway by moonlight. The large ship is an accommodation vessel, housing workers building a new gas plant at Sullom Voe.
Dead Water was my second spring book. I had only intended there to be four novels in the Shetland series, but after the first quartet (which ended with Blue Lightning) I felt that I still had things to say about the islands. The first books are rather quiet and domestic; they’re about families and the way they can crack under stress. Dead Water covers the same territory, but has a slightly different background and atmosphere, setting families within a wider community context.
The novel considers the debate that exists in the islands about energy, oil and gas. Recently the flow of oil into Sullom Voe has declined, but in the last few years construction of a gas terminal close to the original site on the Voe has brought in a fresh wave of workers to the islands. Flotels – floating hotels – have appeared in Lerwick and Scalloway, and a big new hotel was built in Brae solely for people involved in the gas business. The situation seems to have stabilized now, but when I started Dead Water
the place felt a little as it did when I first arrived in Shetland in the Seventies, as everyone came to terms with another influx of strangers.
Shetland is windy, so it’s an obvious place to site a wind farm. There are already turbines on the hill outside Lerwick, and some friends have a small windmill in their garden to help provide power for their house and for the electric car they use for driving short distances. Wind provides all the energy for small communities like Fair Isle. Some time ago there was a proposal to create a giant wind farm on a spine of hillside running north in Mainland. Perhaps because the farm would provide more power than the islands could ever use, this has been a matter of great controversy. Some people ask why Shetland should spoil its natural environment to provide energy for the rest of the UK – a cable would be sunk between the island and the north of Scotland, to export the power. Others believe that the wind farm would bring in a considerable source of income, just as the oil revenue is drying up. And once the cable attached Shetland to the UK mainland, it might make economic sense to develop other forms of sustainable energy: there is an immensely powerful tidal race between Shetland Mainland and the island of Yell, for example, so tidal energy might become viable – and I was interested in exploring how different islanders might react to that.
A solitary wind turbine.
So at the beginning of the book I describe the oil terminal in Sullom Voe, as part of an industrial landscape. Many visitors to the islands never see this site, except perhaps for the burning flare in the distance. It’s very well hidden by folds in the hills and, unless you drive along the road from Brae towards Mossbank, you will be completely unaware it’s there:
Jerry Markham looked across at the voe. Behind him was the open hill, peat and heather, brown after the long winter. Ahead of him the oil terminal. Four tugs big as trawlers, two alongside, one forward and one aft, nudged the Lord Rannoch backwards towards the jetty. The tankers were always moored to face the sea, ready for escape in case of incident. Beyond the still water he saw an industrial scene of oil tanks, office accommodation and the huge bulk of the power station that provided power for the terminal and fed into the Shetland grid. A flare burned off waste gas. The area was surrounded by a high fence topped by razor wire. Since 9/11, even in Shetland, more care had been taken to secure the place. At one time all that was needed to get into the terminal was a laminated pass. Now every contractor was vetted and put through a safety course, and every truck was inspected and badged. Even when the gates were opened there was a further concrete wall to block access.
Jerry took a photograph.
In contrast, one of the novel’s characters works at a croft house museum, so the reader has a sense of the traditional way of life in the islands. Although in the book this is set in West Mainland, Shetland’s actual Croft House Museum is at Boddam in Dunrossness to the south, on the way to Sumburgh airport. This was a mid-nineteenth-century house, which was lived in until the Sixties. The house, barn and byre were all accessible under the same roof, and everything in it was made from materials that had been found and collected.
The mystery in Dead Water begins when Rhona Laing, the Procurator Fiscal, discovers the body of a man floating in a yoal in the marina in Aith. Aith is a small community in the West Mainland, with a lifeboat station, a school and a community shop. It’s rather isolated and the road into it crosses a moonlike landscape of steep hills and peaty pools. The Fiscal, played by Julie Graham in the BBC production, is a smart and rather aloof incomer in the novel. There are rumours that she returns to Edinburgh every month to have her hair cut! She has come to Shetland because she loves sailing and has a passion for the sea. In the story she becomes far closer to the investigation than she really wants to.
The Dunrossness Croft House Museum.
Ian Best working on a yoal, a traditional Shetland boat.
I love undertaking research for the Shetland books. It’s all about chatting to Shetlanders about their preoccupations and everyday life, and drinking tea in croft kitchens. I enjoy bringing the scriptwriters for the BBC series to the islands too. It’s important for them to meet Shetlanders and the more often they visit, the more authentic the drama becomes.
One of the characters in Dead Water is a boatbuilder who makes traditional yoals. He stands for the old values of self-reliance. I needed to find out about the craft and I was fortunate that Ian Best, a boatbuilder in Fair Isle, provided excellent information for those scenes. He talked me through the work, described the clinking, the hammering of grooved copper nails into the overlapping planks, and the smell of sawdust. And my old friend Jim Dickson, who had recently retired as harbour master at Sullom Voe, was invaluable concerning the work of the pilots based in the Shetland Islands Council facility at Sella Ness and the control room there. It’s these small details that bring a character or an activity to life and I’m always very grateful for the insights provided by local people.
In the book Francis Watt, the boatbuilder, lives in Fetlar, one of the smaller islands accessible by roll-on, roll-off ferry from Gutcher in north Yell. Each of the inhabited islands has its own characteristic flavour. I first went to Fetlar when I was working at the bird observatory in Fair Isle in 1975. At that time snowy owls were breeding in Fetlar – their discovery in 1967 by local naturalist Bobby Tulloch caused something of a sensation in the birding world. There are some wonderful stories about the excitement generated by these birds. My particular favourite concerns the time when Bobby and Dennis Coutts, a keen birder and professional photographer with a shop in Lerwick’s Commercial Street, dressed up as the back and front ends of a pantomime horse, in an attempt to get close to the owls to photograph them. I would have loved to see that!
A snowy owl.
Sunset on Fetlar.
In 1975 Peter Roberts, the Fair Isle observatory assistant warden, had been invited to Fetlar to ring the young owls, and I went along for the ride. We camped next to a long sandy beach where Manx shearwaters came in at night and were woken early in the morning by the call of a corncrake. We never saw the bird, although it must have been tantalizingly close; and corncrakes no longer breed in Shetland. The owls have left too, but their presence started a movement that led to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds buying and managing land in Fetlar. Now the island is home to the rare red-necked phalarope, and it’s possible to see the phalaropes on Funzie Loch from the RSPB hide or from the road. Fetlar is worth a visit even for a non-birder like me. It’s a beautiful place, and otters are common and so are both species of seal.
Fetlar is small; it’s only five miles long and two-and-a-half miles wide and its tiny population is supported by a shop and a primary school. But it has a range of habitats: there are gentle moors, higher bleak hills, beaches, low rocky shores and dramatic cliffs. It’s as if all the variety of Shetland’s landscapes is here in one place. The whole of Shetland’s history seems to be represented here too. There are prehistoric house sites and standing stones. Legend has it that the stone circle at Hjaltadans is made up of trows who were tempted out of their underground homes to dance to wild music and were then caught at sunrise and turned to stone. The centre stones are supposed to be the fiddler and his wife. A Celtic Christian monastic site is thought to have been present in Fetlar – such sites weren’t uncommon in the fifth and sixth centuries in the Northern Isles. The monks would probably have grown much of their own food and worshipped in a small chapel. There is still evidence of the clearances too, when greed caused the lairds to take the land for their own use, believing sheep to be more profitable than people. Ruined buildings, drains and walls show where crofters once lived. Some of the ‘big houses’ also remain, as does evidence of early fishing.
Funzie Bay, Fetlar.
The ruined round house at Gruting on Fetlar.
Not all Shetland traditions go back centuries. The prosperity of the islands since the 1970s has meant that young people come home to live and work. There is very little unemployment in Shetland, and many graduates have the c
onfidence to start their own small businesses. The Internet means that they aren’t restricted to an island customer base. These young people have developed traditions of their own and one of these, featured in Dead Water, is the ‘hennie bus’. Unless you live in Lerwick, the traditional pub crawl for a hen night is impossible. Away from the town, bars are few and far between. So the women dress up, as they would anywhere on the mainland, and a bus carries them from home and between the hotels and bars.
