Shetland Sunday- Jarlshof, James-Jim, and Puffins,

Despite relatively decent sleep as pod-people, we still woke a little groggy, and by the time we collected Nervous Nellie we were quite hungry.

We rolled into Lerwick (the sleepy little port town capital of Shetland) and I was very surprised by the size of it. Glancing at a Mercator projection of Scotland, you'd be forgiven for thinking Shetland was a remote spot of nothing, with a handful of intrepid settlers carving out a life.

 "And in the top right corner, you will see a place no-one would ever consider useful"

But the Mercator projection has always been a liar, and a proper look at a globe makes Shetland's population and development suddenly make a lot more sense, as it sits effectively at the crossroads for transport and logistics for all the industries of the North seas.

 

It's basically two days by sail between any two adjacent nodes in the network made up of Iceland, the Norwegian coast, The Faroe Islands, Shetland, and Orkney.

In other words: Viking ships could make the trip from Norway to Iceland in a week.  Modern craft can do it in a couple of days. That whole network centers on Shetland.

 Even so, on a quiet Sunday morning in a working town, there aren't many open restaurants.

But a short googling did eventually deliver us down a small side alley near the old town centre and into a proper hole in the wall called "The New Harbour Cafe".

This was ideal.

We were both craving a full Scottish breakfast (even though we had the same the day before in Ballachulish) and a cup of instant coffee plus an an absolutely unreasonable plate of food (that their menu comically labeled the "Small breakfast") was just the ticket. I added black pudding to mine, because I am a danger to myself and shouldn't be allowed to order food unsupervised.

"Small"

After our feast we headed south. There's a remarkable piece of farm bath the southern tip of the island called Jarlshof, on which sit several different layers of incredibly well-preserved archeology, stretching back a couple of thousand years.

The site itself is super cool, and not just because reaching it involves DRIVING ACROSS AN ACTIVE RUNWAY WHAT THE HELL (I'll post pictures of this later, if I remember to get them from Rachel).

You have the chance to wander through ancient pre-Norse (Pictish and Iron Age Shetlander) buildings, as well as the stone long-houses the Norsemen built after they conquered the area (and enslaved the pre-Norse population) (stone because there aren't really trees on Shetland to speak of so basically all timber has to be imported).  Our tickets included a  fantastic audio guide, which did a great job of directing us around the location and contextualizing the various pieces of rubble into a relatively cohesive narrative. It was neat to be able to listen to a section and then discuss with someone else for a bit.

In addition to being an excellent site, we made an excellent acquaintance.  

The 50-something ticket seller/park guide who sold us our tickets (labeled by his sharpie-defaced nametag as "James Jim") asked us about our plans and when we admitted we were winging it, he said "hmm, well alright there are some things you should do, come back when you return your audio guides" and when we returned, he chatted with us a bit about American history.  

A great-ancestor of his was a cotton smuggler who was engaged in running the blockade during the civil war to get southern cotton out of the US to feed London's desperately underfed textile factories (which were fueled, prior to the outbreak of the war, on a steady diet of southern cotton). And then, awkward conversation about massive death tolls and war-profiteering behind us, he snagged a paper map and a pen and gave us some fantastic advice about the main island and where to spend our time over the course of the day.  

Some options. we chose "B"

It was super thoughtful and helpful, in giving us a sense that we weren't wasting the day, and his first recommendation (that we continue with to the Sumburgh lighthouse visible from Jarlshof) was a great one especially, as it meant we got to see a particular creature neither of us had ever seen outside a zoo before, which we had been excited to learn we might be able to see in person at this time of year.

The Sumburgh lighthouse was also a very cool site.

In addition to a very neat exhibit about the lighthouse itself (including details of both the foghorn engine, only blown now twice a year for reasons of tradition, (to scare the shit out of the wild birds) and the automation process of the North Sea lighthouses (a man and his wife currently provide maintainance service to all 37 North Sea Island lighthouse locations, and he has been doing the job since the sixties)), it also had an exhibit about the radar station that was built there during WW2, which helped provide vital warning services about Luftwaffe raids on the British Naval fleet in the North Sea.

Foghorns driven by room-sized steam powered pressure tanks: The absolute latest in 120 year old Bird-Terrifying Technology.

This is a bit of a faux-pas, since they built the station 4 meters from the base of the lighthouse itself, and lighthouses are considered a No Strike List item, like hospitals. Essentially you're using, as a human shield, not just the life of the lighthouse's operator (in the 40s it was still manned) but also the lives of every sailor and passenger on every ship that might pass through those waters.

Fun fact! Blowing one of these up is a war-crime.

In any case, I've saved the best about the location for last, and that's this: the site has excellent cliff faces, perfect for hosting a variety of wild birds, the most charming of which, by far, were Puffins.

 

Oh hello.

 

 

Don't mind us.

I do not carry a camera lens suitable for good wildlife photography when I travel (because they are heavy and large and expensive), which is a bit of a shame because this location was perfect for getting a good look at the weird little fellows.  

hmph.

They are burrowing, cliff-dwelling birds.  They carve out little hollows in the soft earth near the top of the cliffs, and that's where they make their nests.

Situation normal. Nothing to see here.

And it would appear they have the aerodynamics of a nerf football-- while the Sea-Gull like Kittiwakes soar into flight with one or two flaps of their wings, coasting on the breezes, every time the Puffin hurls itself from the cliff face you'd think it was the last time, their tiny wings pump like mad when they fly and they look impossibly incapable of ever generating enough lift and energy to get themselves back UP to the crazy places they choose to roost.

Every Puffin who has ever watched Princess Bride has seen Wesley clambering up the Cliffs of Insanity and thought "oh those would make a great neighborhood to raise a family."

They were delightful.

After our lighthouse visit, we snagged a bite to eat, drove back across the runway that bisects this part of Shetland (I've driven on flightlines before, but never actually driven directly on the runway! Wild.) and then followed the route  "James Jim" had recommended up the Eastern Coast of the island, stopping for a walk at "St. Ninians Island" where we stumbled across another archeology site, where a Pictish church once stood, and where a treasure was discovered in the mid 1950s containing dozens of beautiful silver artifacts dating from the middle ages of years earlier.

(We got to see replicas of those artifacts in the Shetland museum -- which I'll tell you about in the next entry -- because the originals have been whisked away to the Scottish national museum in Edinburgh.)

After our pleasant little walk around the "island" we drove out to another small beach which took us past Scalloway castle (built by slave labor in the service of a real bastard of a man named Patrick Stewart at the end of the 1500s).

This was a good drive, even though we were quite tired by this point, because it gave us the best opportunities to snag a few picture of roadside ponies.

Shetland ponies have long ago adapted to their environment and as a result they are (like Shetland sheep, pigs, and cows) smaller--and significantly fuzzier--than their southern counterparts. We snagged a few pictures to price that we actually seen them.

Smol horse are smol

Majestic. 

We were fast running out of steam at this point, and it was getting late on the afternoon, so we headed back to Lerwick and checked into our B&B (Alder House Lodge) and then then went out for dinner at a local Indian restaurant, which was delicious, and grabbed a beer at the local dive bar, which was charming but also involved (of course) getting into a conversation about Trump almost as soon as we sat down. Having thus paid our social dues we also made some small talk about the weather, finished our beers, and strolled back through the charming streets of Lerwick for a quiet night of rest.

We checked once more, just before midnight, to see if we'd have any luck with the Northern Lights, but Shetland is at a latitude of about 60 degrees, which means in the summer there's very little hope of proper-dark, ever.

The sun never really sets. It just waits.