Shetland field mouse

Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom.

The islands lie about to the northeast of Orkney, from mainland Scotland and west of Norway. They form part of the border between the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the North Sea to the east. Their total area is ,Shetland Islands Council (2012) p. 4 and the population totalled 22,920 in 2019. The islands comprise the Shetland constituency of the Scottish Parliament. The local authority, the Shetland Islands Council, is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. The islands' administrative centre and only burgh is Lerwick, which has been the capital of Shetland since 1708, before which time the capital was Scalloway.

The archipelago has an oceanic climate, complex geology, rugged coastline, and many low, rolling hills.
The largest island, known as " the Mainland", has an area of , and is the fifth-largest island in the British Isles. It is one of 16 inhabited islands in Shetland.

Humans have lived in Shetland since the Mesolithic period. Picts are known to have been the original inhabitants of the islands, before the Norse conquest and subsequent colonisation in the Early Middle Ages. During the 10th to 15th centuries, the islands formed part of the Kingdom of Norway until they were annexed into the Kingdom of Scotland due to a royal dispute involving the payment of a dowry. In 1707, when Scotland and England united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, trade between Shetland and continental Northern Europe decreased. The discovery of North Sea oil in the 1970s significantly boosted Shetland's economy, employment and public-sector revenues. Fishing has always been an important part of the islands’ economy.

The local way of life reflects the Norse heritage of the isles, including the Up Helly Aa fire festivals and a strong musical tradition, especially the traditional fiddle style. Almost all place names in the islands also have Norse origin. The islands have produced a variety of prose writers and poets, who have often written in the distinctive Shetland dialect. Numerous areas on the islands have been set aside to protect the local fauna and flora, including a number of important seabird nesting sites. The Shetland pony and Shetland Sheepdog are two well-known Shetland animal breeds. Other animals with local breeds include the Shetland sheep, cow, goose, and duck. The Shetland pig, or grice, has been extinct since about 1930.

The islands' motto, which appears on the Council's coat of arms, is "" (“By law shall the land be built"). The phrase is of Old Norse origin, is mentioned in ''Njáls saga'', and was likely borrowed from provincial Norwegian laws such as the Frostathing Law.

Etymology

The name ''Shetland'' may derive from the Old Norse words ('hilt'), and ('land'). Another possibility is that the first syllable is derived from the name of an ancient Celtic tribe.

In AD 43, the Roman author Pomponius Mela made reference in his writing to seven islands he called the . In AD 77, Pliny the Elder called these same islands the . Scholars have inferred that both of these references are to islands in the Shetland group. Another possible early written reference to the islands is Tacitus' report in ''Agricola'' in AD 98. After he described the Roman discovery and conquest of Orkney, he added that the Roman fleet had seen "Thule, too". In early Irish literature, Shetland is referred to as — "the Isles of Cats" (meaning the island inhabited by the tribe called ''Cat''). This may have been the pre-Norse inhabitants' name for the islands. Cat was the name of a Pictish people who occupied parts of the northern Scottish mainland (see Kingdom of Cat); and their name survives in the names of the county of Caithness and in the Scottish Gaelic name for Sutherland, , which means "among the Cats".

The oldest known version of the modern name Shetland is . It occurs in a letter written by Harald, earl of Orkney, Shetland and Caithness, in c.1190. By 1431, the islands were being referred to as ''Hetland'', after various intermediate transformations. It is possible that the Pictish "cat" sound contributed to this Norse name. In the 16th century, Shetland was referred to as .Gammeltoft (2010) p. 21-22Sandnes (2010) p. 9

When the Scandinavian Norn language previously spoken by the inhabitants of the islands was replaced by the Shetland dialect of Scots (a gradual process), became . The initial letter is the Middle Scots letter, ''yogh'', the pronunciation of which is almost identical to the original Norn sound, . When the use of the letter yogh was discontinued, it was often replaced by the similar-looking letter z (which at the time was usually rendered with a curled tail: ⟨ʒ⟩) hence , the form used in the name of the pre-1975 county council. This is also the source of the ZE postcode used for Shetland.

Most of the individual islands have Norse names, although the derivations of some are obscure and may represent pre-Norse, possibly Pictish or even pre- Celtic names or elements.

Geography and geology

Shetland is around north of Great Britain and west of Bergen, Norway. It covers an area of and has a coastline long.

Lerwick, the capital and largest settlement, has a population of 6,958 and about half of the archipelago's total population of 22,920 people live within of the town.

Scalloway on the west coast, which was the capital until 1708, has a population of fewer than 1,000 people.Shetland Islands Council (2010) p. 10

Only 16 of about 100 islands are inhabited. The main island of the group is known as Mainland. The next largest are Yell, Unst, and Fetlar, which lie to the north, and Bressay and Whalsay, which lie to the east. East and West Burra, Muckle Roe, Papa Stour, Trondra and Vaila are smaller islands to the west of Mainland. The other inhabited islands are Foula west of Walls, Fair Isle south-west of Sumburgh Head, and the Out Skerries to the east.

The uninhabited islands include Mousa, known for the Broch of Mousa, the finest preserved example in the world of an Iron Age broch; Noss to the east of Bressay, which has been a national nature reserve since 1955; St Ninian's Isle, connected to Mainland by the largest active tombolo in the United Kingdom; and Out Stack, the northernmost point of the British Isles."Get-a-map"
, Ordnance Survey, Retrieved 7 March 2011 Shetland's location means that it provides a number of such records: Muness is the most northerly castle in the United Kingdom and Skaw the most northerly settlement.

The geology of Shetland is complex, with numerous faults and fold axes. These islands are the northern outpost of the Caledonian orogeny, and there are outcrops of Lewisian, Dalradian and Moine metamorphic rocks with histories similar to their equivalents on the Scottish mainland. There are also Old Red Sandstone deposits and granite intrusions. The most distinctive feature is the ophiolite in Unst and Fetlar which is a remnant of the Iapetus Ocean floor made up of ultrabasic peridotite and gabbro.

Much of Shetland's economy depends on the oil-bearing sediments in the surrounding seas. Geological evidence shows that in around 6100 BC a tsunami caused by the Storegga Slide hit Shetland, as well as the west coast of Norway, and may have created a wave of up to high in the voes where modern populations are highest.

The highest point of Shetland is Ronas Hill at . The Pleistocene glaciations entirely covered the islands. During that period, the Stanes of Stofast, a 2000-tonne