
Jarlshof, Old Scatness and other Shetland Archaeological Sites
Posted 2017-01-13 10:23:13For
the summer and autumn of 1814, Sir Walter Scott joined a party of Commissioners
for the Northern Lighthouse Service on a voyage around the coast of Scotland.
Their main aim was to check the condition of the many lighthouses in their
charge.
It seems to have been an agreeable
trip and the company got along very well. On Orkney, Sir Walter Scott ‘learned
the history of Gow the pirate from an old sibyl’ and for much of the rest of
the voyage, he was left alone on deck, pacing and muttering to himself as he
plotted a new novel.
From Orkney, they sailed on to the
Shetland Islands where Scott became acquainted with the Roost of Sumburgh –
tides ‘running with force only inferior to the Pentland Firth,’ as he describes
in the introduction to his tale, The Pirate.
As well as fierce currents, Sumburgh Head, at
the southern tip of the mainland of Shetland, has a craggy coastline that is
deeply indented with sandy bays. Of a once impressive building at the head of
one of these inlets, Scott wrote, ‘Yarlshof (his spelling) seemed to imply an
ancient Earl of the Orkneys had selected this neck of land as the place for
establishing a mansion house. It has long been deserted and the vestiges only
can be discerned with difficulty. But at the end of the 17th century
a part of the Earl’s mansion was still entire and habitable.’
At the time Sir Walter Scott gave the
building the name ‘Yarlshof’, sand had filled the rooms to a depth of three
feet and the township’s few cottages were ‘wretched’.
On the surrounding land, ‘it was hardly
possible,’ he said, ‘to raise the most culinary vegetables. As for shrubs or
trees, they are entirely out of the question such is the force of the sweeping
sea – blast.’
If the cottages reminded Scott of a Scottish
‘ferm toun’ that is less than surprising. In 1469 Shetland came under the
control of the Scottish king, James 111, and many Scots moved there.
In the sixteenth century the lordship of
Shetland passed into the hands of Earl Robert Stewart, an illegitimate son of
James V. His ‘Palace at Dunrossness’ as he called it, in which the local
magistrate held his court, was the New Hall, the building nearest to the
ancient Norse settlement of Jarlshof (as the site has come to be known).
In 1592, William Bruce Symbister leased the
house from Earl Robert. From 1604 to 1605, Earl Patrick, Robert’s son, had
possession and he built another house that came to be known as the ‘Old house
of Sumburgh.’ This was the building that Sir Walter Scott later named
‘Yarlshof’ and set in his novel, The Pirate.
Unbeknown to Scott, there was far more to
Jarlshof than a sand-filled ruin and a few sad looking houses.
At the
end of the 19th century violent storms broke into the low cliffs at
Jarlshof. The landowner, Mr. Bruce dug into the sand and discovered structures
that were still in place from the day they had been built during the Iron Age.
In 1925, he placed the site in the care of the State. Archaeological
excavations have since revealed many more exciting finds.
When a plane is due to arrive or take off
from Sumburgh Airport vehicles must stop and wait at the roadway barriers. As
soon as the runway is clear, the roadside warning lights stop flashing, the
barriers lift, and drivers can then carry on their way across the runway. After
hardly any distance, a turn off leads to the car park of the Sumburgh Hotel and
the start of the short path which ends at Jarlshof. From the trappings of the
21st century you can wander into the stone outline of a building
where a blacksmith wielded a hammer some 2800 years ago.
The entrance fee to Jarlshof includes
headphones and an audio cassette which gives information on what lies beneath
your feet as you make your way round the site.
Near the first stopping place, three middens
(rubbish dumps) were found separate from each other by layers of wind-blown
sand. The lowest, or earliest midden, was piled beside hearths and much-damaged
walls. Pottery found here has been dated to before 2500 BC but nothing is known
about the people.
In one house the remains of four freshly made
steatite (soapstone) bowls were found and among the many stone tools were
ploughshares and cleavers. Bone chisels and awls suggest that leather working
was common and leather clothing may have been worn.
The middle midden revealed that the
inhabitants grew grain, kept cattle and sheep and fished the sea. It’s not
known what happened after the visible house, (associated with the middle
midden) was abandoned, but it is likely that the occupants moved to other
nearby sites.
The latest (topmost) midden is of roughly the
same date as the Bronze Age village nearby.
From there, a few steps takes you forward in
time to the remains of a large Iron Age roundhouse standing in the courtyard of
a Broch built about 2000 years ago. The houses here have distinctive cells
formed by thick buttresses extending into the living space and are of a type
that can be traced back well before 2000BC in Shetland.
By
this time, the introduction of iron had probably eased some tasks involving
cutting and piercing. Spindle whorls show that thread was made from fibres,
implying woollen cloth was now in use for clothes and coverings.
The villagers farmed in much the same way as
their forebears. They bred sheep, including Soay and other breeds similar to
modern day Shetland sheep. They kept short-horned cattle, a few pigs, and
ponies the size of modern Shetland breeds. They were active fishermen and also
hunted grey seals and walruses on the beaches of offshore islands.
In the fields around the village, cereal
crops like bere (an early form of barley) and emmer (a kind of wheat) were
grown. Stone querns were used to grind the grain. Seeing the actual hollowed
out querns and heavy stones used in the grinding process is proof that making a
loaf of bread would not have been a quick or easy job.
It’s difficult for visitors to disentangle
the Jarlshof Broch from later structures since there are cells in its wall
thickness, a courtyard attached to it, and a roundhouse with an outhouse in the
courtyard. How tall this broch stood when it was complete is not accurately
known. The surviving solid base is 2.4m high but many great stones found nearby
during excavation had probably fallen from the upper storeys.
The tallest broch known in Shetland, and the
best preserved in
Jarlshof is 48 hours by sailing boat from the
coast of
The
first Norse dwelling house was a bow-sided building about 75ft long and built
of drystone and turves, except for its east gable which was of timber. It was
divided into two rooms, the hall or living room, and a much smaller kitchen or
pantry. The hall was provided with a characteristic long hearth down its
centre, with raised platforms on either side for both sitting and sleeping.
Outbuildings consisted of a byre for wintering animals, a barn for storing
their fodder, stables and a small smithy. Another building of similar size to
the smithy may have been a bath house where water could have been thrown over
hot stones to make a steamy sauna.
Amongst many changes over the years, new
buildings and extensions were added when necessary to the original farm
complex. Barns and byres were built. Houses were lengthened and the inhabitants
continued to exploit both the land and the sea.
There must also have been some leisure time.
Beautifully carved bone pins have been found that were used as cloak fasteners.
Various types show thistle - head, axe -head, or cross-head designs. The high
quality animal – head pins are similar to those found alongside 11th
century remains in
From Jarlshof, it’s only a short drive north
to another site known as Old Scatness. Here again there are remains of a broch,
an Iron Age village and evidence of a Viking settlement. But since the overall
site is an ongoing ‘dig’ in progress, visitors are given a guided tour.
“As you can see from the stone work on the
face of the Broch, it’s very well built,” said the guide. “We believe it stood
around 15m high and was at least as tall as the Broch on the Isle of Mousa
which is missing 1m in height of stone. The internal staircase runs clockwise
up the structure which seems to have been of some significance to these early
people.”
In the remains of a building close by,
thought to be Pictish from around the time of the late Iron Age, part of a slab
of stone was found that shows the outline of a bear. Since it is a very fine
depiction, complete with teeth and claws, this is another mystery. Who was the
artist? Where did he usually work? How did he come by his knowledge of such an
animal?
“We
think an artist, an extremely good one, has been brought here to create this
symbol for a chief,” said the guide. “The bear was an emblem of power and
strength.”
Since Scatness Broch is central amongst
several other brochs, the guide suggested that this site might have been some
sort of administration centre or even the site of a parliament. Geophysical
research revealed the whole site to be fairly extensive, and potentially,
archaeologists could be kept working there for a very long time.
Another unusual feature at Scatness is that
two replicas of dwellings from Pictish times have been built to give the
researchers more practical information on daily living conditions within such
structures. As well, over the summer, members of a living history group try and
recreate some of the everyday skills of the period such as metal working,
spinning, baking, beer making and carving local soapstone to make replica
artefacts.
At one side of the path leading in to the Old
Scatness Broch and
Little could Betty Mouat have imagined that
her home would in time be refurbished, renamed, ‘Betty Mouat’s Bod’ and given a
new purpose. The hostel now offers simple accommodation to visitors from around
the world.
The history of Scatness is slowly being
uncovered and archaeologists are learning about Betty Mouat’s predecessors.
I wonder what she would have made of the fact
that she was living on top of one of the most important archaeological sites in
Shetland.
First published in The Highlander
The Magazine of Scottish Heritage
May/June 2008
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