Letters / Local history in a nutshell
Whether or not there has been a deliberate strategy to hide Shetland’s history, most people in Shetland have only the haziest notion of its history. I have been studying the question from a legal standpoint for a number of years and can now put it in a nutshell (some of it is different to the official account):
a.. In 1469 King Christian of Denmark pawned his lands in Shetland to King James III of Scotland.
b.. It was a private agreement between the two individuals and did not concern parliament. There is nothing in the parliamentary records of either country to indicate otherwise.
c.. By a separate letter (not part of the pawning contract), Christian instructed the whole population to pay their skat to James and to be obedient to him until the lands were redeemed.
d.. The king’s lands in Shetland (called the lordship of Shetland) amounted to about 10 per cent of the whole.
e.. He could only pawn his lands because other landowners owned the other 90 per cent – he could not pledge what he did not own.
f.. After the pawning James did not own the lands. All he had was the obligation to hold them safely in trust as security until the Danes came up with the money.
g.. Several attempts were made by the Danes to redeem the property, but the Scots always avoided the issue.
h.. Over the following 200 years, Scottish monarchs farmed out Shetland under feudal charters to various ‘needy and rapacious courtiers’. A feudal charter requires ownership by the Crown – ownership it did not have, so all those charters were invalid. The Crown also purported to annex Shetland more than once.
i.. In international law these acts could be regarded as acts of sovereignty which, if carried on peacefully for long enough and if nobody had a better claim, would remedy the faulty title and give the Crown sovereignty.
j.. During this time the once proud owners of the remaining 90 per cent of Shetland were reduced by threats and intimidation to a position of abject slavery by the incoming Scots. It is my belief that the consequent fear has been passed down the generations and still affects the Shetland psyche today.
k.. The pivotal point: In 1667 the Treaty of Breda declared that the pawning document still stood in its full force. This negated the previous 200 years of deception and turned back the clock to 1469 as far as establishing sovereignty was concerned. The Crown had to accept that it only held the king’s lands (the lordship of Shetland) in trust.
l.. The 1669 Act of Annexation acknowledged the position. It also acknowledged that the matter was nothing to do with parliament and that if any act of parliament were to be passed concerning the lordship of Shetland, that act would be null and void.
m.. The 1707 Act of Union of Scotland and England, only 38 years later, was irrelevant to Shetland. There had been no possible mechanism by which Shetland could have been included. The Crown had no claim on the king’s lands, let alone the whole of Shetland. There was no legislation to take the king’s lands and to make Shetland a county of Scotland and it would have been null and void in any case.
n.. Since that time Shetland has been presumed to be a county of Scotland. It is only a presumption, but once again, after a long period of peaceful occupation, it could be regarded as an act of sovereignty in international law.
Two factors prevent that:
1.. The current property owners have a superior title to the Crown. That is sufficient to counter the Crown’s claim.
2.. The population was kept in such a state of fear and dread that they were unable to protest. In international law that also is sufficient to counter the claim.
a.. In August 2011 the question ‘is Shetland part of Scotland?’ was considered in court for the first time in history. The best evidence the Crown could produce for the court’s jurisdiction was a magazine article by Brian Smith. I’ve got nothing against Brian of course, but this is pathetic. The UK’s authority in Shetland relies on The Word of Brian.
So, where next Shetland? Acknowledge an illegal regime, or take control?
Stuart Hill
Ocraquoy
Cunningsburgh
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