Letters / Tired old official line
In his letter The Next Best Thing (SN, 21/02/14) Michael Mackay sadly falls for the tired old official line about Shetland’s history.
Yes, of course Shetland was part of Scandinavia (Norway to be precise). And yes, Scotland acted dishonourably in not giving it back when the money was offered.
However, fact begins to depart from fiction when the story of the pawning is told.
The assumption is that Shetland as a whole was pawned. The pawing document refers to “the king’s lands”. Historians (including our own archivist) argue that this term means the whole of Shetland, saying that the Latin phrase translates as ‘the king’s lands of Shetland, not ‘the king’s lands in Shetland’.
To resort to such semantics is only to shut your eyes to the real point. Under Norse law, all land was owned allodially – outright.
What historians neglect to consider is that the king could not pawn what he did not own, so the document can only refer to land in his personal ownership – about 10 per cent of Shetland.
Other landowners owned the other 90 per cent. They elected their king (the king of Norway), owned their land outright, made their own laws and had their own parliament. I challenge anyone to give a more complete definition of sovereignty than that.
The really interesting part that nobody wants us to know about is that those rights have never been taken away and have been passed down to the present day.
Everyone who owns a house or piece of land can rightly call themselves sovereign in their own right, ranking above the Queen in Shetland.
For anyone not in that fortunate position, but who wants to proclaim their sovereignty, I will gladly give them a token piece of mine, so nobody is left out.
I agree with Michael Mackay when he says he can’t see us becoming part of Scandinavia again, but I don’t agree that the status quo is the next best thing.
The Sovereigns of Shetland would do immeasurably better to say Yes Shetland.
If Michael would care to be better informed, I issue him a cordial invitation to my talk at the Shetland Museum and Archives on Wednesday 26th at 7pm, or get a copy of my new book at www.StolenIsles.com
Stuart Hill
Ocraquoy
Cunningsburgh
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