Reviews / How do we reconcile change? Viking and the consequences
A Bristol based journalist has written the first book on the Viking wind farm, after being inspired to explore the topic after attending her dad’s funeral in Voe
WHEN Shetland embarked on that protracted Viking wind farm journey more than two decades ago, no-one in the community could foresee what a divisive and in many ways defining experience it would become.
Its many plots and sub-plots, twist and turns, provide a wealth of material for a book but no local writer has yet dared to take on what would almost inevitably turn into a poisoned chalice.
It had to be someone from outside the isles – someone with no view on the wind farm – to be able to tackle Shetland’s biggest story.
In The Shetland Way: Community and climate crisis on my father’s islands, Marianne Brown approaches Shetland and its Viking saga for very personal reasons.
When she arrived in Voe in February 2020 to attend the funeral of her father, the retired teacher and potter Bill Brown, her intention had been to stay for a few days and then return home to Devon. But the first wave of the Covid pandemic was about to hit, and Marianne would not be able to leave Shetland for another six months.
As she settles into her father’s house, sorting through his things, tracing back his life, she gets closer to him than she had been while he was alive, and with it she gets a feel for the islands he called home, for their sense of community, their history, culture and stories.
And she stumbles over the Viking story that is present wherever she goes, in every family and every community hall. Intrigued by what she hears, the environmental journalist is drawn to investigate what is irrevocably tied to her own grief.
This then becomes a journey that is very personal and in equal measure very public – it is about home, about belonging, about how people identify with place, and how a community can move forward together.
“What I was interested in was how people feel connections to the landscape, and how that translates into our relationship with renewable energy, and the big changes as we are facing climate catastrophe,” she says when talking to Shetland News.
“How do we reconcile change? The only way to do that is in the community, or we end up with huge divisions.”
When she returns to Shetland two years later to speak to key players of both sides of the Viking argument, construction of the 103 turbines wind farm has been ongoing for almost two years.
Her important and very readable book is not an investigation as such, it is an impression with a strong theme of listening – exactly what has been missing from the bitter dispute over whether Viking was the right move to secure the future of what we all call home.
Brown does not take sides, she can follow the arguments put forward by protagonists from opposing ends, sympathises with both, and does not point a finger: she simply provides a platform to allow all voices to be heard.
And there are many voices, from locals and incomers, all united by the same strong sense of home, identity and love for these islands: Drew Ratter and Angus Ward, Frank Hay and Billy Fox, Roxanne Permar, Jonathan Wills and many more.
“I felt great sympathy for both Frank [Hay] and Billy [Fox]. Around them the landscape was changing beyond their control, in their view for the worse. I could see too how Drew’s [Ratter] self-assurance that Shetland was benefitting from the wind farm would not sit well with them. Drew’s camp had, after all, ‘won’ the battle and there seemed to be few thoughts for reconciliation”, she writes.
And that is perhaps the tragedy of it all. Half of the islands feel they have not been listened to and are still not being listened to. It is high time for lessons to be learned from Viking, as Shetland is set to experience more and larger renewable energy projects.
“When we are planning the urgent transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, we have to consider who benefits. We need to challenge the economic system that has landed us in this climate catastrophe and build renewable energy for a fairer world,” Brown concludes.
She adds: “Personally speaking, being forced to accept that grief, literally live in amongst the grief, I have eventually emerged, and I feel stronger for it. There is a stronger sense of who I am.
“I feel disassembled and reassembled, and the most important part in that was talking and listing to people – that is such a fundamental part of the human process.”
The Shetland Way: Community and climate crisis on my father’s islands, priced £16.99, will be published by Borough Press on 16 January 2025. The book can be pre-ordered here.
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