Windswept Beauty

The Shetland Islands’ rich history, rugged landscape and abundance of knitters make it well worth the journey

- Nellie Hermann

JUST A FEW days into my trip to the Shetland Islands, the Scottish subarctic archipelago across the sea from Norway, I found myself on the top of a cliff face, peering through the fog at a huge rock in the North Atlantic Ocean. The rock was topped with the Muckle Flugga lighthouse, built-in 1854, a mind-boggling feat as the rock’s cliff face juts straight up out of the roiling sea.

At this most northerly inhabited point in the UK, I felt a profound sense that I was very far from home.

I had disembarked to this spot from a bus at the top of the tiny island of Unst, the most northern and rocky of the Shetland Islands, with a population of about 500. On the bus with me was a group of mostly women from all over the world, all of us attendees of Shetland Wool Week, hailed through the world’s knitting grapevine as the mecca of all knitting and textile festivals.

To get to this spot, the bus had driven us up the length of the ‘mainland’, the largest of the populated islands, crossed on a ferry to the smaller island of Yell, then driven up a snaking road to Yell’s tip and to a second ferry ride to Unst.

Now, we stood at the top of the cliffs of Hermaness, home to some of the largest colonies of nesting seabirds in the UK. We squinted through the fog, trying to keep our feet on the ground and our knitted hats on our heads as the howling gusts of wind pulled at us.

Before I arrived in Shetland, as the islands are called, the only thing I really knew about the place was that it is the birthplace of Fair Isle knitting, a technique of colorwork recognizable in traditional sweaters. What I found was a place with a complex history beyond that of the knitting industry, difficult to get to, but well worth the journey.