Bogenwald

Round about 6 Miles south of Gunnister is my next interesting locale, well it is if you are me 😁.

Next up is Mavis Grind. This is the narrowest point in Shetland. One one side is the Atlantic and the other is the North Sea. Why is it interesting, well, apart from the actual geography, the history of the place is pretty cool too.

As mentioned above, the Shetland Islands (never, never call it ‘The Shetland’s’ up here) sits with the North Sea to the East and North Atlantic to the West.

As Vikings colonised this part of the world they took advantage of this narrow strip of land… rather than sailing all they way around they would drag their boats across from one side to the other. The name is from the Norse and means something along the lines of: ‘Gate of the narrow isthmus’ . This method pretty much carried on for centuries especially in the winter months when coming round either end of the islands was asking for trouble.

In times gone by the ground level was a lot lower, the main road built it up. Supposedly at the narrowest part it is something like 33m (110 feet) from high water to high water.

in the late 90’s the BBC or someone similar did a test…

They did indeed pull a boat from the sea to the ocean. Not sure why they needed to try as in the archives there are lots of pictures and testimonies of people doing just that. http://photos.shetland-museum.org.uk/index.php?a=ViewItem&key=SXsiTiI6MTE2LCJQIjp7InZhbHVlIjoiTWF2aXMgR3JpbmQiLCJvcGVyYXRvciI6IjEiLCJmdXp6eVByZWZpeExlbmd0aCI6IjMiLCJmdXp6eU1pblNpbWlsYXJpdHkiOjAuNjUsIm1heFN1Z2dlc3Rpb25zIjoiNSIsImFsd2F5c1N1Z2dlc3QiOm51bGx9fQ&pg=54&WINID=1558564105627#ZIk6J2xfZQ8AAAFq4ajpUA/130428

Okay it isn’t as big as the one above but they did indeed do it up until relatively recently.

No models, painting or nothing tonight as I am sitting in a hotel room in Edinburgh eating salt and vinegar Pringles and drinking tea… what a rock and roll lifestyle I lead!

Back to Shetland on Friday morning…

Another road trip with work to the north of the island led me past the scene of an extremely important find.

Picture the scene… 12th May 1951. Two men were cutting a new peat bank and came across some human remains at a depth of 75cm or roughly 3 feet down. Police were called and thankfully it wasn’t an ‘orrible murder but something historical and very interesting indeed.

What they had come across was a burial from the 17th Century. By the time they found him there was nothing left but his finger and toe nails, some hair and a few fragments of bone. His clothing and personal effects however were pretty much intact.

His purse still held three coins (1 Dutch and 2Swedish). One of the coins had the date 1690 and his clothing was of a style typical of the 17th century.

The reconstruction of his clothing looked like this…

His grave location was marked by the men who erected a large stone…

I think it was the one above as the sign wasn’t that specific…

It was common practice up here to simply bury someone who was found up on the hill, a shallow grave was dug away from any peat workings if the body was unrecognised. This was especially the case if the body had been there a while.There are no records of this man being buried or no folk memories either so this could possibly be the case. Hypothermia or some illness could have caused him to die between townships. Was it murder, although there is no evidence on the clothing and the fact that there were coins in his purse, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t. He may have had pack ponies with him with valuable goods in… we never can tell. One theory I have heard was that he might have been out collecting rents from the various crofting communities… who knows?

It is a bit sad to think that this man one day simply disappeared, potentially leaving family and friends to wonder why he never came back.

So there you go… the Gunnister man… an extremely important archaeological and historical find.

Next time we will look at some geographical history, or potentially historical geography…