INTRODUCTION.
I.
THE Orkney Isles and Shetland, according to old Saga-accounts, were peopled from Norway in the 9th century, in the days of King Harald Fairhair, at the same time as the Færoe Isles and Iceland; but, from old Celtic monuments and inscriptions and from the place-names, it appears that the Orkney Isles and Shetland had an aboriginal Celtic population; while, from place-names of a distinctly ancient character, it is evident that the Islands had Norse inhabitants also. Neither that Celtic population nor the Norse is mentioned in the Sagas. The Celtic settlement lies so very far back in time, and the Norse settlement, before King Harald’s day, took place so gradually and quietly and was so little marked by striking events, that the great, strong tide of emigrants, setting westward from Norway in King Harald Fairhair’s time, swept out of mind all previous emigrations, and absorbed the entire attention of the Saga-writers.
The Shetland Isles became a province of Norway in King Harald Fairhair’s time, and belonged to that country till 1469, when King Christian I of Denmark and Norway (which countries had shortly before been united) pledged the Isles, together with the Orkney Islands, to Scotland as security for the dowry he had undertaken to provide on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter Margaret to King James III of Scotland.
Although it was expressly stipulated by Denmark, at the time of the mortgage, that no changes should be made by Scotland in the ancient laws and institutions of the Islands, as Denmark intended to redeem them, we find that, about 1600, all the old conditions had been turned topsy-turvy. Owing to the unrest in Scotland, and the remoteness of Shetland, the Scottish Earls, who held the Islands in fief, could do practically as they pleased. Robert Stewart became particularly notorious, and his son Patrick still more so. Their tenure of the Earldom falls in the latter half of the 16th century. As they were closely related to the royal house of Scotland, Earl Robert being an illegitimate son of James V, they did not fear the vengeance of the law, and so allowed themselves almost every liberty in their treatment of the common people of Shetland. The taxes were increased at the will of the rulers; the standards of measure and weight were repeatedly raised[1], and the “bismers”, steelyards, falsified; the udal or
- ↑ See David Balfour: Oppressions of the Sixteenth Century in the Islands of Orkney and Zetland. Edinburgh 1859.
