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Wednesday January 23, 2008 |
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Human
Population of Fair Isle Through the Millennia, by Stoneybrek Pat The
prospect of a new millennium has focused me into thinking about who and what
Fair Isle is and has further lead me to consider who and what Fair Isle was, in
the five millennia since man colonised the Northern Isles after the last ice
age. This is not meant to be a complete history, but a glimpse of the start of
each mew millennium. 3,000
BC and
the isle would have looked quite different. Strip away all the man-made
features: buildings, fences, roads, piers, airstrip, dam, and put back trees of
birch, hazel, willow, and may be pine, elm, oak and alder, to show the lightly
wooded landscape, with a tree line of about 200 metres. The
Neolithic (New Stone Age) people who settled here 5,000 years ago, with their
cows, sheep and possibly red deer, had an immediate and lasting impact on the
environment, clearing areas of woodland scrub for cooking, building and to
expand grazing. They worked the land with stone ploughshares, growing grain and
raising mainly cattle. Their cultural links with other Shetland people were
reflected in their burial chambers, house styles, pottery and tools. Little
obvious evidence still remains from that day, and as Shetland has been slowly
sinking since the end of the last Ice Age, places like the South Harbour could
possibly have been land extending our as far as the Keels and the Skerry. Sadly,
the sea might well have taken our first settlements. At the Point of Koolin, a
Neolithic midden was found with the typically coarse, gritty pottery of the
period. Unfortunately it was at the edge of an eroding cliff, with no sign left
of an associated dwelling. Moving
on a thousand years, to 2,000 BC, and
no radical change appears to have taken place with more of a slow expansion and
evolution into the Late Neolithic. By now the land had been divided, marked out
with stone and turf dykes (walls) for boundaries rather than stock containment.
They can still be seen at Burrashield, Lerness, Dronga and Easter Lowther. The good climate of the earlier Neolithic was starting to deteriorate and higher land occupied before became marginal. House styles remained much the same and did so for at least another thousand years - typically oval in shape, with thick stonewalls, turf and timber roof, a single entrance and alcoves around a central hearth. They had an internal diameter of some five or six metres, and sat low in the ground surrounded by its cultivated land. 1,000
BC was
well into the Bronze Age. The climate had continued to worsen, and a massive
volcanic eruption in Iceland caused an environmental catastrophe about a hundred
years before, which had had a profound effect on the climate for at least twenty
years, causing abandonment of upland settlement right through Scotland. The
settlement at Ferny Cup could have been such a victim with its well-preserved
dwellings, burnt mounds, field system and soil buried beneath bog iron and peat.
Burnt mounds, of which there are 28 dotted around the isle, including the
biggest in Shetland at Setter, indicate the extent of Bronze Age settlement.
Their function is not fully understood, but any use of hot water, made by
putting heated stones in a central trough of water, is possible, e.g. cooking,
tanning, or as a sauna. Life had become much more difficult. People had to be
more resourceful to survive and move to lower coastal sites. The Ferny Cup and
Homisdale have never been populated since. At
the time of Christ, Iron Age society had been established for some five or six
hundred years. For the first time, much larger structures of a defensive nature
were being built, like brochs and promontory forts, which took considerable
organisation and man power. In Fair Isle there is a promontory fort on Landberg
with substantial ramparts. Was this for internal
or external defense, or was it the leaders high status dwelling? Excavation on
Landberg has revealed the domestic setting of a house which had amongst it's
finds: whale bone tools for weaving; distinct Iron Age pottery; and the newly
introduced rotory querns. A short time later evidence of metal-working was found
with a piece of a crucible, clay and stone moulds, and a flue. There
is also an undefended settlement at Kirkigeo, most of it later in time. Right at
the lowest level are the ploughshare marks of it's first agricultural use. The
midden has revealed something of daily diet and equipment: with cow, sheep and
pig bones, some with butchery marks; a lot of fish bones; red deer antler and
bone pin; several finely polished decorated pottery sherds; and pumice used as a
rubbing stone after having floated down from Iceland. 1,000
AD After
a succession of Celtic peoples had worked their way north to inhabit Fair Isle,
people dominated the Northern Isles
and beyond. Place names are the best indication of where the Norsemen lived,
like Busta, Quoy, Shirva, Taft and Leogh - present crofts probably hiding their
earlier beginnings. The style of dwelling radically changed to a rectangular
plan. Some might well have been made out of imported wood. Soapstone was used a
lot, with both a loom-weight and lamp both found at Shirva. It is an easily
carved stone, imported from Shetland since the Bronze Age. Kirkigeo is another
Norse name reflecting the monastic settlement there. In 1015 AD St Olaf had
enquired of the state of Christianity in the Northern Isles `and as far as he
could learn, it was far from being as he could have wished'. What say we now! Most
of our place names are of Norse origin and some reflect what they knew of the
past, incorporating elements meaning cairn, boundary dyke, fortification,
Christian, and domestic settlement. The more I learn about our early neighbours
the more I respect and admire them, especially from the comfort of my warm,
light house, with it's plentiful supply of food. Hopefully when the next
millennium comes someone will still be here, puzzling over who we all were. |
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