Unkans Issue 22
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Unkans FREE The newsletter of the Shetland Museum and Archives September 2010 and the Shetland heritage community Issue 22 Knitting past, present and future Shetland Museum and the University of Norway through how it is portrayed in delegates from afar purchased Shetland Southampton collaborated to bring the Norwegian art forms. Other papers textile goods. Due to the success of the second In the Loop 2 conference on addressed subjects as diverse as conference, there will be discussions knitting to Shetland at the beginning of knitting in wartime New Zealand, to about further textile-related events to be September. The conference was fully product development with villagers in held in Shetland. It is hoped the booked, with 122 delegates from 10 the Himalayas. Eight of the 22 papers conference papers will be published, as countries travelling to Shetland to were presented by Shetland residents. they were for the first In the Loop discuss knitting traditions and its future There was discussion about knitting conference held in 2008. Museum over the 5 days. Keynote speakers were: in Shetland, including the loss of knitting curator Carol Christiansen and her Susan Crawford, author and knitwear tuition in the schools and the amount of colleague Linda Newington at the designer, who discussed the idea of pay knitters receive within the local University of Southampton are hoping to nostalgia and how it is used in her work industry. Local businesses reported a present In the Loop 3 in 2012, probably on vintage knitting design; Deirdre boost in sales over the week, as at Southampton. Nelson, artist, who showed her various projects with communities, using knitting to bring people together and raise money for charities; and Annemor Sundbø, author and historian, who discussed the research for her latest book, charting the history of knitting in Andrea Wong demonstrates a Portuguese Susan Crawford, Carol Christiansen, Annemor Sundbø, Deirdre Nelson and Linda method of knitting. Newington. Winter Opening Hours What’s On Guide Museum Materials’. Touring exhibition by Historic Scotland. Monday-Friday 10am-4pm; September Da Gadderie. 1st August – January 2011: Display, Saturday 10am-5pm; cannon from the El Gran Grifon, Spanish Armada ship wrecked 21st October, and 22nd Mootie Moose– ‘Creepy Sunday 12pm-5pm off Fair Isle in 1588. Foyer. Castles’ . Pre-school craft, storytelling and music. 24th August – 3rd October: Photographic The second in our Autumn series. 10.30-11.30am Archives or 2.00-3.00pm, £6 for three sessions, booking exhibition, to accompany the In The Loop 2 : Monday-Friday essential. Limited places. 10am-4pm; Tradition and Innovation conference. Four other Saturday 10am-1pm; Sunday closed focus displays around the museum highlight knitting. 29th: Talk ‘The Growth of Royal Power in Hay’s Dock Café Restaurant Scandinavia 800-1200 AD’, by Dr Frode Iversen, Monday-Thursday 4th September – 10th October: Exhibition, director of the Department of Archaeology at the Daytime 10.30am- Islesburgh Photographic Club. Focusing on Museum of Cultural History in Oslo. Part of the 3.30pm; Saturday 10.30am-4.30pm; Shetland subjects, this photographic exhibition Nordic Seminar. Free, no booking required. Sunday 12-4.30pm; Evenings Friday- shows the broad interests of the amateur Auditorium 7.30pm (doors open at 7pm). enthusiasts. Da Gadderie. Saturday 7-9pm All events are held at the Shetland Museum and October Archives and are free, unless otherwise stated. Please phone 01595 741569 16th October – 22nd November, Exhibition, To book call 01595 695057. No booking is to book a table. ‘Building Scotland: Scotland’s Traditional Building necessary for drop-in events. 2 Unkans Gaming piece found by young archaeologist Ten year old James Cockerill was exploring the ruins of Eastshore broch near the Ness Boating Club when he found a round, flat stone with markings on it. The stone is very similar to Iron Age gaming pieces we have on display in the Early Peoples section of the galleries. James has donated the artefact to Shetland Museum. However, according to Scottish law, the find must be brought before the Treasure Trove panel in Edinburgh, who will assess its importance and value. The stone has been sent south, along with Shetland Museum’s bid to retain it for our collections. Gaming piece found at eroding broch. James Cockerill with gaming piece. Victorian Vikingism and Burra place saga translators names night Burra History Group will hold the The E. S. Reid Tait memorial lecture in Edinburgh for a stormy decade from first of a series of Place Names Open will be given by Prof Andrew Wawn in 1826. Nights, on Friday 1st October at 7pm, November. Andrew Wawn is emeritus professor at Easthouse, Papil, Burra. The In his lecture Prof Wawn will of Anglo-Icelandic Literature at the isles off Burra, Oxna, Papa, Hildasay, discuss two Victorian scholars, both of University of Leeds. Cheynies, South Havera, etc. will be whom came close to translating the covered on the first night. Large Each year the Shetland Museum Orkneyinga Saga but were beaten to scale maps and aerial photos of the and Archives hosts a lecture in publication by Shetlander Gilbert areas will be available, with other memory of a Shetland scholar or Goudie. The main focus of the lecture areas of Burra to be covered on later antiquary. Edwyn Seymour Reid Tait will be Rev. Sabine Baring Gould dates. The group are concentrating was a Lerwick draper who collected (1834-1924), who Andrew describes as on a place names project this winter, records and artefacts in his spare time. ‘an influential folklorist and Victorian with a view to publishing a map and Shortly before his death Tait donated Britain's greatest and least-known history of the place names of Burra. his impressive collections to the Icelandic scholar’. He was a parish If you have knowledge of, or an council and they are now housed in the minister in Dartmoor who was interest in, the place names of the Shetland Museum and Archives. fascinated by the old north and isles, please come along. Tea and intrigued by pagan magic and mystery. homebakes will be served, all Andrew will also speak about The lecture is on Thursday 4th welcome; phone Adalene on 859 623 Icelandic philologist Þorleifur Repp November and tickets will be available or Sylvia on 859 209, or email: (1794-1857), who was a friend of Sir nearer the time. Please contact us for [email protected] for Walter Scott, and Advocates' Librarian more information. more information. Unkans 3 Plethora of new Like migrating birds… One of the signs that summer has arrived is the return of our student helpers – home from university to work in the archives donated museum over a ten-week period. This year saw the return of Jake Watt and Helen Whitham, along with Cairi Jennings over summer who joins the team for the first time. This year Helen and The Shetland Archives is crammed with items that kind people have donated. As the years pass, we get more and more of them and this summer we have acquired dozens of items. We have received 31 documents by the military authorities addressed to the warder of the jail in Lerwick, about the post office employees who were imprisoned there in 1914. It is remarkable that papers are still coming to light about that famous event, dealt with by Margaret Flaws last year in her book Spy Fever. The same donation contained a 177-page transcript of evidence in a dispute of 1914 between a local fishcurer and a herring merchant in Germany. This book-length document throws light on Shetland’s booming fishing industry before the First World War. There are other gems. One generous donor has given us two scrapbooks kept by the author J.J. Haldane Burgess in the 1890s, and a mass of miscellaneous printed material from the 19th and 20th centuries, some of it rare. One of the books that he donated was a copy of Ivar Aasen’s Norwegian dialect dictionary of 1850, inscribed by its original owner, the Cairi Jennings and Helen Whitham. saga-scholar Gudbrand Vigfusson. It also contains pencil notes by a later owner, the Shetland scholar W.W. Ratter. Cairi reorganised the museum’s art store, which is home to Yet another deposit of papers contained some important an extensive fine art collection. They spent the summer early material. A document fragment from the early 1640s cataloguing, repacking and finding suitable storage space for contains valuable new material about the Sinclairs of new pieces received into the collection since 2007. Jake Quendale, and the problems that the head of the family had spent the summer in our boat sheds where he organised storage facilities and worked on boats. Three boats were in providing for his sons. We hope the other half of it turns up taken out of storage for the first time in many years, and later! There is also a letter by the factor for James Mouat at Jake began the painstaking job of scraping and painting so Stenness, dated 1721, with a list of all the men that had been the boats can be put in the water at Hay’s Dock. The work fishing there for Mouat during the summer. they achieved during their short stay is amazing and the And there’s a 13-page letter by the inveterate museum seems much quieter without them! We look controversialist Dr Arthur Edmondston, from 1832, addressed forward to their return again next summer. to the inhabitants of Lerwick, about attempts by the government 'to get possession by fair or foul means, of the barracks of Fort Charlotte, to be used as a hospital for the reception of patients that might be seized with cholera'.