Secessionist sentiment grows in Shetland

Neither Scottish nor British, islanders say

Stuart Hill stands on a jetty at Lerwick on Scotland’s Shetland Islands, which he says can become the epicenter of the “breakup of monolithic states.”
Stuart Hill stands on a jetty at Lerwick on Scotland’s Shetland Islands, which he says can become the epicenter of the “breakup of monolithic states.”

SANDNESS, Shetland Islands -- With gray clouds building and rain slanting in over the Atlantic, Stuart Hill pointed to a small lump of land inhabited by an otter, a few seals and a variety of seabirds.

photo

A map showing the location of the Shetland Islands.

To the rest of the world, this barren, inhospitable and largely inaccessible rock off the coastline of the Shetland Islands is a part of Scotland, on the northernmost tip of Britain. To Hill, it is the sovereign state of Forvik, whose independence he proclaimed in 2008, arguing that it -- along with the oil-rich Shetland Islands themselves -- is legally neither part of Scotland nor Britain.

The authorities do not agree. The police have confiscated three vehicles from Hill after he drove in Shetland with Forvik license plates he designed, and he has spent 28 days in prison (including a brief hunger strike) for challenging the authority of the courts.

Yet, while many Shetlanders regard Hill as an eccentric, a growing number are being drawn to calls for more independence for their remote and scenic isles.

On this beautiful windswept archipelago, closer to Norway than to mainland Scotland, Wir Shetland, a group that promotes "self-government," counts about 400 members and claims the support of four times that many.

Even though Gary Robinson, leader of the Shetland Islands Council, opposes independence, he favors more autonomy. To that end, he is pursuing links beyond Edinburgh and London, through the Nordic Council, which includes Denmark and Norway, as well as the Faroe and Aland Islands. Robinson is also working with neighboring Orkney, whose council recently produced a report on self-determination.

Unleashed by Britain's planned withdrawal from the European Union, the debate underscores the forces of fragmentation threatening to turn the United Kingdom into a contradiction in terms.

The domino effects of the vote have been felt clearly in Scotland, where there is new pressure for Scottish independence, and in Northern Ireland, where there are calls for a vote on joining Ireland. But now the ripples are reaching Shetland, which has a population of 23,000, but a distinct identity.

In 2014, Shetland voted against independence for Scotland by 63.7 percent to 36.2 percent in a referendum that rejected separation.

But last year's referendum on leaving the European Union, in which a majority of Scots voted to remain, brought closer another plebiscite on Scottish independence, leaving Shetlanders wondering whether they might be better off controlling their own affairs -- and the lucrative energy reserves and fishing stocks in the seas around them.

Unique culture

Shaped by their Viking, rather than Celtic, roots, the Shetlands have a unique culture. Small Shetland ponies are a frequent sight in much of its panoramic landscape, and the red-and-blue houses of parts of its capital, Lerwick, look more Nordic than British.

Hill, who is from England, would argue that that is because the Shetlands aren't Scottish at all. The islands were pawned to King James III of Scotland in 1469 by Christian I of Denmark and Norway in exchange for a wedding dowry for his daughter.

To this day, however, historians struggle to identify a point at which they became, legally, Scottish. Hence, Hill's case that the Shetlands belong neither to Scotland nor to Britain.

To critics, discussion of independence for a tiny clutch of islands, while far-fetched, underscores the growing risk of the Balkanization of Britain in the wake of the vote to leave the EU.

"We live in a globalized world. This is the time to be rubbing out lines on the map, not drawing new ones," said the local member of the British Parliament, Alistair Carmichael. He concedes, however, that Shetland's relationship with power centers can be strained.

"We have a history of having to push water uphill against Edinburgh," he said. "From London, you get benign neglect, but you get patronized from Edinburgh."

Inspecting boxes of haddock and cod at Lerwick's busy wholesale fish market, Gary Smith, skipper of a trawler, agrees.

"I would never say to anybody I am Scottish -- never," he said.

Specific concerns

Shetland has its specific concerns, such as ferry services and the sustainability of rural schools, Smith said against the backdrop of a harbor where seals regularly bob to the surface.

The way people behave is different, too, and generally rather nicer, he added. "They tolerate more; they are not so volatile," he said. On Shetland, people cannot avoid one another for long, he said, so before starting an argument that might escalate into a bitter personal feud, you think "Why make life difficult for yourself?"

Yet, collectively, Shetlanders are becoming more argumentative. Given the oil beneath the seabed and the seafood in nearby waters, there is seething resentment that public spending has been reduced.

"There's a feeling in Shetland that everybody is working and we are paying into the pot, and we are getting shortchanged," Smith said. He thinks Hill has a good historical case but jokes that he is "probably about 400 years too late with his argument."

The Shetland Islands Council has a reserve fund, financed by the oil industry, currently worth a hefty $375 million -- more than $16,000 for every inhabitant -- but there are worries that it is being drained by funding cuts from Edinburgh.

At the St. Magnus Bay Hotel that she runs in scenic Hillswick, Andrea Manson, a councilor and Wir Shetland supporter, argues that, had the islands won independence decades ago, "we would have been rich on the same sort of scale as Norway, with millions of pounds in the bank for each person. We would be treated with more respect."

The dining room is decorated with Viking shields, and Manson, too, insists that Shetlanders "don't think of ourselves as Scottish," adding, with a laugh, that the islands are "too windy for kilts."

The authorities in Edinburgh calculate that "year on year, they can cut the grant and somehow we will manage to find the money," she said.

"Maybe what they weren't expecting was for Wir Shetland to say, 'Enough is enough,'" she said, claiming growing support for independence or at least the status of a British overseas territory, like the Falkland Islands.

At Lerwick Town Hall, Robinson, the council leader, argues that funding cuts flow from Scotland's local government formula rather than political decisions, but he thinks the effects are unfair.

The grant has been reduced since 2010 by 23 percent, he said, prompting the loss of 600 of 2,900 council staff members.

Robinson says laws made in Edinburgh or Westminster often fail to fit a rural area and that the vote to leave the EU and Scotland's independence debate provide a "political opportunity" to get more powers for Shetland.

As to Hill, Robinson thinks there "probably is a doubt as to the constitutional status of Shetland," but added that Hill's "antics over time have grown to irritate people."

Now 74, Hill arrived in 2001 after being shipwrecked off Shetland on an ill-fated trip around Britain in a 15-foot boat -- a voyage that he says prompted nine lifeboat call-outs and one helicopter rescue mission, winning him the nickname "Captain Calamity."

So difficult to reach is Forvik, which Hill says means island of the bay of sheep, that he visits only about twice a year, though a shelter he built there in 2008 is still standing. A fount of self-taught legal and historical knowledge, Hill describes himself as Forvik's acting first minister.

With plans to create a Forvik passport and another attempt to test the authority of Shetland's court -- this time over planning permission -- Hill says he thinks he can make the Shetland Islands the epicenter of the "breakup of monolithic states."

Manson, the hotel keeper, thinks that future generations will erect statues to Hill, though, right now, even he accepts that he divides opinion.

"There are a lot of people who support what I do, because they know that my heart is in Shetland," he said, before acknowledging, "There is the other side that think that I'm just a complete nutter, and that I should go away and mind my own business."

SundayMonday on 04/23/2017

Upcoming Events