Basically as the title suggests, has there been any people/things from Shetland that have been of note in history? Shetland has a massive history spanning thousands of years, yet you never hear of anyone from it, not even any Vikings. Was just curious.
My answer will only cover down to around 1470 (1469/72) when the king of Denmark (together with Norway under the Kalmar Union) transferred Shetland and the Orkney Isles into the hand of the king of Scotland in exchange for some payment.
The first certain turning point for medieval history of Shetland occurred in 1195: King Sverre of Norway (who had grew up himself in the Faroe Islands - see my previous post on: How did the Faroe Islands get into the hands of the Kingdom of Denmark? Is it a colony or constituted as something else?) summoned and confiscated Shetland from the Earl Harald Maddadson of the Orkney due to his alleged involvement with the revolt of eyjarskeggjar (the Island-beard faction) after their defeat, and instead put the islands under the direct rule of the king of Norway. King Sverre appointed the local official (syslemann) to take care of the royal farmsteads as well as judicial process in Shetland (probably based on confiscated possession of the dead rebels as well as the Earl of Orkney). Archdeaconry (deputy of the bishop of Orkney) also seemed to be set up around 1200, but we don't know much about how the archdeacon worked on field in Shetland in the 13th century (Cf. Smith 2003). Instead, several (almost all) of their archdeacons served the king of Norway well (sometimes as a royal chaplain), and were often employed as the diplomatic envoy to England and Scotland.
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There are at least a few local documents (in Old Norse) issued in Shetland around 1300, and we know the royal local official who was mentioned in these documents rather well than the majority of other Norwegian officials about the same time - his name is "Sir (herra)" Thorvald Thoresson "of Shetland" (middle of the 13th century - after 1330).
He first appeared in 1289 as one of the diplomats of King Eirik Magnusson of Norway to King Edward I of England, called the knight (miles) as well as "of Shetland (de Shetland)" (DN XIX-328). At that time, the title (Lord or Sir in modern English, herra in Old Norse) of the knight was the second rank of royal liegemen (hirð in Old Norse), serving aristocracy in medieval Norway. While researchers don't reach an agreement on his exact origin, but if we accept Crawford's claim (Crawford 1992: 73), he was a native Shetlander who played a role of mediator with the title of nobility between the king and the local society.
Helle suggests that these preference of Shetlanders/ officials whose post was in Shetland in the diplomatic business of medieval Norwegian kings might be relevant not only to the location of Shetland itself, but also to their possible cultural/ linguistic knowledge of the British Isles (due to the location, of course) (Helle in Crawford ed. 2002: 47).
The oldest extant local document of 1299 in Shetland tell us the vivid picture of a strife of the island society in which : On Mar 13 (Monday in the Passion week) and 14, 1299, a female called Ragnhildr (Símunardóttir= daughter of certain Símun) came to a stofa (gathering building) (linked to the reconstruction site) in Papa Stour, a small island located west to the main island of Shetland, and accuse Thorvald of cheating a part of the rent payment owed to Duke Håkon Magnusson, who had been a younger brother of King Eirik of Norway and would become a king of Norway himself as Håkon (V) (d. 1319) soon, from farmstead in that island, in front of other local people gathered in the building. Consequently, local people of shetland investigated the case (the detailed payment from the Island), clarified the alleged innocence of Thorvald against the accusation, and submitted it to the duke in written form - The 1299 document itself is a testimony of this quarrel.
The document cites the voice of the alleged whistleblower, Ragnhildr, in vivid second-person dialogue style (The modern English translation is taken from: Crawford ed. 2002: 10-11):
- "You must not be my Judas, though you be the duke's."
- "I did not heed (Lord) Eindriði the frenzied, when he ran from the east out of Norway and never knew welcome, but you all who knew have then betrayed the duke."
We unfortunately knew neither the social origin of this Ragnhild (generally assumed as a tenant farmer?) nor the exact consequence of the accusation. Thorvald apparently succeeded in defending his influential position within Shetland in about 30 years or more, but it is nevertheless worth noting that the local community in Shetland didn't neglect the accusation of otherwise unknown woman, Ragnhildr, against the royal official, Thorvald, and took heed to it at least formally.
Another local document from 1307, issued by the authority of the law assembly of Shetland in Tingwall (DN I-109), narrates the process of unsettled payment of fine to Thorvald (as a local royal official sysleman) again by a certain woman called Mistress (Húsfrú) Bjorg of Cullivoe. She owed 24 marks of fine (it was quite an amount of money, but we don't know what kind of crime she had committed), and couldn't pay it on spot. Thorvald repeatedly gave a choice to her whether she renewed an agreement of due payment to him on behalf of the royal authority or the case should be settled in the local law assembly [of Shetland] - so she finally resorted to the assembly to relieve her property (exactly speaking, the rent from the attached farmstead in question) from attachment that Thorvald had seized. While local assembly (logrettamenn) did not accept her claim fully, they at least advised Thorvald to be more lenient to her: Thorvald had tried only to accept the payment in (good) hard currency, but the assembly told him to accept her payment also in butter (at least for the half of the debt), one of the most common form of rent in medieval Norway (and the Atlantic Isles as well).
Thus, these two legal cases, both Thorvald and a certain local woman involved with, offer an indispensable glimpse of how local society of medieval Shetland worked within the kingdom of Norway (Norwegian Dominion) stretching across the North Atlantic, as well as the legal-social status of woman within it. Even Thorvald, the local representative of the royal authority, at least sometimes had to pay attention to another representative of government, the voice of local community [of farmers] in Shetland and to make a compromise with them.
We can confirm that Thorvald had at least three or four children, two (or more) sons and two daughters, whose last-born was named Herdis. When Thorvald last appeared in the historical document in 1330 (probably in his 70s or even in 80s), he was mentioned as "Lord of Papa [Stour] (dominus de Papey) - researchers suppose that Thorvald somehow got the former royal estates in Papa Stour, Shetland, that he had taken care of. Thorvald's youngest child and daughter Herdis, who married with the Norwegian aristocrat (probably more than once) in Norway, seemed to inherit this property in Shetland. Widowed and without her child, Herdis decided to donate her property in Shetland for the foundation of Cistercian monastery on her bed in 1363 (though her last request never realized, and her cousin succeeded the property) (Øye in Crawford ed. 2002: 89).
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Well, this is "an almost" end of the story of Thorvald Thoresen and three local women (including his daughter, Herdis), probably the most prominent historical figure from medieval Shetland.
Some modern authors (since the late 18th century) have collected the folk tale of certain "Lord Terwil/ Tirvil", a tyrant resided in Papa Stour with many sons and did many thing as he pleased, without taking any heed to laws. Crawford wonders whether this oral tradition is based on the reputation of Thorvald in the local society of Shetland (Crawford 1992: 85f.)
As for the modern re-telling of "Lord Terwil" and brief profile of Thorvald thoresen, you can also find it at the official site of the Viking festival of Shetland (Up Helly Aa): https://www.uphellyaa.org/recent-festivals/2018/saga-of-thorvald-thorvaldsson/
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