A Shetland blog thing

UKIP Shetland are looking at Shetland independence.

Its a funny one. Faroe has very close links with Denmark, but effectively runs itself. But Faroe has a population that is double Shetland's, and I'm not sure that it has had the same volume if 'incomers' that we have had due to oil. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing - the vast majority of people that I have met that have moved up in recent years are tremendous people that moved here because of a love of Shetland - its birdlife or its freedom or the chance to get away from the rat race. Some Shetland people feel that there are a lot of people coming here for 'the good life', because housing is cheaper than down the road and we have excellent services here. I have to admit to never having met them, and I'm not entirely sure they exist, or if they do, chances are they won't last.

You see, Shetland is a very peculiar place. It has incredibly strong winds, bitterly cold winds that combine with precipitation to create horizontal rain (yes, really). We have a limited high street - we have a boots, a somerfield and a co-op - but no M&S or Debenhams. Its not an easy place to live in many ways. We can get stranded here for days with weather, which also means that there may be no fresh food supplies coming from the mainland of Britain - or we might get snowed in for a week which is easy if you can walk to the local shop, or (like people that know the place) have enough food/baby milk/nappoes/medicine to see a week through - but sometimes people newly up from South sometimes don't appreciate the problems that the remoteness combined with the weather can cause.

Anyway, my point was - Shetland has also appealed to people that want to drop out of society, and get away from 'it all' (whatever 'it all' is, as we seem to have everything we need - well, maybe apart from an ice rink and bowling alley - and I'm not sure that we would have the amount of forward thinking, go ahead kind of people that would be needed to get independence for Shetland off the ground.

And would it be a good thing if we did....?

Shetland has its own dialect. Shetland, once upon a time, was part of Scandinavia, and was gifted to the UK in lieu of a dowry. As I understand it, we were supposed to be swapped for cash once Denmark could afford it (but I could be wrong) - it was hundreds of years ago and my memory isn't all that great....

So our dialect is partly derived from Norn, and it's partly Scottish. I am no expert - it may have other roots as well. One of the most common Shetland words you will hear if you come here is peerie - meaning small.

Shetland's dialect has funny idiosyncracies (is that spelled correctly) though -

We have two things we might say - one is 'I doot dat', the other ' I hae me doots aboot dat'. Literally ' I doubt that' and 'I have my doubts about that'. Same thing? Nope, completely opposite - 'I doot dat' is said if you agree with something someone says, while 'I hae me doots aboot dat' is if you think the information is probably wrong or false.

We also have our own past tense. Instead of saying 'it fitted well' - we would say 'it fat fine'. (well - sit, sat, fit, fat - it makes some kind of sense...) When I was young, these things were so part of how we spoke that it was really difficult to understand why they got marked down when you did english at school!

In fact when I was at primary school we were not supposed to speak in Shetland dialect at all - thankfully things have changed and it is enjoying a bit of a resurgence at the moment.

Shetland is the second-safest place in the UK, second only to Orkney, our slightly southward neighbours.

Its one of probably fairly few places left where you can let your children outside to play without having to feel you need to keep an ever-watchful eye over them - as such, our kids are generally active and healthy and thats a huge bonus in these days of mass advertsing of what is basically junk food for kids - full of sugar and fat and refined carbs. Don't get me wrong - our kids also love the Playstation/Gamecube/X-box, and will sit happily with their controllers welded firmly in their grasp for ages at a time - but as soon as the sun parts the clouds and the wind dies down the kids are out there on their roller blades or bikes. We know all the neighbours, and also know that should anything happen (I pray not) then we would find out quickly and they would be taken best care of in the meantime.

Its a great life for kids.