Medieval Scalloway

Scalloway, on the west side of Shetland’s Mainland about 10 km from Lerwick, was the islands’ capital until Lerwick overtook it in the 17th century. Its name is Norse — Skálavágr, the bay of the halls — and the Norse law-court of Shetland, the Lawting, met a few kilometres north at Tingwall on a holm in the loch, from the settlement of the islands by Norwegians in the 9th century until well after Shetland was pledged to Scotland in 1469 as part of the dowry of Margaret of Denmark. The medieval Shetland of the sagas is a Norse one, and no medieval building stands in the village.

What does stand is Scalloway Castle, the tower house built in 1600 by Patrick Stewart, Earl of Orkney, with forced labour and abandoned after his execution in 1615; it is roofless, in the care of Historic Environment Scotland and free to enter. The Scalloway Museum beside it tells the Norse and medieval story of the district and that of the ‘Shetland Bus’, the Norwegian resistance boats that ran from this harbour in 1942–45. The fire festival on the second Friday of January is the first of Shetland’s Viking-themed winter festivals, three weeks before Lerwick’s Up Helly Aa.