Odin's Eye Blog

As part of the INS Public Seminar Series Brian Smith from Shetland Archives presented ‘Shetland in the Sagas: Invisible or Hidden?’ on the 31 March at 7pm. On St Magnus Day in 1914 Alfred W. Johnston gave a presidential address to the 22nd annual meeting of the Viking Society. ‘Notices of Shetland in the [Orkneyinga] Saga’, he announced, amongst other gibes, ‘are to all intents and purposes nil.’ Johnston’s contribution had some influence. It is however worth scrutinising Orkneyinga Saga, and other early sources, with care, to try to work out what part Shetland played in the Orkney earldom’s affairs, and after 1195 when separated from it. The key question is, as Johnston’s adversary Storer Clouston put it in 1932: was Shetland ‘a remarkably independent dependency’?