The Norse influence on Shetland fiddling: an introduction

Shetland was Norse for longer than it has been Scottish. The islands were pledged to Scotland in 1469, and the Norn language survived into the 1800s — so it should be no surprise that the fiddle tradition, which took root in the 1700s, grew in soil that was as much Scandinavian as Scots.

You hear it first in the tune names: Da Full Rigged Ship, Willafjord, Aandowin at da Bow. Then you hear it in the tunes themselves. The old listening tunes from Papa Stour and the West Side share DNA with Norwegian slåtter — insistent rhythmic figures, drone strings, melodies that circle rather than march the way a Scots march does.

The clearest survivals are the trowie tunes — melodies said to have been overheard from the trows, the hill-folk of Shetland lore. Winyadepla and the Trowie Burn tunes have a modal, otherworldly character you won't find in the Lowland repertoire. Whether you believe the trows had a hand in them, they are plainly older and stranger than most of what surrounds them in the books.

There's also the matter of ringing strings. The Hardanger fiddle of western Norway carries sympathetic strings under the fingerboard; Shetland fiddlers, playing plain fiddles, got the same shimmer by retuning — AEAE and ADAE scordatura turn the whole instrument into a drone. Tom Anderson collected tunes that only make sense in these tunings.

None of this is a museum piece. When you sit in a Lerwick session and the reels swing with that particular lift — more Bergen than Perthshire — you're hearing five centuries of the North Sea being a road, not a wall. Come on a Tuesday and we'll show you what we mean.