This photo shows a garage which has a roof made from and old boat. Old boats which were no longer seaworthy, have been used as shed roofs for centuries. The one in this photo used to be the mail boat for the island of Foula, (Old Norse Fuglaey = bird island) which is the most westerly of the Shetland Islands.
Does it burn with a flame or just embers? (is the word right?) Is there any city around or are all little towns? How many people live in Shetland? It would be nice to have a boat as a shed roof but I guess that it would be a little bit difficult to you send to me a boat here...
Hello Juan, there are different types of peat, but they will all burn with flames and then burn down to a warm red/orange glow from the embers. (Yes, you got the word right). The brown coloured peat was for general everday use, the dark blue to black peat, (it's closer to coal than the brown peat) was mainly used when we wanted to heat the oven, for doing a roast or for baking, it burns hotter; some of it burns so hot that it was used by the local blacksmith in his forge. The peat from the weathered face of the peat bank was used for resting the stove overnight, because it burns very slowly and lasts until the morning, which is very pleasing in the winter. There are about 22000 folk in Shetland, so there are no cities and even Lerwick (our capital) is more of an overgrown village! I'm sure that you could obtain an old boat in your country, Jeff.
Hello Juan, I live in the northwest of the Shetland mainland, in a place called Urafirth. In Old Norse Urrfjord, which I think means sea trout inlet, (perhaps some of the Scandinavian collectors will let me know), but the sea trout still come into this fjord when it's the season, Urr may also be Old Norse for Salmon, they also vist this fjord in season, Jeff.
This photo, which the author/photographer has released to the public domain, shows a natural arch which is called the Dore Holm. The young son of a friend of mine, reckoned that it was a monster having a drink! The link below is for the actual file. Jeff. File:Dore Holm 5829.jpg - Wikipedia
That's a word that must have changed a lot. Going by the sound, it is closest to trout. I would be pretty sure it's not salmon. We need someone from Iceland or who has studied the old norse language for a better idea. What is the large building in the photo with the boat roof? Is that actually a tree half hidden out on the right edge of the building?
Hello Nils, for many years I have thought that Urr meant sea trout, but in Scotland there is the river Urr which is a well known salmon river. Does anyone know of an Icelandic lamp collector? Their winter nights are really long, so lamps would have been well used. The large building was originally built as a home for widows of Shetland fishermen, it was endowed by the late Arthur Anderson. The link below shows information about him. Yes, there are some trees in that part of Lerwick, I shall try to find some photos of trees in Shetland. Jeff. Arthur Anderson (businessman) - Wikipedia
This photo shows a small wood in the Kergord Dale in Shetland. Kergord is the most sheltered dale in Shetland, so this is about as tall as trees ever grow here. There may be a few in Lerwick which are taller, because they are sheltered by buildings, but there won't be much difference. I shall try to photograph the Lerwick trees sometime, we also have many horizontal trees in gardens here, I'm not joking, the poor things grow upright as far as the height of the garden walls and then they grow horizontally, Jeff.
Sea trout is called (havs) "öring" here. In Norway it's "örret". Guess you could find some resemblence with "urr" there. Mind you, spelling is one thing. Pronounced they very well could be more similar.
In Denmark trout is "øred". If it is sea trout it would be "havøred". If "urr" is pronounced in english the way it is spelled, then it has a similar sound to the first two letters of "øred". Allowing for changes over a thousand years there is a possibility of a connection there. Salmon is "laks" in danish, so even allowing for changes I doubt if there is any connection between salmon and "urr". Very nice trees.
Hello Christer & Nils, thanks for the information. This information has reinforced my opinion about the place name Urafirth. The Norwegian Orret is very close to Urr, and it is obvious that all of the words have the same root, Urr is pronounced in the English way. You mentioned Havs and Hav, in Shetlandic the word Haaf is used, the older fishermen spoke about, gaain ta da (going to the) Haaf fishing. There is a Laxfirth in Shetland, perhaps that could be salmon fjord. I posted 2 photos of Olnafirth, firth should be fjord, but Olna is a word which I do not have a tranlasion for, any ideas? It could be a person's name, some Shetland place names are named after a person who lived there, Jeff.
If you have a place called 'Laxfirth', it's most probable that it's from our word 'Laxfjord'. Salmon is called Lax in all nordic countries, just with different spellings. The word 'haaf' or 'hav' is not so strange since it's quite common in many Germanic languages for the word you nowadays call "sea" in English speaking countries. I don't think it's a specific Norse word, but rather an older, and more common, Germanic one.
Hello Christer, thanks for confirming the Lax part, firth is merely a corruption of fjord. Any ideas about Olna? I read somewhere that all of the Germanic languages derive from Gothonic, which was the language of the Goths, but I may have mentioned that before in some of our earlier chats. Haaf in Shetlandic refers to the open sea. In Shetlandic the sky is called Lift and in German it's Luft, I assume that it's something similar in Swedish? Jeff.
Hi Jeff, Intersting language thread after your post of the lovely Shetland images. Language is somewhat strange. In Swedish you can find many connections among the Nordic languages and the ancient Nordic/Gothic, but you also have a lot of words and Grammatik in common with the German and Anglo Saxon languages. Furthermore you have influences of the Latin languages and of Arabic. The word “sky” in Swedish, but with another pronansiacion, is “sky” or “himmel” so here is the Anglo Saxon influence. I think the German word Luft has the same meaning as the Swedish “luft”, which is “air”. There´s air in the sky, but that is not quite the same! /Conny
Hello Conny, you are correct, I should have said that lift is Shetlandic for air rather than the sky, I should remember to be more precise! The Angles and the Saxons were Germanic people, so I'm not surprised that Swedish has connections there, Latin influence is widespread, but Arabic had not occurred to me. I assume that the Arabic connection is from the period when the Moors were in Spain? Jeff.
Actually it's the other way around with that word. It's an old Norse word that has been adopted into the English language. This is particularily common in words that has to do with the sea, ships and navigation, and sky is sort of related since it at that time more was about weather than another word for the heaven above us. (Originally it meant something like cloud or mist.)
You are right Christer. A lot of everyday words (sky etc.) were adopted from Old Norse to Old English, all according to Wikipedia . “While the number of loanwords adopted from the Norse was not as numerous as that of Norman French or Latin, their depth and every day nature make them a substantial and very important part of every day English speech as they are part of the very core of the modern English vocabulary”. The influence from English to Swedish is of more recent date. /Conny
I was speaking with one of my neighbours today and that word Urret or to use the Norwegian spelling Orret, does still survive in this area. There is the Urret burn (Trout stream). Shetland Norn (Old Norse) died out here as an actual language over 200 years ago, but many words still survive and are still in daily use, Jeff.
This photo shows the But End (Kitchen/Living room) of a traditional Shetland croft house. The door to the right of the fireplace would have led to the hay barn and then to the cowshed. This design of building meant that in the winter, the animals could be attended to, without the crofter having to brave the fierce winter weather. Jeff.
Looks like a beautiful place to be if you have the stuff to endure it. It reminds me of the island communities that I visited in the Aleutian Islands when I was working in Alaska. I suspect that you get to know and need your neighbor in that kind of place.
