11 July 2018:
Lerwick, Shetland Islands, Scotland:
Not Quite the Mainland

By Corey Sandler

We completed our passage eastward from Iceland across the North Atlantic, arriving at Lerwick, the main port of the Shetland Islands.

It is not quite the mainland of Europe, or to be more precise, not the mainland of the United Kingdom. Lerwick is a piece of Scotland roughly 200 kilometers or 123 miles off the north coast of the United Kingdom.

It is roughly equidistant between the Faroe Islands (228 miles or 367 kilometers) to the west, and about 222 miles or 357 kilometers east of Bergen, Norway.

In Shetland, we are as close to the North Pole as parts of Greenland or Alaska.

This place of ancient settlement was very much off the world’s mind until the North Sea Oil Boom of the 1970s when some industry and housing arrived from over the horizon.

Today, oil jobs are still there although on the decline. Now the locals seek to pump pounds from the pockets of tourists.

I went with a group of guests on a tour of the countryside, including a stop at the ancient archaeological site of Jarlshof, which includes prehistoric Mesolithic and Paleolithic structures as well as some of the oldest manors of the Scottish lairds.

Here is some of what we saw:

All photos and text Copyright 2018 by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.

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