Are you ready to be amazed? If you like peering into history,
if you like exploring a single site and peeling back layer after layer
of life through five thousand years or more, laying bare the homes of Neolithic, Bronze Age,
Iron Age, Pictish, Viking and Scots, then this is the video for you
because today we re going to Jarlshof, and you d be crazy not to come
So if you re interested in the people, places and events in Scottish history
then click the subscribe button at the bottom right of the screen.
In the meantime, let me tell you a story. This is Sumburgh Head at the very southern
tip of the Shetland Mainland. In 1814 Sir Walter Scott visited here,
and along the coast at that time, he saw a solitary manor house,
not quite as dilapidated as it is today. It inspired him to write a novel called
The Pirate. Of course,
he needed to call the manor house something and the obvious name was the Earl s Mansion.
Shetland having a uniquely Norse influence thus was coined the name Jarlshof.
A coastal storm around eighty years later showed us that Jarlshof was
so much more than just an Earls house and that s what I m going to show you today
That 1890s storm gave just an inkling of what has since been excavated here at Jarlshof,
so that what we have now is THE most incredible place for anyone interested in history to visit.
When Promote Shetland offered to sponsor me to come to tell you
why you should come to Shetland, I immediately said this place.
The first time I came to Shetland I came
here and I m proper excited to bring you here with me today.
Where I m standing now was a neolithic farmhouse.
We know from pottery found here that people were living in this house and farming here
four and a half thousand years ago... around the time the Great pyramid was built in Egypt.
Sometime before, these people or their ancestors had arrived in the pleasant,
sheltered bay to the west of us. There s fertile land behind you to the
north, on the other side of the wall they built. They ate shellfish from these coastal waters.
Archaeologists tell us that after a while they abandoned this site.
I don t know why. It was around the
time that folk built Stone Henge. They wouldn t have been the first
people to head south for construction jobs, but more probably they left because they had
to eat shellfish Yeuch.
but we know from a hearth, and shell midden remains, that folk came back to this same spot ,
presumably after somebody had invented broon sauce to cover the taste of fish.
Archaeologiests haven t confirmed this, but
Broon sauce in the bag this may have been the era of the world s greatest invention
square sausage. But humans had made another,
less significant, technological step forward. Bronze which led to a new set of structures
here. As the Hittite
Empire was rising in what we call Turkey, they still farmed the fields around here,
but instead of oval shaped, the houses developed to a central
hearth surrounded by a number of buttressed chambers.
Apparently, the floor has been paved several times,
so folk had been living here over a long time with the houses being renovated and re-used.
Archaeological finds here also show how much folks were trading
across the British Isles and Europe beyond. At some point, an entrance was blocked up
and they put in a new doorway at the opposite end of the building.
This was probably around 800 BC, when a bronze smith set up a workshop in the building.
because They found remains of his hearth and moulds for axe heads.
Chisels, crucibles and slag were also found. But it wasn t all bronze.
We also know they were working leather, making soapstone and clay pottery, stone
ploughshares, cleavers, bone chisels and you ll never believe this
eating shellfish.
As Greeks were inaugurating Olympic games and Rome was being founded by Romulus and Remus
here they were still eating shellfish wi broon sauce
Now we ve barely moved geographically, but chronologically we ve come through
more than two thousand years of time. You see in the final centuries BC, not long
after The Parthenon had been built in Athens, the bronze smith disappeared.
But his skills were replaced by new developments in metallurgy.
You know what I m talking about But the Iron Age also brought a
new type of housing as well , and some of it slap bang on top of
these bronze age houses that had gone before. The thick buttresses that had been replaced
by thinner internal supporting walls, leaving more living space.
Iron made for stronger tools and weapons for farming, fighting
and opening shellfish.
Now archaeologists are finding spindle whorls and weaving tools, so presumably
clothes are changing from leather to textile. They have more efficient querns for grinding corn,
and I imagine are more productive in growing techniques.
Maybe they have a little more time on their hands.
As well as sheep and cattle, we know they re keeping pigs, small ponies and dogs.
and They still fished and hunted seals and caught birds for food and oil.
They carved beads and pendants out of soapstone, but still used bone for tools.
Curved whale bone has been found coming out of one of the outer walls,
creating a ring that must have been used to tether livestock.
Tools were becoming more effective, things were becoming more efficient ,
but in some ways life was becoming more dangerous.
They tell me that the site here was once again abandoned.
Did they face outside threat? Were there poor harvests?
We re still in the era that has been conveniently named The Iron Age
but as sand covered the houses here the world outside was clearly changing
and we can see the world changing here at Jarlshof.
If you can imagine when Julius Ceasar was born. As he rampaged through Gaul, then crossed the
English Channel to veni vidi and vici it s Latin you know.
Around the time the Romans crossed to take Britannia seriously or seriously take Britannia.
At the time folks form Orkney travelled south to submit to Roman power.
Around THAT time folks were starting to live in larger groups.
They were starting to build larger buildings. The jury is still out as to whether it was for
protection or prestige, but it was around this time that we start to see brochs
and of course they built one here. Tall, double skinned towers with stairs and
galleries between the two walls. On this trip we ve made a
video of the broch at Mousa. If you want to see just how impressive
a preserved broch looks then watch that video. But the broch didn t stand alone.
There was a walled courtyard, and the wall of the courtyard would have come round to here.
Today, about half of this and its courtyard have been lost to the sea and erosion,
but whilst time and tide have since taken their toll, this must have been an impressive sight,
At some point somebody then built this roundhouse with an outhouse
that sits in the courtyard of the broch house...
childish I know.
There are wheelhouses like this here in the courtyard and on either side of the broch.
If we go inside, we can get a feel for what it would have been like.
Floors were deliberately covered over by clean sand and stones several times,
so folks lived here for generation upon generation.
Your granny, great granny, great great granny, and more besides all living in one place.
Walls were blocked off. New entrances were constructed.
Byres were built, but generation upon generation lived out their lives in this place.
Excavations tell us that there were people living here from the 1st century BC
to the 8th century AD. Through the life and death of Christ,
the rise and fall of Rome, the destruction of Pompeii;
Christians were tolerated, then persecuted, then Christianity became the religion of the empire.
The Pictish hegemony rose, the Saxons crossed the seas St Columba established Iona
and through it all folks lived here eating shellfish
Then AROUND 800 AD came the Vikings.
Folks tend to focus on 795 when Vikings raided Iona,
or down south 793 when they raided Lindisfarne , of course the Vikings were here earlier
and longer and completely took over Shetland. Everything we ve seen so far
has been round, or oval. But by the end of the 9th century
a Norse family had settled here at Jarlshof and built one of their traditional longhouses.
They reckon the original Viking settlement was a farmhouse, a bathhouse,
a smithy, servants quarters and a separate byre. There are remains of seven phases of building
down the centuries and across this Norse farm village.
Houses dating between the 9th and 13th centuries.
When Alba was formed to the south, this was part of the Norse world that
forced Pict and Scot together. When Macbeth defeated Duncan in
battle in Moray, his ally Thorfinn the Mighty of Orkney held sway.
When Alexander III of Scotland fought Haakon IV at the Battle of Largs
the people here would have been on the side of Haakon.
When Alexander III died leaving Scotland kingless and Edward I opportunistically invaded,
the folks here would have looked on with disinterest.
At that very time they were busy building a new house.
They would have been too busy establishing the medieval farm a few yards in this direction.
You see in the late 13th century, as Scotland was going through its turmoil
the descendants of these long past Viking settlers were building a new farm.
No more traditional long houses for them This was a new style of building, reflecting
a new Norwegian architecture. These buildings were dry stone.
But whilst there was no cement, there was an earth core in between the internal and external walls.
A bit like cement and cavity wall insulation all built into one.
As this medieval farmhouse stands above that original neolithic farm
it s funny to think how we ve come full circle round this site.
Now the original prehistoric farm would have lain beneath sand at the time,
and our fourteenth century farmers probably didn t realise how close
they were to the original farmers here. Neither would they be aware of what was to come .
You see in 1469 James III of Scotland married Margaret of Denmark,
daughter of King Christian of Denmark and Norway.
Now daddy Denmark was a wee bit strapped for cash.
So he mortgaged Orkney and Shetland in lieu of a dowry.
Two years later, when none of the cash had been forthcoming
the Scottish parliament annexed the islands. I ll be honest, some folks here are still a bit
upset about it , but trust me... Things were worse back then
At this time of the Scottish takeover Jarlshof belonged to
the estate of Sir David Sinclair of Sumburgh, captain of the palace guard in Bergen, Norway,
as well as chief magistrate of Shetland. Lands in the Northern Isles started
to be given to relatives of the Stewart monarchs and favourites,
who came north and began to introduce changes. The most notorious of those was Earl
Patrick Stewart. His father had been
the illegitimate son of James V, and it was he who built a house
here on the summit of this site. But Patrick himself later built an
even larger house, leaving his dad s creation as the kitchen block.
Now Patrick Stewart was a wrongun. If you re one of those Scots who think
bitterly towards the English because of what some individual English baddie did to your people,
then spare a thought for Shetlanders who look back to what that Scotsman did here
but that s a story for another day. The message for today is come
here and visit Jarlshof. To stand here, on the very spot that
generation upon generation of people have done; as different architecture, cultures, languages and
belief systems grew one on top of the other every one of them part of the human
story that leads to us. You d be crazy not to come.
There s another place you d be crazy not to visit coming up on screen now.
There ll be no shellfish In the meantime