From the National Geographic Explorer in the Arctic, 7/29/2012, National Geographic Explorer

Shetland Islands

Today we visited the second of our countries on this voyage to the Heart of the Arctic. We visited the British Isles, but, if you ask the locals of the Shetland Islands, which they simply call Shetland, their connection with Britain is only recent and does not represent the true nature of the place. Shetlanders consider themselves much more closely tied to Scandinavia that to Britain or Scotland. Their language is called Norn and is a version of old Norse. Although the last Norn speaker has now passed on, the language remains in most of the place names of the islands and certainly in their collective memory. Even their flag, which carries the light blue and white colors of the Scottish flag, displays them in the slightly off-center cross of all the Scandinavian flags.

We made our first stop in Shetland at the isle of Noss where we had opportunities for walks on the rolling hillsides of the island and up to the towering bird cliffs on its east side. The great skuas, or “bonxies” as they are known in Shetland, nest on the flat grassy areas of the island, but on the bird cliffs, thousands of northern gannets and guillemots nest on narrow ledges formed by the Old Red Sandstone. As the gannets fly to and from the bird cliffs to feed their chicks, they are regularly attacked by skuas who sometimes drive them right down to the water in their effort to make them disgorge their crop full of fish. We also encountered many puffins carrying sand eels back to their chicks waiting in the burrows dug by the adults in the hillside. On the rocks near the shore were hundreds of fledgling gannets waiting to fly off to sea to make their way on their own. They have been abandoned by their parents at this stage and must figure out how to fish and migrate south with no parental advice or example.

In the afternoon we tied up alongside in Lerwick, the capital of Shetland and had time to visit the town and enjoy its shops and tea houses. We stayed in Lerwick through the night so some of our shipmates sampled the nightlife of the town as well.