Rock of Icy Waters : Shetland Islands Abound With Wildlife, but Humans Are Scarce

With the population of Papa Stour down to 26, farmer Ted Gray believes the survival of his island community is at risk.

So in May he called a radio station to appeal for settlers, setting off a wave of publicity that carried all the way to Australia.

“Come and look. Come and see the sunshine. Come and see the green fields and the blue sea and you’ll love the place,” he promised. He got more than 400 telephone calls and 500 letters.

“One chap asked if he could work in a bank, and a young lady said the island sounded beautiful but could she find a husband? I had to say there was no bank and a shortage of eligible bachelors,” says Gray, 54, an English immigrant himself.

Gray says he answered every inquiry, but months later Papa Stour is still waiting for its first new settler.

Starfish-shaped Papa Stour, 2 1/2 miles wide by 2 miles long, has the smallest population of the 16 inhabited islands of Shetland, the most northerly part of Britain and home to 22,550 people.

Some 600 miles north of London, Shetland is closer to Bergen, Norway, than to Edinburgh, Scotland, and the weekly Shetland Times prints a regular half-page of Norwegian news.

Occupied by Norsemen by the 9th Century, the islands were annexed to Scotland in 1472.

The Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic drift keep the weather mild. “Last year there wasn’t enough snow to make a snowball,” says dairy farmer Davie Anderson.

And the 100 or so islands of the archipelago--less than a fourth of which are inhabited--are a bird watcher’s Valhalla, teeming with auks, gannets, skuas, shags, guillemots, kittiwakes, fulmars, puffins and razorbills.

The hardy Shetland pony and the Shetland sheepdog originated here.

On the smaller islands, such as Papa Stour, only the humans are scarce.

“There are crofts (small farms) standing empty, and there are only two children at the school, one of them in a family who will be leaving soon,” Gray says. “Several families have gone in the past three years, and when the youngsters leave for higher education they don’t return to take up crofting.”

“One family makes such a difference,” says Audrey Scott, who comes from Lerwick, Shetland’s capital and the only town. Two of her three children are away on Mainland, the largest and most populated island.

“I like the wildness here, and I couldn’t live in a town anymore,” Scott says. “I’m glad to get back from Lerwick. But bairns (children) make a place. I like to hear them and see them running around.”

Her husband, John, 48, is a crofter with 300 sheep who fishes as a hobby. He has never lived anywhere else.

“I see the outside world on TV, and it doesn’t appeal to me at all,” Scott says.

Gray, a former maintenance engineer on the London subway, became a farmer in Cornwall in southwest England. He brought his family to Papa Stour eight years ago “to get more land to give us a living, and we have no regrets.”

“It’s a beautiful place with peace and tranquillity. You can talk to people if you want or not, and you can earn a living, although you have to work hard.”

Gray’s farmhouse has a view of the sea, piped water, a flush toilet, telephone and television.

Papa Stour’s oldest inhabitant is Gray’s mother, Maisie, 89, who has just been flown back from Lerwick after hospital treatment for a viral infection caught from a visitor, her son says.

“We don’t get colds or flu unless strangers bring them in,” Gray says.

Like many Shetlanders, Gray has several jobs. He has more than 200 sheep, 15 cows and a bull, pigs and poultry. He’s the telephone engineer and postman. His house doubles as the post office, and he rents out a holiday cottage.

Scott believes the community will survive, but adds, “When numbers drop lower than now, social conditions are intolerable. We need more ferry services. But I don’t foresee a St. Kilda situation”--a reference to the Hebridean island whose 35 people were evacuated at their own request in 1930 because of their isolation and deprivation.

Immigration in the Shetlands comes in ones and twos.

Janis Cutler, a 30-year-old artist from Brooklyn, N.Y., boosted the population of another small island, Foula, to 39 when she married an islander.

In May, Foula recorded its third crime in the 20th Century when a visitor got drunk on homemade beer and hit a local man on the head. He was jailed on Shetland.

Cutler says she loves Foula but feels its isolation keenly. “There’s nothing out there until you get to America,” she says, pointing west from her home.

The population of Shetland ebbs and flows. In the 19th Century, Papa Stour supported 350 people on crofting, fishing and knitting the loose, finely twisted wool of the special breed of Shetland sheep.

Shetland has 22,550 people today. There were 21,100 in 1931 and 17,300 in 1971.

The North Sea oil and gas boom brought in thousands of workers. At Sullom Voe, Shetland has Europe’s largest oil terminal and Britain’s most valuable port.

Prosperity has meant money to build homes, swimming pools, sports and leisure amenities and to finance ferries, air links, schools and other services. Forty thousand visitors a year spend $24 million, half of it on transport because Shetland isn’t a cheap place to get to.