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The Bow and Strings Reign Supreme in the Shetlands
“In fact, one of his (Willie Hunter Jr’s) better-known tunes is the reel “The Cape Breton Visit to Shetland”, which has been covered by everyone from Alisdair Fraser to Natalie MacMaster.”
Just The Facts
Shetland Music
• It’s hard to find a soul among Shetland’s 22,000 people who can’t handle a musical instrument with competence — well, maybe those under 2.
• The revival of Shetland music owes much to Tom Anderson and the Shetland Fiddle Society. Anderson, a traveling insurance salesman, collected many of the old Shetland tunes on his trips.
• Among Shetland’s best-known exports: Fiddler Aly Bain.
Lounge Session
Cape Breton claims the mantle as the fiddle capital of the world. Perhaps it is, but Scotland’s Shetland Islands could give it a good run for the crown. Spend time there and you’ll soon believe that there can’t be more than eleven slackers on the archipelago who’ve not taken up the fiddle.
Every night the bows are flying in a pub somewhere, and the very mention of Shetland fiddling inspires a litany of accomplished players: Aly Bain, Ross Couper, Brian Gear, Maurice Henderson, Trevor Hunter, Catriona MacDonald, Jenna Reid, Margaret Scollay, Steven Spence, Chris Stout, Gemma Wilson…. There are also a plethora of Shetland bands in which fiddles play a big role, such as Drop the Box, Filska, Fullsceilidh, Rock, Salt and Nails, the Shetland Fiddlers Society, and the international sensation Fiddlers’ Bid, the last so beloved that they’re known locally simply as “Da Bid”. This is amazing output when you consider that Shetland has fewer than 22,000 souls spread across fifteen inhabited isles.
 
Tom Anderson display at Shetland Museum and Gue Recreation, Speculative
Equally astounding is the fact that neither Shetlanders nor scholars know exactly how the fiddle became dominant. The Shetland Museum in Lerwick, the capital and largest town of the islands, has a model of a gue that’s said to be a fiddle ancestor but that’s just a guess, as is the very design of the box-shaped bowed lyre that’s on display. Hamish Henderson, a mainstay of both Fiddlers’ Bid and Fullsceilidh, speculates that the fiddle became popular “because Shetlanders went to sea and the fiddle was portable and it was readily available” across the rest of Europe. Scholars mostly agree with him and think the instrument probably gained a toehold through 18th-century Hanseatic traders, though it would be another century before there’s a definitive mention of a fiddle in written records.
However it got to the Shetlands, the fiddle caught on in a big way and unique styles emerged in a hurry. Ask today’s players to define the Shetland style and the first thing they’ll tell you is that there’s no such thing as the style. Henderson notes, for instance, that on the northern isle of Yell players use the upper part of the bow more and favour shorter strokes, but on Unst, one island north, there are heavier accents on each beat. In general, the further north one goes the more “Norse” the music sounds; ringing strings often evoke the feel of a Norwegian Hardanger fiddle. But by the time one gets to the remote Fair Isle in the south, fiddle tunes are often more akin to those in the northeast of the Scottish mainland. On Whalsay to the east, there is more back bowing and use of slurs.
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