Root and branch – the story of Shetland’s trees

The early Viking settlers who came across the sea, many centuries ago, to sink roots into Shetland would all have been familiar with Yggdrasil, a sacred tree that stood sturdily at the heart of Norse mythology. Yggdrasil was an immense ash tree that grew at the heart of the Norse cosmos, with branches that extended into the very heavens. It was the meeting place of their gods, and the pivot around which the worlds, visible and invisible to man, were anchored. Trees, apart from their practical significance to a people whose culture came to revolve around the longboats that carried them to new lands to raid, settle, and trade, really mattered to the Vikings.

Shetland, when those first settlers set foot upon our shores, would have been many things. A new home, certainly, with space for families to grow and communities to be established. There was reasonably fertile land, girdled by productive seas, and a climate that, if never one they could have called clement, was certainly not as harsh as some parts of northern Scandinavia. Shetland, once the resident Picts had been displaced, had a lot going for it.

What it would not have had, however, were many trees. Those Picts, who had quietly lived here for many centuries beforehand, would have already seen to that. Some 5,000 years ago, Shetland would have looked very different to how it does now and, indeed, probably looked to those Vikings as they hauled their boats ashore and waded through the surf to a new life. Then, as now, there would have been small fields near to the shore on which livestock could graze and crops could be grown. But thousands of years ago, before the point at which mankind first set foot here, Shetland would have been blanketed with low trees and scrub.

The Picts, or their ancestors, settled upon Shetland with livestock, and between them set about clearing the land, either deliberately or simply through centuries of grazing. We know, from the pollen that archaeologists have analysed from the deep layers of peat that blanket much of the islands, that once upon a time alder, birch, hazel and willow all grew here. Sometimes gnarled wood emerges from the peat too – mute, dark-stained reminders of trees long gone.

As Shetland’s population swelled over the centuries, the pressures that had cleared the islands of trees ensured they didn’t naturally return. By the late 20^th century just two native hazel trees were known to have endured – one on an isolated island holm in the North Mainland, and the other in a sheer ravine in the Central Mainland. One of those has subsequently perished… Shetland, still home to many sheep, now with rabbits at large too, and with a damp, cool, and salty climate, isn’t an easy place to be a tree.

The lack of them is almost a Shetland byword now. Visitors, arriving here for the first time, often remark upon their evident absence. By the time they leave, though, most know better. Times are changing here in the islands and, with a little help from Shetland folk, trees are beginning to flourish once more.

There are a few established, small stands of woodland in the isles. The plantations at Kergord are the best known, boasting substantial trees over a century old, with mossy trunks and lichen-smothered branches. In the spring, carpets of lesser celandines and bluebells make these copses feel even more otherworldly in the surrounding landscape. But there are further small patches of mature trees scattered around the isles. Visitors to Unst in summer, for example, can’t fail to notice the dark green dome of trees that marks the enclosed woodland at Halligarth.

Many of these mature woodlands were planted by wealthy landowners, back in the day. Society has changed a lot in the islands since then. Many gardens have now been planted with trees at their margins, providing shelter within from the wind. Arrive in Lerwick by boat and the town reveals itself to be almost a woodland in itself – the gardens of many of the old houses that line the lanes leading up from the shore and the shop-lined, meandering Commercial Street now have sycamores rising from within their walled limits. Later in the year, their seeds windmill down in the first autumn gales. I gather them by the pocketful, taking them home to germinate and, in time, plant out in my own garden.

My garden trees took a while to get going. There’s no escaping the fact that Shetland’s a windy place and the growing season, while the days of summer are famously long, is a short one this far in the cool and damp north. It’s a tough place for a young tree to start out in life. But in time, those first trees I planted when I arrived in the isles sank their roots deep, caught their breath, and flourished. While I watched them impatiently in the first few years, wondering if they would ever come to anything, I just needed to give them a chance. Suddenly, as if they had taken a while to make their minds up about their new home, they flourished and grew strongly.

I experimented a little, trying hawthorns, sea buckthorn, horse and sweet chestnuts, and even oaks, with varying degrees of success. I still cherish the doomed to be forever bonsai oaks, but have learned to value the native species that are happiest here. Shetland Amenity Trust have a woodland unit that propagates native species, and it’s their lead that I largely follow now. They were justly proud when, in 2019, a hazel tree that had been propagated as a clone from one of those former two remaining trees produced a hazelnut. How many years had it been since a Shetland hazel tree proved fruitful? Nobody could be sure.

Those trees, mine and those of so many other homes throughout the islands, are a welcome sight and proof were any needed that first impressions shouldn’t always be trusted. It may be centuries, if ever, before Shetland looks anything like it did 5,000 years ago. But in the meantime, a mosaic of trees are springing up around our homes. They provide shelter and food for migrant birds, and shelter and succour for us too. There’s new life flourishing in Shetland.