The great benefits of being a stay-at-home mum

Before we moved to Scotland we decided I would stay at home this year to ease the transition to a new life in an English-speaking country. This turned out to be a great arrangement for all of us.

Getting the family settled in

In the first months I spent a lot of time getting us organised in a new community and a new country - I was amazed at how much time I spent on these activities.

However, after the first week at school, I was told that I no longer needed to stay at school with my youngest son. In fact, it would be better for my son and the other children if I did not tag along any more, as this would improve interaction between the children. Hint taken.

Indulging in my hobbies

I continued to spend a lot of time helping the boys with their English and follow-up on school-work, but as one thing after the other was sorted, I had more time to indulge in hobbies.

I soon got into a routine where I started most mornings by walking the boys to school, jogging for 30-45 minutes and then doing 30 minutes of strength training at Curves. Even though exercising was my main hobby, I also did some volunteer work at school, took piano lessons and joined a couple of drawing classes.

I also went to the library a lot and ended up reading around 60 books during our stay in Scotland. This included audio books that I listened to while I was on the go or doing other things. In addition to these books I also read a lot of books with the children and we also listened to many audio books with them. Among our favourite books were Scottish history books for children and we learned a lot of Scottish history during our stay in Scotland.

Great benefits for the whole family

Among the benefits of me being a stay-at-home mum was that:

• We hardly ever had to go shopping or run errands on the weekends or evenings - this was taken care of by me during daytime
• I would walk the children to school and pick them up after school, help them settle in, follow up on homework, take them to the doctor or dentist as needed, stay at home with them if they were ill etc.
• The weekends and evenings were mostly free of house work. We sometimes did some housework together because it's not something I'm very fond of and I felt the pain should be shared, at least a little
• I planned our trips around Scotland during the day, so Friday after my husband finished work we could all set off for a new adventure where everything had been planned in advance
• I could spend hours socialising with my new friends during the day, so most evenings I was with my family
  
• I exercised more than I normally do, which meant I became stronger, fitter and happier
• I indulged in my hobbies during the day, so as soon as the children were home from school I was available for them
• I did management training and a project management certification course without it interfering with ongoing projects at work
• No stress at work meant I was more patient with my family and my overall mood was better. I also slept much more than I normally do, which also was a positive contribution to my mood. 

Back to working full time

Tomorrow it's back to sleep deprivation, yelling at the kids because I'm tired and stressed out from work (and then feeling lousy for doing it), and general frustration over having too little time to do all the things I want to do.

I know that somehow we will all get through it all, I will go back to a job I love and the kids will still grow up to be good human beings, despite their imperfect mum. And we will all have our memories of a year with much less stress than usual.

The benefits of renting a car

Before we moved to Scotland, we decided to get a rental car instead of buying a car or bringing our own from Norway. We wanted a Volkswagen Passat, but the car rental company could only guarantee that we would get a 'Station wagon', or a 'People carrier' as its called over here. I found this very strange at the time, but I soon understood why.

Our first car was a black Peugeot, but after a couple of  months we were told to take the car back to the car rental company and have it replaced with a new car.  This process was repeated every two to three months while we lived in Scotland. While we lived here we had two different Volkswagen Passat, two Peugeot 508 and a Hyundai Blue Drive.

I especially liked the Hyundai. When we were sitting in traffic or waiting at the lights it automatically stopped the engine, but instantly restarted it when the clutch was pressed. It was really smooth and I also liked it because it's good for the environment.  Another thing I liked about it was the really nice blue colour, which made it easy to spot in the car parks.


The main benefits of having a new car every couple of months were:

• We got to try different brands/models
  We're not very interested in cars and know very little about them. The car we have in Norway is the second one we've ever owned, though my husband did have an old car before he met me. This means we have very few cars to compare with, so we don't really know much about which cars are good and which cars are not. So far we've asked around and read a bit to try to find cars that best suit our needs. My ideal car is a car that is always reliable, has a decent acceleration and speed and that we 'never' have to take to the garage to get fixed. 
• We hardly ever had to clean the car
  By the time the kids had started making a mess in the back seat and it was starting to get a bit dirty, it was time for a new car. This meant I didn't have to hoover the car or clean it inside - perfect!
  Come to think of it, I never cleaned the exterior of any of our rental cars either.

We've really enjoyed having all those different rental cars, but in a few days we go back to Norway and our own car, which means we'll have to start cleaning our car again. Life's tough!

26 October: A quiet day in Lerwick

After breakfast we walked to the Clickminin Broch, which was a 15 minute walk from our apartment.

Clickminin Broch

A small farmhouse was built on a grassy islet in Clickminin Loch around 1000 BC, the visible remains of the farmhouse lie to the north west of the Clickminin broch. The islet was walled to enclose the cattle and sheep, but around 200 BC a much stronger wall was built around the islet. The new wall was built for defense, more than to keep the livestock in.



Around 100 BC, a 'blockhouse' was built immediately inside the only gate through the wall. This provided additional defense at the weakest point of the islet. Not long after the work on the broch was started. It was originally up to 12-15m high and came with the usual rooms, enclosures and stairs within its thick, dry stone walls. It would also have had internal wooden structures providing shelter and accommodation for a significant number of people. Some time later it was reduced in height and converted for use as the residence of a single family. At the same time the original bronze age farmstead was reoccupied.

It is thought that it was during this period that one of Clickimin's oddest features was added: a slab of stone with two footprints carved into it on the causeway leading to the broch.

From around 500 AD, occupation became less organised and the houses in use were poorly built and partly dug into the ruins of the earlier structures. By the time the Norse arrived in the 800s, Clickimin had been abandoned and forgotten.

Fort Charlotte

The next item on our itinerary was Fort Charlotte which, according to the tourist guide, offers a good overview of Lerwick.

After lunch we strolled up King Harald Street, headed up King Erik Street and walked past St Olaf Street on our way to Fort Charlotte. I really felt at home with all these great Norwegian forefathers around me.

In King Erik Street there was a large play ground and the children were keen to have a go. We had been doing so much sight-seeing by now, so we left the children to play while we went to take a look at Fort Charlotte.

The view from Fort Charlotte was not as good as expected, but the area around it made it worth the walk there. The area was littered with impressive stone buildings, including an old school with separate entrances for girls and boy, the library and an abandoned, old church.

My favourite building was the town hall with its magnificent lampposts.

A walk around Lerwick

While my husband and boys went to Clickminin Pool, I went for a stroll around Lerwick. As I walked around town I discovered that it was smaller than it seemed when we were driving, trying to find our way around the place. Most of the shops are (fittingly enough)  in Commercial Street and there are some very charming and extremely narrow Closes connecting the Commercial Street with the Esplenade and with the streets above.

A rough trip home

Our fantastic holiday had come to an end and it was time to go home. We boarded the ferry an hour before departure and got ourselves installed in our cabin. The weather forecast was pretty severe, with winds up to gale force 8. I asked the people in charge what the scale was and they confirmed that this was 8 out of 10, force 9 and 10 being storm.

With this information in mind, we all took our sea-sickness tablets and crossed our fingers. The boys and I watched a video in our cabin while my husband watched a couple of movies in the boat's cinema. We all slept very well that night and though we felt some rocking, none of us got seasick.

25 October: Going North to Esha Ness, Yell and Unst

Today we wanted to go as far north in Shetland as possible, so we had an early start and then headed North. This is actually what the signs say: North or South.  Charming!

The weather was a bit more grey than the day before, but it was not raining so we were happy.

Spectacular Esha Ness

Our first destination of the day was Esha Ness, with its magnificent and wild nature. Along the way we passed many beautiful places and, of course, lots of ruins, sheep and Shetland ponies.

Esha Ness is home to Shetland's volcano, but for us the main reason to go there was to admire the spectacular nature. It was well worth the drive.

Cuddling Shetland ponies at Yell

From Esha Ness we continued to the island of Yell. After a short ferry journey we were once more in the great outdoors. With a small population (nearly 1000) and few cars on the roads, it was almost as if we had the island to ourselves.  Add some more sheep and ponies and you've got yourself a mind-soothing experience.

The boys wanted to stop every time we saw ponies and I must admit I have a soft spot for them too.

On one of the deserted plains we saw four Shetland ponies grazing right next to the main road. The road was a single-track road with passing places at appropriate intervals, but it was straight and in good shape.

With hardly any cars on the road, I decided to stop on the passing place conveniently placed just opposite the ponies. Even though we stopped for around 20 minutes, no cars went past while we were cuddling the ponies so I did not feel too guilty about stopping in the middle of the road.

The Unst Bus Shelter

After the ferry ride from Yell to Unst, the most northerly island in Britain, we headed north on the main road. Not far from Baltasound, we discovered The Unst Bus Shelter. The bus shelter was originally used by children waiting for the school bus. In 1996 the original bus shelter was demolished and a new shelter was built. 

A few days after completion, a wicker sofa and table appeared in the new shelter. Soon afterwards, a small TV was added, closely followed by a ‘hot snacks’ counter. In the winter, a 2-bar heater was installed, allowing an even more comfortable wait and it wasn’t long before a carpet was fitted. 

Since then the Unst Bus Shelter has become a tourist attraction and has had a new theme every year since the Millennium, with Pink (Breast cancer, 2009), World Cup (2010) and Tall Ships (2011) being among the latest.

At the shelter there were no signs or explanations and to us this seemed rather strange, but extremely charming. Unexpected thing like this give me such a positive boost.

Viking heritage at Unst

Unst is thought to be the first foot-fall of Vikings in the North Atlantic, only 300 kilometres from Western Norway. There are the remains of at least 60 longhouses, the highest density of rural Viking sites anywhere, including Scandinavia.

Driving along the main road we passed places with very Norwegian names like Hamar and Littlehamar, equivalent to Hamar and Lillehammer in Norway.

Hamar longhouse - the best preserved in Scotland

At Keen of Hamar we took a look at the Hamar longhouse, the best preserved longhouse in Scotland.

According to the information at the site, the term 'Viking' refers to raiders and settlers from Skandinavia. In Shetland, the 'Viking period' refers to the initial phase of raiding and settling between 800 AD and 1050 AD.

'Norse' is used to describe the later period of established settlement from 1050 AD up until 1469 AD. In 1469 Norway pawned Shetland to Scotland as part of a dowry payment for the marriage of Margrethe, daughter of the king of Denmark-Norway, to James III of Scotland.

As we were walking around the site, we saw many rabbits and rabbit holes. There were a number of ravens circling the site - it seemed this was their smorgasbord, judging by all the rabbit carcasses we found on our short walk around the area.

Longhouse reconstruction at Haroldswick

When we reached Haroldswick, we saw a longhouse reconstruction and next to it the Skibladner, a replica of the Gokstad ship.

The reconstructed longhouse had been built based on the excavated remains of the longhouse at Hamar, but it also used elements from other excavations. The excavations at Unst showed that there was no standard single design, each house was different in some way to the next.

Full scale replica of the Gokstad ship

Skibladner is a full scale replica of the 9th century Gokstad ship, found under a mound in  Sandefjord, Norway. She is one of the largest replica Viking longships ever built. The Gokstad ship seated 32 oarsmen and carried up to 70 men. As they rowed, the oarsmen sat on chests which contained their possessions.

Skibladner stranded in Shetland in 2000 after a mainly Swedish crew failed in their attempt to sail like Leiv Eiriksson from Scandinavia to America without a back-up engine or any facilities to accommodate the eight crew. Shetland Amenity Trust aquired the Skiblader in 2006 and it has been located at Haroldswick ever since.

The hedgehog at Hermaness

Before leaving Unst we wanted to go as far north in Shetland as we could, so we drove to Hermaness. On our way out there I nearly ran over a hedgehog, one of Britain's most endangered species.

Hedgehogs are among my favourite animals and it would have broken my heart if I had killed one. My relief was immense when I stopped the car and discovered that it was unharmed.

This was the end of the nice weather and the scattered showers soon turned to more persistent rain. For us it didn't really matter, we had finished our sightseeing for the day. It was already time for dinner and we had a long drive back. With no restaurants for miles, we had to settle for sandwiches made from our supplies of fresh food from the back of our car.

24 October: Jarlshof Prehistoric and Norse Settlement

After a very slow morning, we drove to the southernmost tip of Mainland Shetland to see Jarlshof Prehistoric and Norse Settlement. I was fascinated by the fact that the information at the site is given in English, German and nynorsk (New Norwegian), indicating that the majority of the tourists are Norwegian and Germans. And I guess they chose to use nynorsk instead of bokmål (Norwegian) because of the close links to the western parts of Norway.More about this later.

The name of the site means 'earl's house' and was created by Sir Walter Scott when he wrote his novel 'The Pirate'. It refers to a fictional house based on the 16th century laird's house, the Old House of Sumburgh, which still towers over the prehistoric remains today.

Jarlshof's surroundings are truly magnificent, with steep cliffs, strong winds and big waves crashing against the cliffs and against underwater reefs.

A multiperiod settlement

The site contains remains dating from 2500 BC up to the 17th century. Just like Skara Brae, this site was uncovered by violent storms, this time towards the end of the 19th century.

Upon excavation, the site was found to contain a remarkable sequence of stone structures – late Neolithic houses, a Bronze-Age village, an Iron-Age broch and wheelhouses, a Norse longhouse, a medieval farmstead, and a 16th-century laird’s house.

The buildings that fascinated me the most were the wheelhouses. These houses were round, where the 'spokes of the wheel' divided the house into separate rooms.

I was also fascinated by the Norse settlement, which shows that the Vikings were skilled farmers and fishermen, not only raiders.


In Norway the viking longhouses were built from wood, in Shetland they had to be built with stone as there was not enough timber available. However, the frames, roof  and furniture were built from timber. The timber was imported from Bergen, which was only 48 hours away by ship. This was considered a short boat ride for our seafaring nation. 'I'll just pop over to Norway for some timber to build a new roof, I'll be back in a flash.'

A visualisation of Jarlshof

As I was writing this blog post, I came across a computer generated film by Kieran Baxter. The film is based on kite aerial photography and is really amazing - it made it so much easier to understand what Jarlshof would have looked like in different time periods. On the website Kieran Baxter's webpage you can also see the process of how the film was made.

 

Mousa Broch and the Shetland ponies

We (or rather I, the tour guide) had already decided we wanted to see Mousa Broch, and the Iron-Age broch at Jarlshof made us even more keen to go see it.

Mousa Broch is the finest preserved example of a broch or round tower in Shetland. With its 13 metres it is the tallest still standing in the world, and amongst the best-preserved prehistoric buildings in Europe. It is thought to have been constructed around 100 BC, one of 570 brochs built throughout Scotland.

Unfortunately the ferry had closed for the season, so we had to admire the broch from the mainland. We were lucky that the weather was so clear, it was easy to see it.

As we were searching for the best place to look at the broch, we ended up on a dead-end track, where there were a number of Shetland ponies.

We've seen them in such great numbers here in Shetland, so I went outside to take a photo. This turned out to be a little difficult, because they came straight over to me to see if I had a snack to offer them. The boys and I ended up cuddling these trusting creatures for quite a while - they were so charming it was almost impossible to leave.

Trondra and Burra

From Mousa Broch we drove across the island of Trondra and on to the island of Burra. The landscape is a bit like a combination of Iceland's grassy hills and Australia's beautiful, sandy beaches.


Almost everywhere we turn here in Shetland, we see ruins of old stone buildings and at Burra they seemed to be exceptionally abundant.

When we reached the southernmost end of the island, we left the car to take a look at a few of the ruins, walk on a sandy beach and enjoy the magnificent landscapes.

The rain stopped as we were getting out of the car, leaving us a magnificent rainbow and a little later we enjoyed a wonderful sunset.

On our little afternoon walk I was fascinated by the two beaches on the narrow strip of land we crossed to get to the tip of the island. The beach on one side had white, finely grained sand, the other side was filled with small, dark, round pebbles. Amazing how two beaches only a few metres apart could be so different.


As we continued walking, we came across some sheep. A few of them had left the grassy hills and were exploring a very rough and uneven beach. I wonder what they were doing down there.

On our way back to the car we also saw a rabbit and a seal. The seal was extremely curios, the rabbit was not.

23 October: A tyrant and many heroes in Shetland

As we left the ferry in Lerwick, we were welcomed in five different languages, including Norwegian. Please note that Norwegian is the second language on the sign, the German and French welcome texts are below the Icelandic text. How often does that happen? Hardly ever.

I'm not sure who they used to write the Norwegian text, but they obviously didn't get it right the first time. Those of you who are fluent in Norwegian will notice that they didn't get it quite right the second time around either. I found it quite charming, though.

Shetland Museum and Archive 

We started our stay in Shetland by visiting the Shetland Museum and Archive. This was a very good museum, with lots of information for the adults and lots of interactive activities for the kids.

Shetland was under Norwegain rule until 1469, when it was given to Scotland as dowry in the marriage between Princess Margaret of Denmark and James III, King of Scots. The laws, dialect, place names and way of life all reflect the Scandinavian impact on the islands.

I discovered many Norwegian words, for example 'sound' for 'sund' (an inlet or deep bay of the sea), 'bairn' for 'barn' (children - this is something I've also heard in Scottish) or 'ay' for 'øy' (island), for example Whalsay or Bressay. And then there is the 'thing' or 'ting' which I will write more about later in this blog post.

Holy business

After our visit to the Shetland Museum we headed off to Scalloway to visit the Scalloway Museum. On the outskirts of Scalloway we drove past Kirk Business Centre. We were all very intrigued by this place.

I assume they do holy business there? Or is this a place where they combine God and Mammon?
The truth is unfortunately less exciting, it's another example of a church that is used for new purposes. But I do love the name! It sparks your imagination.

Tourists arriving out of season

The Scalloway Museum was very new, it had been opened by Norway's Prime Minister on our Constitution Day last year. We were very disappointed when we discovered that the museum closed for the season on 30 September.

As we were looking in, a man working inside the museum came out and told us that the museum was closed, but we could borrow the key to the castle instead. We happily accepted the offer and went to look at the castle. (We later learned that this was the way it is done - you borrow the key and lock yourself in. Pretty cool though.)

Scalloway Castle

Scalloway Castle was built in 1600 by Patrick Stewart, Earl of Orkney and Lord of Shetland. Yes, this was the tyrant who built Earl's Palace in Kirkwall, ref. my blog post '22 October - part 2: Kirkwall, seen through Norwegian eyes'. In order to build these great buildings, Patrick enforced his right to make use of the labour of neighbouring landowners' tenants, offering them neither food nor drink in return. Not a very sympathetic man, was he?

The L-shaped tower was the main block of Scalloway Castle, although there would have been other domestic buildings and stores in the grounds. The castle stands three storeys high above a vaulted ground floor containing the kitchen and store. The main block contained a great hall at first floor level, and a series of chambers on the upper floors.

Sheriff Court for Shetland at Scalloway Castle

During the era of the castle's full use it increasingly housed the Sheriff Court for Shetland, which had formerly taken the form of lawting sessions at Tingwall. Part of Earl Patrick’s abuse of his position was that he used whatever legal system best served his own wealth and interests during his rule. This lead to an Act of Scottish privy council being introduced to prevent this parallel use of legal systems in 1611.

After 1615 the court was ruled by a Sheriff and the records from this era provide an insight into the crimes, judgements and agreements of the era. These range from land agreements to petty theft, peculiar crimes of the era and punishment for witchcraft. The range of punishments decreed to offenders was brutal and extreme, ranging from banishment to beheading and from branding to burning after drowning. It was even decreed that the new settlement of Lerwick be demolished and burnt due to its lawless iniquity in 1625!

The decline of Scalloway Castle

Earl Patrick was imprisoned in 1609 for his errant rule, then granted bail, before his continued misbehaviour led to his execution in 1615. Scalloway Castle remained the administrative centre for Shetland and it was still in good shape when it was used as a barracks for Cromwell's troops in the 1650s. By 1700 there were reports that the roof was leaking, and the shift of Shetland's capital to Lerwick a few years later confirmed Scalloway Castle's decline.

Scalloway Museum

As we were on our way to return the castle key, we ran into a man who invited us inside the Scalloway Museum. We felt like we had hit the jackpot!

The Shetland Bus - an important part of Norwegian resistance during WWII

Our main reason for visiting the museum was to learn more about the Shetland Bus, a clandestine organisation formed by the Secret Intelligence Service, the Special Operations Executive and the military intelligence service of Norway’s government-in-exile.

The main purpose of the group was to transfer agents in and out of Norway and supply them with weapons, radios and other supplies. Coded messages were passed in BBC broadcasts.

The group would also bring out Norwegians who feared arrest by the Germans. In Scalloway there is a house called Norway House, where the refugees were given shelter when they first arrived at Shetland.

Undercover fishing boats

The unit was initially operated by a large number of small Norwegian fishing boats. Crossings were mostly made during winter under the cover of darkness. This meant that the crews and passengers had to endure very heavy North Sea-conditions, with no lights, and constant risk of discovery by German aircraft or patrol boats. There was also the possibility of being captured whilst carrying out the mission on the Norwegian coast.

However, early on it was decided that camouflage was the best defence and the boats were disguised as working fishing boats, with the crew as fishermen. The fishing boats were armed with light machine guns concealed inside oil drums placed on deck.  One of these was on display at the museum and I was impressed at how skilfully it had been made.

Several fishing boats were lost during the initial operations and in 1943 it was decided that faster vessels were needed. The unit was augmented by three fast and well-armed submarine chasers, after which there were no more losses.

Leif Andreas Larsen (popularly known as Shetland Larsen) was the most famous of the Shetland Bus men. In all he made 52 trips to Norway, and became the most highly-decorated Allied naval officer of the Second World War.

Tingwall - the old parliament of Shetland

On our way from Scalloway to Lerwick, we went to see Tingwall or Tingaholm, a small promontory in the Tingwall Loch (both seen in the background in the picture below).

'Thing' or 'ting' comes from the Old Norse 'þing' and means parliament. The small promontory of Tingwall was the site of Shetland’s local parliament until the late 16th century.

From the 1270s onwards, Shetlanders used the Norwegian law code of King Magnus the Lawmender (Magnus Lagabøte). Shetland’s lawthing was an assembly where local people and officials tried offenders, interpreted the law, and enacted new legislation. Many other thing sites throughout Britain and Scandinavia occur wherever Norsemen settled and brought their laws, and they can still be identified by their 'thing', 'ting', 'ding' or 'fing' place names.

Early documents dating from1307 onwards, record Lawting meetings taking place at Tingwall. After the islands became part of Scotland in 1469, the law gradually began to change. In the 1570s, the thing moved to Scalloway, eventually meeting in Earl Patrick's new castle.

As an added bonus, the landscape around Tingwall was extremely beautiful and that alone made it worth the drive. We were also fascinated by the number of sheep on one of the fields close to Tingwall - it was like there was a party there and everyone was invited.

Royal accommodation at King Harald Apartments

After looking at TripAdvisor and Shetland Visitor, we found King Harald Apartments.With a name like that we just had to go there.

The apartment had tea, coffee and biscuits, and even a pint of milk in the fridge - it truly felt like a home away from home. I've come to really appreciate this part of life in Scotland. It seems this tradition is starting to rub off on our boys as well, now they too want tea with sugar and milk.