Reared from gold

My Shetland ancestors on my father's side were largely fishermen, although my great grandfather owned and ran a general store on Yell, the bottom part of which still exists on the island as part of the boatyard.

His oldest son, my grandfather, followed his father's occupation although he left Yell to live in Aberdeen, where he started his own grocery. His premises in Aberdeen, too, are still in service, albeit currently serving as the Red Cross shop. In the 1920's, with wife and son in tow and having fallen on harder post-war times, that branch of my family emigrated to South Africa, where my grandfather found employment in the grocery division of a biggish Department Store.

Amongst my Scots ancestors on my mother's side the men in the family had embraced the industrial revolution as miners, and my grandfather as a young man was a skip operator on the mines near Kilsyth. After his move with his own wife and family to South Africa he found work again as a skip operator, but this time in one of the deep gold mines of the Johannesburg reef. My parents, hailing thus from northern Britain, found themselves by serendipity to be in the same class of a working class school in a small mining town in South Africa.
My father took to mining, too, becoming an assayer and then a metallurgist to the gold mines around Springs and Brakpan. In 1954, in our turn, my parents and my sibs and I emigrated to 'Southern Rhodesia', my father attracted to the gold mines there. I had heard of Cornwall as a child, as one of our dear friends on the mine had actually been a Cornish miner. That part of Cornwall where I now live is a laid-back part of the world beloved of surfers, but in times not long gone bye it was a hub of industry and trade. Rich in tin and other metals, Cornwall had been known for a millennium or more for its mining and metalwork, and Cornish mining methods became very influential throughout the world. As the tin ran out in Cornwall in the 20th century, Cornish miners and Cornish mining expertise spread throughout the mining world.

The Cornwall landscape is still peppered with the enigmatic buildings of the mining engine houses, and there is still a busy local industry in creating tin, silver and gold jewellery, much of it created with Celtic knotwork and other classic Celtic designs. In fact there is a bit of a 'Pictish' frenzy in Britain, where young people, men and women, pride themselves in their Celtic body tattoos, and Celtic knotwork patterns embellish just about every possible surface.

Celtic Style

I began to become interested in these wonderful designs when I was a small girl. My ex-Aberdonian granny knitted 'fairisles' for the department store where grandpa worked. The patterns were all marked out on squared paper, and she skillfully wove together the many colours and designs into pullovers that were in high demand at that post-war period.

My other grandmother knitted babywear and shawls in incredibly fine one-ply, and always had to cover the bit that was knitted with a spotlessly-clean flourbag so that it did not get dirty, and her hands were always kept soft with the use of butter as her night-cream. These items, too, bore classical patterns of the Highlands and Islands.

This lovely video gives a background to the Shetland knitting heritage, and the fine work my grandmother used to do, even though she herself was not a Shetlander.

 

Not long ago I discovered a wonderful and classic book by George Bain, and this led me to appreciate not only the intricacies of the interlaced knotwork, but also the Pictish spirals and key patterns often of great complexity. From the latter, I recognised what had influenced my Grandmother's knitted 'fair-isles' - those amazing but almost extinct pullovers of intricate repeating patterns and colours. Of course, contemporary Scandinavian knitware still uses such patterns. Scottish and Irish island ladies had an ancient history of incorporating Celtic, Pictish and Norse design in to their knitware, including the knotware, such as in Aran styles. No wonder that I myself felt so drawn to these patterns despite growing at the other end of the world.

In 2012 I was struggling to repair a little tea-caddy that I have owned for many years, and which had some decoration on it that I was told had been done with pyrography by my Shetland grandfather. I liked greatly the idea of working on a finished product, rather than having to produce it from scratch, and I eventually decided to try my hand at a form of craft hailing from the Scandinavia - Kolrosing-  and to include any Celtic, Pictish and Norse designs in my work.

Celtic Roots and Viking Blood

Born a fair-skinned redhead in South Africa and raised in the African sun of Zimbabwe, I always felt out of place amongst my peers. My having red hair and freckles seemed to give a licence to all and sundry to tease and call me 'carrot top', 'rooi kop', 'ginger', 'freckle-face'. My closest childhood friend, Helen, had skin that loved the sun, and we always had to find a spot at the pool where she could lie on her towel in the sun while I lay covered by my towel in the shade, with a hat over my face.

Now that I am older, and live in Cornwall in the UK, I no longer need to hide from the sun, and I have come to look back fondly on that red-haired child, knowing that it was my Celtic roots and my Viking blood that made me stand out so. My father's family was from the Shetland Isles, and I doubt that there are few from that part of the world who do not have a good handful of Viking genes. My red-headed mother's family from the Pictish and Celtic Scottish Highlands almost certainly had a fair dollop of Viking genes too.

My grandparents on both sides had emigrated in the 1920's in one of the great Scottish diasporas, heading off in ships like my Viking forebears with pockets full of hope and little else other than a desire to find a better life. I was raised in the sun on oatmeal porridge, pancakes, girdle scones and Scots broth and a familiarity with the accents of my grandparents. I was their 'bonnie wee bairn' when I was good, told to 'dinna fash yersel' if I was upset or to 'wheesht' if I was crying. I was unaware that many of the funny words of my grandparents hailed from the Old Norse of their Viking forebears.

Many years ago I moved back from Africa to live in the UK, retracing by air the journey that they had taken by boat sixty years earlier. How far it must have seemed to them, sailing all the way to Cape Town from Aberdeen, into the unknown. They remained in South Africa for the rest of their lives, and I believe I was the first of that branch of the family to return to live in the UK. Now, as I myself grow old, I find myself deeply interested in my genetic past, and especially in my Shetland roots and Viking background.