By the end of the ninth century, Norse Vikings shifted their attention from plundering to invasion, mainly due to the overpopulation of Norway in comparison to resources and arable land available there.  The Norse colonized much of northern Scotland, Shetland, Orkney, the Hebrides, the Isle of Man, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and briefly, North America.

In the early ninth century, Norse raiders, then settlers began arriving at the North Sea islands.   The Pict inhabitants had no love for the southerners, so they joined the Vikings in their raids.  The Gaelic Papars were executed or sent packing by the pagan Norse.

The Norwegians tended to follow a northern route to the islands and less populous places whereas the Danes went westward to more populated areas such as England Normandy and the Frankish Empire; Whereas the Swedes went east, colonizing Finland, the Baltic coast and Russia.

Shetland was colonized by Norwegian Vikings in the 9th century.  The colonizers established their laws and language.  That language evolved into the West Nordic language "Norm", which survived into the 1800s.  The Orkney and Shetland Isles became gathering centres for raiding the Albann coasts.

For centuries, the inhabitants of these islands had indulged in piracy of southern settlements, and this turn of ownership no doubt offered lucrative and familiar opportunities to adventurous Picts as well as Norse.   Shetland was Christianized for the second time in the tenth century when Norway itself became Christian.

It is very likely that the Pict men were not annihilated when the Norse seized control.  Since the Pict men of Orkney did not disappear, neither would the men of Shetland.  It is very likely over half the men on the Shetland Isles (similar to those on Orkney) today, are direct descendants of those first Picts who colonized these islands. 

In the 14th century, Norway still treated Orkney and Shetland as a Norwegian province, but Scottish influence was growing, and in 1379 the Scottish Earl, Henry Sinclair, took control of Orkney on behalf of the Norwegian king Haakon V!.  In 1348, Norway was severely weakened by the Black Plague, and in 1397 it entered the Kalmar Union with Denmark.

The Scottish Era

With time, Norway came increasingly under Danish control.  King Christian I of Denmark and Norway was in financial trouble and, when his daughter Margaret became engaged to James III of Scotland in 1468, he needed money to pay her dowry.  Apparently without the knowledge of the Norwegian Riksråd (Council of the Realm), he entered into a contract on 8 September 1468 with the King of Scotland in which he pawned Orkney for 50,000 Rhenish guilders.

On 28 May the next year, King Christian also pawned Shetland for 8,000 Rhenish guilders.  He secured a clause in the contract which gave future kings of Norway the right to redeem the islands for a fixed sum of 210 kilograms (460 lb) of gold or 2,310 kilograms (5,100 lb) of silver. Several attempts were made during the 17th and 18th centuries to redeem the islands, without success.

Following a legal dispute,  Charles II ratified the pawning document by a Scottish Act of Parliament on 27 December 1669 which officially made the islands a Crown dependency, and exempt from any "dissolution of His Majesty’s lands".  In 1742, a further British Act of Parliament returned the estates to a later Earl of Morton, although the original Act of Parliament specifically ruled that any future act regarding the islands status would be "considered null, void and of no effect".

The Hansa Era

After the decline of the Vikings, four centuries followed where the Shetlanders sold their goods through the Hanseatic League of German merchantmen in Bergen, in Norway, and later directly to merchants from Bremen, Lübeck and Hamburg, in Germany. The Hansa would buy shiploads of salted cod and ling. In return, the island population received cash, grain, cloth, beer and other goods.  The flourishing trade with the North German towns lasted until the 1707 Act of Union between England and Scotland, which prohibited the German merchants from trading with Shetland.

Shetland then went into a severe economic depression as the Scottish and local traders were not as skilled in trading with salted fish.  However, some local merchants took up where the German merchants had left off, and fitted out their own ships to export fish from Shetland to the Continent.   For the independent farmers of Shetland this had negative consequences, as they now had to fish for these merchant-lairds.  With the passing of the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 the British Liberal Prime Minister, William Gladstone, emancipated crofters from the rule of the landlords. The Act enabled those who had effectively been landowners' serfs to become owner-occupiers of their own small farms.

The British Era

Many of the employees of The Hudson Bay Company operating out of London, were enrolled from the people of the Orkney and Shetland Islands, as sober, reliable and trustworthy people were needed as "factors" to man isolated outposts in the Canadian north-west.  Many of Canada's great explorers, such as Simon Fraser and John Thompson, were from these people.  Generally, most young people had to leave the islands to make a decent living, and the population declined.

Some 3000 Shetlanders served in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars from 1800 to 1815.  In 1861 there were 32,000 people living in the Shetland Islands.   During the Second World War, a covert ferry service was established to and from Norway to harass the Germans in occupied Norway.    In 2001, there was a population of  21,990.  Recent vast oil production offshore has improved the quality of life, and has halted emigration from the islands.

Language

The Pictish language died out during the Viking occupation, and was replaced by Old Norse, which in turn evolved into Norn. This remains the most prominent remnant of Norse culture on the islands.  Almost every place name in use there can be traced back to the Vikings.  Norn continued to be spoken until the 18th century when it was replaced by an insular dialect of Scots also known as Shetlandic, which in turn is being replaced by Scottish English.  Although Norn was spoken for hundreds of years it is now extinct and few written sources remain.

The Lunnasting Stone

Lunnasting is located in the eastern part of North Mainland, and is where the Lunnasting stone was found in the ruins of an old croft house.  It bears an inscription in Ogham - an early medieval alphabet, originating in North Africa.  The Lunnasting stone bears an ogham inscription, and was donated to the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland in 1876.  It is printed in the unique - North Briton P-Celtic dialect (Old Welsh), and dated about 720AD (before the Norwegian take-over), it reads: 

In modern Welsh (which is the closest living language to the now extinct North Britain "P-Celtic/Pict" (of post 300 AD Albann), It would read:

In modern English, it would read:

Partial Ydna Test Results