Where to Stay in Shetland
Map of Where to Stay in Shetland
Information about the Shetland Islands
Shetland is the most northerly part of the British Isles, a remote and extraordinary archipelago of over a hundred islands sitting closer to Bergen in Norway than to Edinburgh, and carrying in its landscape, its culture and its people the marks of that Norse heritage with a quiet and distinctive pride. It is a destination that demands a genuine commitment from visitors but rewards that commitment with an experience unlike anything else in the British Isles.
The landscape is one of the most dramatic and elemental in Scotland, a treeless world of moorland, cliff, voe and beach where the sea is never more than three miles away and the Atlantic light creates a quality of visibility and colour that has drawn artists and photographers from around the world. The cliffs of Eshaness on the west coast of the Mainland are among the most spectacular in the British Isles, their basalt columns and sea caves taking the full force of the Atlantic with a drama that is genuinely awe inspiring. Sumburgh Head, at the southern tip of the Mainland, offers some of the finest seabird watching in Scotland, with puffins, gannets and great skuas nesting in extraordinary numbers on the surrounding cliffs and headlands.
Lerwick, the most northerly town of any size in the British Isles, is a compact and characterful place of grey stone buildings, a fine natural harbour and a strong community life that revolves around the sea, the landscape and the distinctive Shetland traditions of music, craft and storytelling. The Up Helly Aa fire festival, held each January, is one of the most spectacular and authentically rooted community celebrations in the British Isles, a Viking longship burned on the darkest night of the year in a ceremony of fire and music that has no equal anywhere in Scotland.
Jarlshof, at the southern tip of the Mainland, is one of the most remarkable archaeological sites in the British Isles, its layers of human settlement spanning four thousand years from the Bronze Age to the early modern period in a single exposed and extraordinary site.
Whether you are looking for seabird watching on the cliffs of Eshaness, a journey through four thousand years of history at Jarlshof, the spectacle of Up Helly Aa or simply the rare and profound experience of a landscape at the very edge of the known world, Shetland is a destination that changes those who visit it in ways that are difficult to define but impossible to forget.
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