Samburgh, Shetland Islands: Old Scatness Broch, Jarlshof Prehistoric and Norse Settlement: Bergen, Norway

 Old Scatness is considered to contain the best preserved remains of an iron age village in the U.K. It lay undiscovered for more than a millennium until roadwork uncovered a corner of the broch.  The broch itself was built around 400 to 200BC.  A village of round houses and later Pictish wheelhouses grew up around the broch and was lived in until about AD850.  Vikings lived and used the land but not the dwellings which were eventually encased in blowing sand and the Shetland mossy ground cover.  Broch refers to a type of construction that is only found in iron age Scotland.  It consists of two concentric dry stone walls (no mortar or mud).  These walls are capped with flat stone and between the walls are rooms and stairs.  The land is backfilled around the outside wall and a low thatched or sod roof covered everything.  From the outside it looked like a mound and from the inside you would have felt as if you were living underground.

A second site near Old Scatness is Jarlshof Prehistoric and Norse Settlement which is  interesting in that one culture after the next built on this seaside site.  First, Neolithic, then Bronze, then Pictish and Iron, then Viking, then Medieval, then finally a Laird's Mansion.  These cultures, one following the other, just kept building on top of the other at the same site.  In all likelihood, until the Vikings showed up each culture was simply the progeny of the one before it.  The site for years was only a large mound with a ruined Laird's castle atop it.  An Atlantic Storm in the late 1800s washed away some beach and dunes, and exposed portions of  these buildings, then archeological excavations followed.

I've already posted this crazy road that crosses the runway.  But, going back to the airport we had to cross that runway again and I had to better document this.  My son, confirmed by a Shetlander informed me that there are only two runways like this.  The one here on the Shetland Islands and another one on Gibraltar.  However, on Gibraltar they are tunneling under the airport runway and by year end the road is no longer expected to cross the runway.  That will leave the Shetlands with the only Commercial Airport with Internationally scheduled flights that has a crossroads with auto traffic. 

From in the plane crossing the road

A car on the road driving across the runway

From in the car, crossing the runway

A car crossing the runway

Also at the airport there was a constant traffic of large passenger carrying helicopters.  These are for the oil rigs.  The rig workers generally work a two weeks on two weeks off schedule.  While on the rigs it is generally 12 hours on 12 hours off.  The helicopters are constantly swapping out crews at the beginning and ending of their two week shifts.  The Shetland Islands are in the middle of the North Sea Oil Field which is Scotland's and through Scotland, Great Britain's claim to a portion of that oil.

We took our last LoganAir flight today, Samburgh, Shetland Islands to Bergen, Norway.  This is a demarcation in our trip.  Up to this point the trip has been entirely in English speaking Scotland.  We now travel to Norway where the language is not our native tongue.  As it turns out, however, this is a difference without distinction, as I could not understand a damn thing those Scots were saying.