That which is gone, that which remains and that which drifts between

The installation will be on show at Da Gadderie, Shetland Museum & Archives, Lerwick, until August 27th 2017. 

We hope that we will be able to take it and show this part of Shetland to audiences elsewhere - depending on funding of course.

In the course of researching Stenness and the haaf fishing we have consulted many sources. We would like to acknowledge and thank the following people for their help and support:

Rob Gawthrop - sound recording/technical support and chef extraordinaire

Shetland Museum: John Hunter, Ian Tait, Trevor Jamieson, Yvonne Reynolds (for loan of bell)

Shetland Archives: Brian Smith, Angus Johnson, and Blair Bruce

Tangwick Haa Museum: Ruby Brown and Nanette

The Vaila May crew: Brian Wishart, Jim Tait, Gilbert (Gibbie) Fraser, Andrew Cooper, Ewen Balfour, Robert Wishart, Trevor Jamieson (particularly for valiant ludder horn blowing) 

Gary and Andrew from LHD and Guardian Angell skipper for organsing and supplying Ling

Steve Anderson for gutting ling received, and Lynn McCormack for arranging this

Catriona Macdonald for superlative fiddle playing of ‘Shingly Beach’, written by Tom Anderson

Tom Williamson for creel boat journeys at Stenness

Readers of 19thC texts: Ewan Balfour, John N Hunter, Nancy Hunter, Ruth Fisher, Wilma Stewart, Valerie Watt, Jim Tait, Gilbert Fraser, Margaret Anderson, Peter Sinclair 

Tommy Isbister for talking about the fishing

Jonathan Rich (Shetland Arts) - sound installation

Finally Alistair Goodlad, who’s authoritative book Shetland Fishing Saga set us on course.

These are some of the documents and images used in the course of making our film and sound installation. 19thC texts have been taken from archival documents in Shetland Museum & Archives.

Ling Shipped off at Stenness,1817

(facsimile) D1/24/1 Small Gifts and Deposits

This fragile piece of paper records the names of fishermen and the number of ling caught by each sixareen team. They would have received payment accordingly.

 

We the Undersigned, October 1861, Book of Agreements (facsimile)

Agreements signed by fishermen binding themselves to prosecute the fishing for the Laird. D1/36/2 Small Gifts and Deposits

Each team of fishermen would sign their names agreeing to carry out fishing for the summer season for the laird. This bound them to the laird, who often owned the boats and line the men used.

Indebtedness, Book of Agreements, December 1862 (facsimile)

D1/36/2 Small Gifts and Deposits

Within this book are pages where the men write that, despite having spent the season fishing, they find themselves still in debt to the laird.  They are forced to pay these debt by giving, in this case, their livestock in lieu of money.

Tangwick Haa Museum has a wonderful 19thC Day Book which was kept during the summer fishing season. It lists items bought and prices paid by the men occupying the lodges on the beach, even giving where they were from - places around Northmavine. The names of many of the fishermen relate to families who still live in the area. It gives some insight into their lives. The book will be on show in Da Gadderie during the exhibition.

Day Book, Stenness (page shows entry for Saturday, 4th July 1891)

Ledger documenting items bought in the shop during the summer fishing season, May - August, 1890 –1895. Lent with kind permission of Tangwick Haa Museum

The lodges that the men lived in during the summer fishing season were pretty rudimentary - rough stone with poan roofs, that were re-roofed each season. They were occupied by each sixareen team. 

A hand-written booklet in the archives describes these and who owned and who occupied them. We're not sure when this was written. Some of the booths seem to have been shops, some were owned and lived in by the laird's factor, some seem to have required the payment of rent or "no rent at all".

Stennis – all the Booths and lodges within the town of Stennis

Description of the lodges at Stenness beach, 1800’s (facsimile),

D6/40/6 2 Reid Tait Collection

This booklet also describes lodges in other fishing stations on Shetland (again this booklet is on display as part of our exhibition).

The more we study the old 19thC photographs of Stenness, the more we become aware of the men on the beach - sitting outside the lodges, mending nets, washing items in the sea, spreading their nets on the grass above the lodges. 

1890's Stenness beach. Copyright Shetland Museum

Here are the faces of men who lived such a hard life on that beach, some who may have been taken by the sea. 

1890's Stenness beach. Copyright Shetland Museum

These are the men whose names were read out by our readers on the beach, names that appear in the documents describing the catch and in the Day Book listing items such as tea, line, hooks, coffee, and even sweeties, bought in the shop. 

All this has been put into the film, together with contemporary images filmed and field recordings of sounds on Stenness Beach - of the ruined lodges, views out from shore to sea and the horizon, views looking back at the beach and the Böd from the sea that the men would have seen as they returned from the Far Haaf, and of course from the sea itself. 

Confusing Shadow with Substance is not a documentary, neither is it a work of fiction. It examines the relationship between past and present and the interplay of land, sea and human activity at the site of one of Shetland's busiest former fishing stations. The material remains of the station are elusive today, yet the more we explore the landscape, the more its traces are revealed. Poised between land and far haaf, the shoreline draws us to the sea, a constant presence in a world of embedded memory. 

Images from 3 screen and sound installation

Weaving together contemporary and historical images, Shetland voices merge with the sea, drawing breath on the tide. Our work is concerned  with the interplay between that which is gone, that which remains and that which drifts between the two.

Screen and sound installation, Da Gadderie, Shetland Museum & Archives. Lerwick.

Thank you to Creative Scotland for funding this project, to Shetland Museum & Archives for supporting and giving us Da Gadderie in which to show the installation, and to Shetland Arts for their support with the sound.

Janette Kerr and Jo Millett 

The one that got away and infestations of hoe

      While Jo and Rob filmed on the beach I took to the water with Tom Williamson again and 

      attempted to film hooks and line under water. Not only was it difficult to actually see what I

      was filming with a GoPro on a stick underwater, I now realise how tricky it is to keep one's

      hooks and lines in order..

     And why the fishermen kept theirs carefully organised laid out in rows before setting them 

     out in the sea.

19thC line and hooks laid out on a board

       I really would have made a rubbish fisherman.

       However when I reviewed the footage later I realised that I'd managed to film the one that 

       got away - from Tom's hook...

         So close... it then turns tail and swims off!

         It is still an experience to see the land from the sea and to watch it appearing and 

         disappearing as we head out 

      Back on shore Jo and Rob were still busy doing the far more serious business of recording

      sounds and filming the sea.

      In between filming and recording we have been collecting information about the lodges and          shops that were used by the men during the fishing season. The beautiful Day Book, which          is part of the collection at Tangwick Haa Museum, is a testament to the coming and goings          from one of the shop at Stenness during the fishing season.

     Documenting the names of fishermen occupying the lodges we can find out what they were         buying, and the price of rope, tea, hooks, counterpanes and sweeties and, on occasions,             even cigars were purchased.

Pages in the Day Book

     The book will be on display during our installation. 

     From reading 19thC newspaper reports from Northmavine it is clear that fish were not  

     always plentiful during the season as articles in the local newspapers in the 1890's indicate.

     In addition to light loads, the fishermen are plagued by 'swarms of hoes' (which I think are 

     dog fish) which prevent them catching the white fish.

June 17th 1893

           Then there are other problems..

24 June 1876

          What the diet of the men consisted of and whether they were well nourished or not, living

          in such close proximity in pretty rudimentary conditions meant that illnesses spread pretty

          fast. It seems that, as usual, the unsettled Shetland weather - thick fog and gales - also

          put paid to successful fishing trips. 

          At the end of the season in August 1877 Laurence Anderson is noted as having taken the

          highest yield at 315cwt. But chief topic of conversation was the ordinance survey that was

          going on that year, with complaints of wheat fields being trampled in the process of 

          mapping and threats of giving the boys a dipping in the sea if they were seen in the corn

          again.

Newspaper 18 August 1877

          Another long day - home now for our own tea.

Agreeable beauty

Saturday 17th June  - Agreeable beauty

While the south of the UK is sweltering in 32 degree heat here in Shetland we have perfect weather for filming mist out at sea using 16ml film and video.

Followed by some photographing of atmospheric ruined lodges scattered around Stenness beach. Most have disappeared, swept away over the last 100+ years by the action of wind and sea as well as the stones being plundered over the years sine they were last occupied in the 19th C to build walls and houses elsewhere.

They would certainly have been agreeable to 18th C William Gilpin's definition of the picturesque as 'that kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture' and for whom a bit of a ruined abbey or castle with rugged edges would add 'consequence'.

Days full of sound

Thursday/Friday 15th/16th June  - Full of sound

Having collected Shetland's own musician Catriona MacDonald we drove to Stenness and recorded the wonderful sounds Catriona playing the Shingly Beach tune composed by the famous Tammy Anderson. Set against the sounds of the sea and birds it was pretty special  (not that we are getting or intend to be romantic!).

Margaret Anderson arrived and was recorded reading about the Ling catch in Stenness on Friday, June 19th 1812, her fine voice mingling with the tide's comings and goings.

And finally it was time to go home. Tomorrow is another day...

Friday 16th June started as yet another session of filming the sea  - using the GoPro above and below water level

and more recording bells ringing and footsteps walking on the beach.  

But the best of the day was a visit to Mary and Tommy Isbister on Tronda - such a wonderful mind - knowledge of and skills in building boat, violins, houses, playing fiddles, farming, fishing ....

sixareen line and hooks

We left, having recorded Tommy and with much information about the Haaf fishing, how to split a Ling, and the construction of sixareens filling our heads.

Trials and tribulations

We've spent the last few days on Stenness beach wandering, looking, thinking, discussing and experimenting with sounds and images, supported by the very able sound artist Rob Gawthrop. 

Jo Millett & Janette Kerr

Rob Gawthrop recording

Jo MIllett sounding the bell

Currently trying out and recording different bell sounds.. having found references to a bell marking the beginning and end of work sessions at the fishing station.

' The curing and drying of fish taken at the Stenness Haaf  is ... conducted with great regularity, a bell ringing for the cessation and resumption of labour'.

High views 

Kite flying trials are underway. Lack of wind (surprising on Shetland) is hampering progress. But that can change pretty rapidly.

The problems of having a GoPro on the end of a kite up in the air and being taken wherever the wind decides to pull is that you never know what you are filming. So the results are hit and miss, but a slightly random approach makes for more abstract images. 

Confusing shadow with substance

Confusing shadow with substance is a collaborative project exploring aspects of Shetland’s relationship with the sea and the past, and focusing on Stenness, one of the many once thriving fishing stations around Shetland’s coastline.

Inkster's Böd, Stenness 

Janette Kerr, a painter, and Jo Millett, a moving image & sound artist are researching and making a multi-screen video & sound installation to be shown in Shetland Museum's exhibition space, Lerwick - 22nd July – 27th August 2017

Site of Stenness fishing station

The project investigates the traces – tangible and intangible – of a fishing station where hundreds of men worked and lived for the summer months during the 18^th & 19^th centuries.

Stenness beach, image courtesy of Shetland Museum & Archives

In the passage between fishing grounds (the far haaf) and shore the activities and sounds are re-imagined.