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 

Light in the lum and light below the Vaila Mae

Tuesday - Sixareen launch day

A sixareen (photo from Shetland Photographic Archive)

Mustering at the museum the excellent Brian Wishart assembled our fine rowing crew from various parts of Shetland – all well qualified and skippers in their own right, so who gives and takes orders to and from whom is a mystery.

(photo by J Kerr)

Sorting the sail (photo by J Kerr)

The boat made ready we spent the morning filming the beautiful Vaila Mae. 

Under the oars (photo by J Kerr)

The sounds of the oars rising and dipping, with square sail up to catch the wind she just flies along through the water... 

Sail up on the Vaila May (photo J Kerr)

.... it's a wonderful boat to experience (and it will be available for trips around Lerwick Harbour during Boat Week - see website for more detail: https://www.shetlandmuseumandarchives.org.uk/community/boat-week/events).  

You begin to understand how such boats were able to travel so far out to the far Haaf, although the fishermen must have had a cold, wet and cramped time living in the boat, often sleeping under the sheet for several nights until they had a full catch and could return to the fishing station. 

Old sail from the Boat Haven, Unst, and sections of oars from Shetland Museum
(photos by J Kerr)

The sixareen was best suited for the prosecution of the white fishing. With a keel about two thirds of the overall length, flaring outwards to the gunnels, like the Viking ships, inside it was divided into compartments by gratings under the benches where the men sat to row. With working sections to hold the fish, the bottom of the boat would be filled with ballast of beach boulders until ready to be replaced by the caught fish. Sitting on top of a run of fish secured down by netting made the boat more stable and less likely to take on water. In the owse room the flooring was higher so the shovel might have a smooth sweep from one side to the other when bailing. The mid room was for shooting and hauling lines, which could be 6 miles in length.

Rowing on the Vaila May (photo by J Kerr)

When the first fish showed 'light in the lum', then 'light below that', followed by 'white below white', hauling a line laden with struggling fish weighing 30 - 40 lbs per cod and ling, plus Halibut weighing 2 cwt and gigantic skate, all hauled from depths of 30 to 90 fathoms must have been a supreme test of strength, even with the boat being pulled by a couple of oars in the direction of the line.

The foreroom held ballast, fire kettle and pot, plus peat fuel, the head room and bow-space were culinary areas holding a sea chest for knives and utensils and food, along with water breakers, sail, six miles of line, 5000 baited hooks, buoys, sinkers, spare rope, boat hooks, oars, oilskins etc etc.. All of which, with a mast lying somewhere in the mix, didn't leave much room for manoeuvre in a boat containing six large fishermen rowing, a skipper at the stern trying his best to avoid the breaking sea that could flood in and the bailer trying to keep the sea at bay, all at some points, hauling and gutting fish, at snatched times in between, eating and sleeping.

Action on the Vaila May, (photo by J Kerr)

Shetland fishermen were unsurpassed in their handling of these open boats, rowing the 30-40 miles to the fishing grounds. But very few fishermen would have owned their own boats, most being owned by the landowners who hired them out for the fishing season, which of course meant if the boat was lost it had to be paid for, often by a grieving widow and children, who, not being able to pay, would be evicted from the croft. In 1774 a six-oared boat complete with mast, square sail and oars cost about £6 and measured 18ft on the keel, 24-25ft overall. 

A break from rowing  (photo by J Kerr)

Thank you to Brian et al. for all your work in planing our trip, and for all the rowing we made the crew do. 

Brian Wishart, Sandwick, Gilbert Fraser, West Burrafirth, Robert Wishart, Lerwick, Jim Tait Mowbray, Walls, Andrew Cooper, Walls, Trevor Jamieson, Cunningsburgh, Ewen Balfour, Brae, Trevor Jamieson (and for blowing of Ludder Horn)

Luder Horn (photo by J Kerr)

Vaila May (photo by J Kerr)

Sixareens on Stenness beach 1890's (photo from Shetland Photographic Archive)

'

.....out at the Haaf, before the compass came into general use - with the fog and tidal currents prevailing..... here the men of old had means of finding their way to land.... an underswell - the moder dye - the surge or physical protest the Ocean makes when her cosmic motion is restricted by the proximity of land. Unnoticeable in deep water, the wave-like motion or swell becomes clearly discernible to trained eyes on soundings, and can be best observed in foggy weather. ... No matter how fierce the gale, how wind-driven and uncertain the billow, the methodical undulations of the 'moder dye' could be seen across the hills of a wind-torn sea, always setting four-square towards the land'. 

Extracts taken from 'The Sail Fishermen of Shetland', A Halcrow, pub. The Shetland Times, 1994, 1st published T & J Manson, Lerwick, 1950.
Other information taken from 'Shetland Fishing Saga', C A Goodlad, pub. The Shetland Times Ltd. 1971, and 'Inshore Craft of Britain: In the Days of Sail and Oar' vol 1, Edgar J March, pub.david & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1970.
Plus information gleaned in conversation with Tommy Isbister, Trondra, Shetland: 
http://www.shetlandheritageassociation.com/members/central-mainland/burland-croft-trail) 

Putting the haaf fishermen back on the beach

Sunday 18th June - Readings

We met on Stenness Beach and a small group gathered; people very generously came and gave us their time and voices to read in the shelter of the Bød.  

We made some wonderful oral recordings read from 19thC handwritten texts that we’ve been painstakingly transcribing - extracts from the Day Book (now kept at Tangwick Haa Museum) noting daily purchases from the Bød when once it was a shop, from the Fishermen Agreements Book and from records of the Ling fishing - kept in Shetland Museum & Archives.

Thank you to John N Hunter, Nancy Hunter, Valerie Watt, Ruth Fisher, Wilma Stewart. 

The names of the fishermen who once inhabited the lodges and worked on this beach floated into the air and out to sea, merging with the sounds of sea birds and the sea pushing and pulling on the shore. It felt pretty special - in fact it made my spine tingle. 

Haaf fishermen from 1890's Stenness, (published in the New Shetlander No 59, 1961, supplied by John H Johnson)

Extract from the Fishermen's Agreements Book, 1861, Shetland Museum & Archives.

Stenness fishing lodges and Haaf fishermen 1890's ( Shetland Museum Photographic collection)

Slowly the beach begins to emerge as a place of work and the noise of the men working and living here. The more we walk around the shores the more the remains of the lodges become visible. Looking out to sea we imagine the sixareens pulling away from the shore, the land gradually disappearing as they row out to the far haaf. 

Today it's cold and there's a wind blowing the sea into the bay. Jo is up on the cliff on one side filming the incoming tide.

I go back to my kite flying attempts.... there's enough wind but I'm not sure that the camera is set in the right place...

It does give some sense of the landscape. I even catch glimpses of the ruined lodges and can see them more clearly as part of the landscape, but it's probably a bit too random for our project. Yes it would probably be easier to use a drone but I'm not keen on such high tech approaches and I like the sense of drawing in the sky over the landscape.

We leave the beach at 11pm - simmer dim is approaching in a few days time, but we need our sleep. Another busy day approaches