From the archives: The Dutch in Shetland, 7 June 1902

YEAR after year, as surely as June returns, the Dutch busses, booms, or luggers sail into Bressay Sound, Shetland [in pursuit of fish shoals].

With a few occasional lapses, the longest of which occurred during the Napoleonic Wars, they have done so ever since the 13th century.

The Shetland Islands have always held on European seas the same kind of distinction as the Netherlands, as the battlefield of Europe, have held on land. From the legendary days when Vikings drove the tilling and fishing papae into the Atlantic, to the present day, when the fearsome voices of the alien trawler is uplifted round their shores, the islands have suffered violence at the hands of strangers. These, pursuing their interests and settling their differences round the islands, have as little regarded the island welfare as buffalo herds, in their annual combats, cared for trampling the prairie.

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