A place apart? : debating landscapes and identities in the Shetland Islands

This thesis explores a number of contemporary debates with a bearing on landscapes and identities in the Shetland Islands – an archipelago caught between the Atlantic and the North Sea – and which physical location often seems notoriously difficult to ‘pin down’ by outsiders. Meanwhile, islanders too may sometimes seem at a loss, not so much in terms of where they are as who they are, whether Scottish, or Scandinavian, or something that is neither of the two. Geographical and cultural location, belonging and tensions between local and national interests are discussed by the author in relation to several contested issues, ranging from landscape management and nature conservation to place branding and island stereotypes, with the overall purpose of investigating where people in this group of islands currently ‘are’ in relation to questions of landscape and identity. In this context, the thesis also highlights some aspects of the interconnectedness of these concepts from different theoretical perspectives as well as when expressed and enacted in the course of everyday life. The present study, which is distinctly place specific in character, is set against a backdrop of devolved power structures, nation building and the upcoming referendum on Scottish independence.