TAP Field Report No. 5 A survey of Shetland's gallow hills Joris ...

Gallow hillsas Herrisdale (Park) and Herrislea (House /Hill) in Veensgarth.It is generally assumed that the old thingparishes,as well as the héruð each had theirown, local assembly. The only assembly sitewhich can be located with some certainty is atTingwall (from Old Norse Þingvöllr, ‘the ieldsof the parliament’). According to the tradition,the assembly met at the islet called Law TingHolm, at the north side of the lake (Coolen &Mehler 2010: 6-9). There is a very close spatialrelationship between the assembly site,the parish church and the Gallow Hill: theholm is located only 340m from the churchand exactly 1km from the summit of GallowHill.It seems logical to believe that the localassemblies of Delting, Nesting, Lunnasting,Aithsting and Sandsting were held in theDale, Neap, Lunna, Aith and Sand respectively(Smith 2009: 41). Sand and Lunna each hosta Medieval parish church, while Neap is atleast close to the former parish church ofKirkabister. There are old church sites in Aithand Dale too, but they are not documented asparish churches. However, none of these allegedthing-sites is close to any of the gallowssites (Fig. 45). As for the herra-names, thereis an interesting association of the Herra witha parish church and a Gallow Hill in Fetlar, allbeing located within 2km from each other.The Herra in Mid Yell is about 3km from Holsigarth,but as said, this site is very dubious.Although there are several pre-Reformationchapel and church sites known in the vicinity,none of them is recorded as a parish church.The same applies to the chapel site in Vidlin,which is located about 0.5km from the Herrain Lunnasting.One could argue that the places of executionmight have been located near the boundaryof a judicial district rather than close to thecourt site. In Medieval and Early Modern Europe,gallows were often erected near districtboundaries for both practical and symbolicreasons (e.g. Piech 2010: 314. Mol 2007, 281ff.). Reynolds (2009, 219-27) has describedthe strong association between Anglo-Saxonexecution cemeteries and Early Medievalhundred boundaries. Since we know littleabout the Medieval parish division of Shetland,it is almost impossible to reconstructthe parish boundaries. However, no matterwhere the boundaries were, the area betweenthe alleged thing-sites mentioned above iscompletely devoid of known gallows sites. Ofthe present thing-parishes, only Tingwall andDelting include a gallows site. Although theformer is close to the border of Whiteness, itdoes not overlook any access route betweenthe two parishes. Moreover, Whiteness is nothing-parish. The Gallow Hill of Brae in Deltingseems more convincing: it is close to theborder of Northmavine, and everybody whowould cross Mavis Grind and the wider isthmusof Brae would have been confronted withthe sight of the gallows.There is, however, an interesting relationshipbetween the gallows sites and post-Medieval parish borders (Fig. 46). The latterwere taken from a modern map showing theparishes listed in the Old Statistical Account(1791-99). 31 Alternatively, the parishes canalso be modelled based on the descriptionsof Pitcairn and Brand and the location of Medievalparish churches. Assuming that eachparish church lies more or less in the centreof its associated parish, the parishes can bemodelled as Thiessen polygons (Fig. 47). Ofcourse this is a highly theoretical and perhapssimplistic approach, since it does not accountfor the actual geography. Surely, the actualdivision was more complex. However, theThiessen polygons show strong similaritieswith the parishes listed in the Old StatisticalAccount, and as long as we acknowledge thetheoretical character of this approach, thereseems to be some justiication for it.At irst sight it seems striking that there isnever more than one gallows site per parish,except in the already discussed case ofTingwall. However, this is simply a consequenceof the already discussed correlationbetween the gallows sites and Medieval parishchurches. The Thiessen polygons show31