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

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TAP Field Report No. 5penalty. However, several references to thehanging of thieves and traitors can be foundin the Heimskringla sagas, recorded around1230 by Snorri Sturluson.From the second half of the 13th century, thekings of Scotland increasingly gained powerin the Northern Islands. Shetland inally cameunder Scottish rule in 1469, as it was pledgedby Christian I of Denmark-Norway to JamesIII of Scotland for the dowry of his daughterMargaret (Crawford 1983). However, it wasnot until 1611 that Scottish law was fullyadopted in Shetland. Until then, judgementsby the lawthing and (later) the sheriff werestill mainly based on the law issued by MagnusLawmender.In 1564, Lord Robert Stewart received a feuof Orkney and Shetland from his half-sister,Queen Mary of Scotland, and he later acquiredthe earldom and sheriffship of both archipelagos(Anderson 1982. Anderson 1996: 179).Robert appointed his half-brother, LaurenceBruce, as sheriff. Soon after Robert Stewartcame into power, the lawthing was movedfrom its traditional site in Tingwall to Scalloway,Shetland’s new capital. After his deathin 1593, Robert was succeeded by his sonPatrick, who commissioned the building ofScalloway castle (Anderson 1992). Like hisfather, Patrick used his power to exploit theislands for his own beneit rather recklessly(Donaldson 1958: 10 f.). He was arrestedupon charges of treason in 1609 and inallyexecuted in Edinburgh in 1615.From the reign of the Stewarts onwards,we get a good view of judicial practice inShetland from the preserved court books.They document several executions and otherpunishments, which were carried out at thegallows (Appendix I). The oldest known referenceto gallows in Shetland dates from 1574,and most likely refers to the Gallow Hill inScalloway. Smith (2006) believes that the lastexecution in Shetland took place around 1690(Smith 2006). The folklorist James (‘Jeemsie’)Laurenson has claimed that the last witchwas hanged on Fetlar in 1703, but the historicalrecord mentioned by Laurenson is notknown to me. 3 Most of the convicts, who weresentenced to death in the 17th century, werefound guilty of thievery; some, however, werecondemned for witchcraft, and there is onecase each of murder and bestiality.SourcesThe main evidence of former execution sitesin Shetland is found in place names. The nameGallow Hill can be found at least seven times inShetland. Apart from the frequency, the nameis highly remarkable in itself, since more thanninety percent of all place names in Shetlandare of Norse origin and not comprehensible tomodern English speakers (Nicolaisen 1983).Apart from the Gallow Hills, there are fourplace-names, which have been interpretedas derivatives from gálgi, meaning gallows inOld Norse.The only place of execution in Shetland,for which there is historical evidence, is theGallow Hill in Scalloway. Several executions,which took place here in the early 17th century,are documented in the court books ofShetland and Orkney (see Appendix I). Unfortunately,no old maps or scenes that show theexact location of these or any other gallows inShetland are known so far.By the time when the documents start tospeak, Scalloway was the seat of Shetland’smain court, which dealt with all capital offences.Death penalties were only performedin Scalloway. Assuming that at least some ofthe other alleged gallows sites were indeedused for executions, the lack of historical evidencethus provides a terminus ante quem.With one possible exception on Fetlar (seep. 19) none of the sites offers any visible,archaeological evidence for the former presenceof gibbets or gallows. Hence, archaeologyin its traditional sense, as ‘the study ofpast human societies and their environmentsthrough the systematic recovery and analysisof material culture or physical remains’ (Darvill2002: 21), cannot help us much furthereither.In some cases, the morbid history of thesite is recalled by a local tradition. Althoughthese stories form an interesting part of the6
Gallow hillssite’s biography and a wonderful example ofthe cultural meaning of places, we need to beaware that they also have their own culturalbiography and may well have turned up lateror may have signiicantly changed over time.In short, the evidence for the alleged placesof execution needs to be critically assessedfor each site individually. By comparing thenature of the sites and their position in thewider landscape, and compare them to placesof execution in other regions, we might indsimilarities that could give us some more informationabout the history of these intriguingplaces. A Geographical Information System(GIS) provides a valuable tool to analysethe topography of the sites and their relationshipboth with the physical environment andthe historic landscape.MethodologyMost of the sites, which will be discussedbelow, were visited in May and June 2011 toinvestigate their topography and check forthe presence of archaeological features. Onthis occasion, panoramic photos were takenin a 360° angle on every site, using a regularcompact digital camera (Appendix II). Sincethe exact location of the gallows is not knownfor any of the sites, except (perhaps) the oneon Fetlar, the photos were taken from the spot,which offers the widest view of the surroundingarea (and hence also presents the mostvisible spot). The single photos were adjustedand stitched together in Adobe Photoshop.Additionally, a viewshed was created forevery site in ArcMap 10.0. A viewshed modelsthe areas, which are visible from one or severalobservation points, based on a digital terrainmodel (DTM). The accuracy of the viewshedhence depends on the spatial resolutionand vertical accuracy of the used DTM.The viewsheds presented below werecalculated on the basis of the OS LandformPanorama DTM of Shetland (excluding FairIsle), freely available from Ordnance Survey. 4It has a horizontal resolution of 50x50m andvertical resolution of 1m. The OS LandformPanorama DTM was created by interpolationof 10m contour lines, derived from the Landranger®1:50,000 scale map series, which inturn were generated from stereo aerial photographyfrom the 1970s (Ordnance Survey2010: 9).It is assumed that the visibility of the siteand its surroundings are reciprocal, i.e. thatthe site can be seen from all areas, which arevisible from the site. Since the gallows or gibbetswould have risen to a certain height fromthe ground, the observation points were givenan offset of 2m. In some cases, a combinedviewshed was created for several pointsaround the spot from where the photos weretaken, to reduce the effect of sharp drops inthe DTM at grid cell edges and to achieve abetter correspondence with the actual view.The viewsheds do not only help to locatethe landscape features shown on the panoramicphotos, but also allow for a quantitativeanalysis of the view. We can calculate the sizeof the visible area, and also calculate the divisionof the visible land and sea surface. SinceShetland’s vegetation has hardly changed inthe past 3000 years (Bennett et al. 1992), itoffers good opportunities for viewshed analysis;trees being rare, it can be assumed thatthe view across the landscape was almost thesame in the Middle Ages as it is now.7
Page 1 and 2: TAP Field Report No. 5A survey ofSh
Page 3 and 4: Gallow hillsTable of contentsIntrod
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Page 10 and 11: TAP Field Report No. 5to the northw
Page 12 and 13: TAP Field Report No. 5Figure 11 Top
Page 14 and 15: TAP Field Report No. 5 Figure 17 V
Page 16 and 17: TAP Field Report No. 5Hills (252m).
Page 18 and 19: TAP Field Report No. 59) Watch Hill
Page 20: TAP Field Report No. 5Figure 28 Top
Page 23 and 24: Gallow hillsFigure 36 Topography of
Page 25 and 26: Gallow hillsWilgi Geos should proba
Page 27 and 28: Gallow hillsboth from the sea and l
Page 29 and 30: Gallow hillsFigure 44 Location of p
Page 31 and 32: Gallow hillsas Herrisdale (Park) an
Page 33 and 34: Gallow hillsof the discussed sites
Page 35 and 36: Gallow hillsturn are strongly conne
Page 37 and 38: Gallow hillsNotes1Brian Smith, foru
Page 39 and 40: Gallow hillsCrawford, O.G.S. 1922.
Page 41 and 42: Gallow hillsAppendix IHistorically
Page 43 and 44: Gallow hills‘Luckymenis Ness’ (
Page 45 and 46: Gallow hillsto be naild to the gall
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