Shielin-Bough-Publication WEB - with bleed

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Shielin-bough: inter-cultural connections
We gathered around the topic of
the laavu and the shieling, under
the shelter of shielin-bough which
came to represent a conceptual,
physical and social space for
thinking and learning together. The
project was structured around
inter-cultural sharing of insight in
the differential textures of virtual
and physical space. Through
shielin-bough we came together
to explore the Finnish laavu and
the Scottish shieling. We learned
about the history of their use
in their respective landscapes
and the cultural practices which
they engendered. We designed
local activities in Finland and
Scotland which supported student
research, fieldwork and learning in
innovative, immersive pedagogic
environments.
By engaging in imaginative
journeys through the historic
landscape we learned about our
places in a deep and meaningful
way. These learnings were shared
at a virtual seminar held between
GSA Highlands & Islands and
the University of Lapland. The
presentations formed part of
the co-design workshops which
followed. They were held with
the objective of designing a
shelter, inspired by the Finnish
laavu, which would be used for
inter-cultural dialogue through
storytelling, preparing and sharing
food.
It has been the ambition of this
project to bring people together,
and we thank the Scottish
Government for their generous
support of the project through
the Arctic Connections Fund.
The aim of this fund is to enable
collaboration between Scottish
and Arctic organisations, and our
aim in applying to the fund was
to build a relationship between
the University of Lapland and
The Glasgow School of Art
which would foster a continuing
partnership between the
institutions to the benefit of our
students. We have succeeded
in laying a strong foundation for
this and we look forward to our
continued work together under the
auspices of the University of the
Arctic’s Arctic Sustainable Art and
Design Network (ASAD).
We hope that you enjoy the visual
essays that follow. They show the
archival research, the fieldwork
and the immersive pedagogies
undertaken through this project.
The first section of the publication
conveys the laavu’s historic use
through archival images alongside
the documentation of some of
its various contemporary forms.
This includes images of fieldwork
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undertaken at a community built
laavu at Meltosjärvi in Finland.
We are appreciative of the
contribution made to the project
by Masters students Ella Haavisto
and Pinja Iivonen from the
University of Lapland. The insights
that they have gathered and
shared have energised the project
throughout, affirming the benefits
of inter-institutional learning.
The second section of the
publication moves seamlessly
from the first, charting the
immersive pedagogic experience
held at GSA’s Highlands & Islands
campus. During these workshops
we journeyed imaginatively
through the historic landscape of
Scotland to understand the history
and culture of the shieling through
embodied pedagogy. This involved
a multi-sensory engagement
with transhumance, imagining
the journey through storytelling,
experiencing it through distilled
natural perfumes of the meadow,
the earth and the imagined interior
of a shieling, while making butter
and eating bannocks.
Making the dream a reality in the
final stage of the project would
not have been possible without
the financial support of the
Finnish Institute UK + Ireland, and
the creative facilitation provided
by the In The Making collective
who joined the project to support
the co-design process. This phase
of the project can be found by
following the link to
www.shielinbough.co.uk.

The co-design has involved
collaborative learning between the
Mackintosh School of Architecture,
GSA Highlands & Islands and the
University of Lapland. Working
with the students in a space of
inter-disciplinary learning, utilising
a pedagogy of sociability, hitched
to creative, imaginative dreaming
has brought joy to the project.
It has been a privilege to be
involved in shielin-bough, a project
which has enabled a spacebetween
to emerge organically.
We have populated this space
with stories of place, cultural
doings, re-imaginings, and most
importantly, with time spent
being-together. This has reminded
us of the potency of sharing
culture, along with the power of
people imagining and creating
together to find a place to sit with
one another under the stars in the
glow of firelight.
Dr Gina Wall and Professor Timo
Jokela
March, 2023

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It is early summer in the year
seventeen hundred and thirty,
we are walking with our cattle
herd to the distant shieling
on the high pasture. We call
this the summer flitting. Flit
is a Scots word meaning to
move home. The warm air
stirs the fragrance of bog
myrtle which catches my
nostrils with its sweet, warm
resinous smell. We also call
this sweet gale. I bend down
to pluck a few sprigs and
tuck them behind each ear
to keep the midges away. The
landscape is mountainous
and we are surrounded by
steep hills. They are stark, but
there is beauty in the details,
small plants, stones covered
with lichen and the changing
patterns of weather. Today it is
warm and fine, shadows skid
across the hillsides as the
sun interacts with cloud. The
ground is heavy underfoot as I
walk through green moss and
brown heather, the blooms
are not yet out and the dry
brush of the heather catches
at my legs, scratching me as I
move through the landscape.
In the blue summer sky above
I hear the haunting cry of
curlews.

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Now, up ahead in the valley
the shieling comes into view,
this is our summer home for
the next month and a half -
it is here that we will graze
our livestock. We will make
butter and cheese with the
fat rich milk that the cattle
produce from the sweet new
grass of the high pasture.
The pastures contain wild
food that we often forage to
supplement our diet. In the
lower meadows chickweed
grows alongside yarrow which
is used to flavour beer. We
also collect sorrel, sometimes
called sour dock which is rich
in vitamin C. Chewing on sorrel
stems relieves our thirst on a
hot summer’s day, perfect for
a day like today after a long
walk.

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Bannock Recipe
Ingredients
• 290g Oatmeal (ground)
• 305g Plain flour
• 2 teaspoons Baking powder
• 1 and ½ teaspoons Salt
• 375ml Buttermilk
Method
Mix the oatmeal and flour together in the bowl and add salt. Add the
baking powder to the Buttermilk, it will froth a bit. Add the milk mixture
to the dry ingredients in the bowl. Try to make sure that the mixture
doesn’t get too sticky, so be careful to add the buttermilk gradually,
bringing it together with the wooden spoon to form a workable dough.
Take the dough from the bowl and split evenly in to two. Pat the dough
into a rough circle approximately 2 cm in thickness. It should preferably
be the same diameter as your griddle. Take care not to overhandle the
dough as you may knock the air out of it.
Indent the dough to make four quarters then add the dough to your
heated griddle/pan. Cook on a medium heat (to avoid burning) until
cooked all the way through. Cook the bottom first for around two thirds
of the cooking time. Then flip over to cook the top.
Be patient, cooking can take between 30-40 minutes depending upon
the thickness of your Bannock and the style of your pan.
Once cooked, enjoy warm with hand-made wild sorrel butter.
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arable
a type of land for growing grain
bannock
a traditional round flat bread,
usually unleavened and cooked on
a stone
áiridh
a Scots Gaelic word for bothy or
shieling
barley (bere)
a type of grain used for making
bread, beer and whisky
bog myrtle
a sweet smelling plant that grows
in wet upland habitats
bothy
a rudimentary hut wilderness hut,
often previously a shieling
chickweed
a small edible wild plant with
slender stems and white flowers
crotal
a Scots Gaelic word for lichen
craobh-ghiuthais
Scots Gaelic for pine tree
crowdie
soft fresh cheese made from
cow’s milk
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curlew
a type of bird with a beautiful
slender beak and distinctive call
flit
Scots word meaning to move
house
fraoch
a Scots Gaelic word for heather
davoch
an ancient Scottish land
measurement, or farm
forage
the act of searching for wild food
heather
a small shrub which grows on
moors, flowering purple in the
Autumn

järvi
a Finnish word for loch
lichen
a plant composed of a fungus and
an alga growing symbiotically
moss
small green plant found growing in
boggy areas
laavu
a traditional small shelter, found in
wilderness and civic environments
midge
very small biting insect found
in Scotland in the summer and
autumn
pasture
land covered with grass suitable
for grazing animals (cows, horses,
sheep and goats)
oat
a grain commonly used in
Scotland to make porridge,
oatcakes and bannocks
peat reek
peat smoke caused by the burning
of dry peat for fuel
peat
heather and other plants that have
partially decomposed in wet acidic
conditions
sorrel
a small edible wild plant with
acidic leaves
shieling
a rudimentary hut used for
nomadic pastoral use
yarrow
a herbaceous edible wild plant of
the daisy family
tyyni
a Finnish word for calm, tranquil,
serene
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The shieling is a basic handbuilt
stone shelter with a
roof of turf and peat overlaid
on timbers, and inside it has
alcoves made out of stone for
storing butter and cheese. We
have been building dwellings
like these for about 5,000
years. The simple interior of
the shieling has space for us
and our animals and after a
long summer’s day we sleep
deeply on our bedding made
of heather, surrounded by
the smell of peat reek and
bannocks from the cooking
fire. This is a time that the
community looks forward
to each year, a holiday of
sorts, filled with the industry
of tending to the animals,
churning butter and making
cheese.

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Images by page number
Cover: Hen House, Altyre Estate. Photograph: Gina Wall 2023
2. Kaltilaavu, Vaatunginköngäs, Rovaniemi. Photograph: Pinja Iivonen 2023
4. Laavu, Sairaalanniemi, Rovaniemi. Photograph: Pinja Iivonen, 2022
5. Coffee, at the Laavu, Meltosjärvi. Photograph: Ella Haavisto, 2022
6. Laavu, Meltosjärvi. Photograph: Ella Haavisto, 2022
9. At the Laavu, Meltosjärvi. Photograph: Ella Haavisto, 2022
10. Log driver’s laavu by a rakovalkea. 1923. Photograph: Sakari Pälsi.
Finnish Heritage Agency. Ethnographic Picture Collection. Helsinki,
Finland. Creative commons license: https://creativecommons.org
13. Elk Antlers on Laavu, Meltosjärvi. Photograph: Ella Haavisto, 2022
14. Landscape and cooking fire, Meltosjärvi. Photograph: Ella Haavisto, 2022
15. Sausages, Meltosjärvi. Photograph: Ella Haavisto, 2022
16. Cooking pot, Meltosjärvi. Photograph: Ella Haavisto, 2022
19. Weathered wood, Lochindorb Estate. Photograph: Gina Wall, 2023
21. Sulphur Firedot Lichen, Lochindorb Estate. Photograph: Gina Wall, 2023
22. Across the hinterland, Lochindorb Estate. Photograph: Gina Wall, 2023
24. Wild meadow plans, Altyre Estate. Photograph: Gina Wall, 2022
25. Huathe/Hawthorn, Altyre Estate. Photograph: Gina Wall, 2022
28. Davoch, Illustration. Photograph: Gina Wall, 2023
31. Sorrel butter. Photograph: Gina Wall, 2022
32. Student Feedback Card. Design: Gabby Morris, 2022
34. Bannock. Photograph: Gina Wall, 2022
39. Plan view of a shieling. Illustration: Gina Wall, 2023
42. Making Charcoal. Photograph: Gina Wall, 2023
43. Butter making, Sensing the storied landscape workshop. Photograph:
Ahmed Bin-Zia, 2022
44. Smellscapes. Design and production: Gabby Morris, 2022
47. Scots pine and lichen. Photograph: Gina Wall, 2023
48. Heather/Froach. Print: Gina Wall, 2023
51. Reindeer Moss. Photograph: Gina Wall, 2023
52. Handmade Butter. Photograph: Gina Wall, 2022
53. Student Feedback Card. Design: Gabby Morris, 2022
55. Plan View of a shieling. Illustration: Gina Wall, 2023
Back Cover: Roadsign. Photograph: Gina Wall, 2023
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Project Team:
Research & Project Leads: Dr Gina Wall & Professor Timo Jokela
Designer: Gabby Morris
Illustration & Printing: Dr Gina Wall
Student Researchers: Ella Havisto & Pinja Iivonen
www.shielinbough.co.uk ISBN: 978-1-7394086-0-2
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