Shetland Midsummer Marked by Johnsmas Foy

Shetland’s midsummer festival, the Johnsmas Foy, is over for another year.  The Foy is a recently-revived festival that, centuries ago, used to mark the arrival of the Dutch herring fleet in the islands.  The 2008 Foy included an exciting line-up of local and international events.  The theme for the year was Shetland’s historic connection with the ports of the Hanseatic League, a partnership that dominated trade in the islands for more than 300 years from around 1400. 

 

Appropriately, musicians and poets from the Bremen area were among those heading to the isles for the Foy, which ran from 19 to 29 June.  Guest speakers explained the history of the Hanseatic trade connections with Germany and Norway.  However, this year’s Foy also featured a wide range of other attractions, from food to sailing and football to walking.  Events took place from Unst, Britain’s most northerly island, to Fair Isle, which lies between Orkney and Shetland.  The musical programme ranged through traditional and contemporary fiddle, adventurous jazz and sublime classical playing. 

 

Performers included Chris Stout, one of Shetland’s best-known musical ambassadors, whose work recognises few boundaries; rooted in Shetland’s fiddle tradition, he embraces jazz, latin and electro-acoustic influences.  For jazz enthusiasts, there were the Bremen-based Ed Kröger Quintet - a truly international band - and Shetland Youth Jazz.  One of Scotland’s brightest young bands, Bodega made three appearances.  Faerd, a trio from Denmark, played in Fair Isle and Lerwick and there was German traditional music too, from Wolfgang Rieck, who has a particular interest in plattdeutsche, the old Low German tongue.  From Norway, there was a male voice choir complete with accordion and harmonica, Shantykoret Cape Horn.

 

Classical concerts featured too: on the opening night, the very talented Chroma Ensemble played Prokofiev and Stravinsky and Shetland pianist Neil Georgeson, now London-based, performed on the closing night in a programme that included Patrick Nunn’s ‘Music of the spheres’, which uses sounds recorded by NASA of the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn and other planets alongside Bach preludes and fugues and works by Schubert, Chopin and Prokofiev.

 

There was lots to engage lovers of the spoken word.  There were appearances in Lerwick and Unst by poet Sujata Bhatt, one of the judges for the 2008 T S Eliot Prize, and her husband, German writer Michael Augustin.  They also took part in a workshop for local writers and spent time working with students in the Anderson High School and Brae High School.  Sujata Bhatt’s poetry is colourful and often deeply moving.  Michael Augustin’s is reflective, questioning and very witty.  Talks about the Hanseatic trade, in both its German and Norwegian guises, were given by two leading experts, Dr Mark Gardiner and Dr Knut Helle.

 

Exhibitions included Along the Edges, in which four artists explored where sea and land meet on three remote coasts, East Sutherland, Orkney and Shetland.  In Yell, another exhibition interpreted ‘A Descent Into The Maelstrom’, the short story by Edgar Allan Poe, through film, drawings and a woven whirlpool sculpture.

 

Out of doors, there was something to appeal to everyone.  Sports fans were  very well catered for.  Shetland beat Highland League side Deveronvale 2-1 in an action-packed game and there was also a rugby sevens tournament and the Shetland Half-Marathon.  Guided walks were on offer through some of Shetland’s outstanding natural history on the islands of Unst, Noss and Mousa.

 

There was the usual full programme of events on the water.  The Lombardini 1000-mile Double Handed Race and the Sjøassistanse Bergen–Shetland Races were both be in Lerwick over the first weekend of the Foy and, during the week, there were opportunities to sail on the restored sail fishing vessel, the Swan or on other craft.  At the Shetland Museum and Archives, another highlight was the launching of the two boats – a sixareen and a haddock boat – that have been under construction over the winter.

 

For the first four days of the Johnsmas Foy, Victoria Pier in Lerwick hosted Flavour of Shetland, an open-air event with crafts, music and food.  BBC Radio Scotland’s Tom Morton broadcast live from the pier, with a guest appearance by Edwyn Collins.  On that first Saturday, too – which was also Shetland Flag Day – there was a Viking Parade and the Lerwick Summer Carnival.  The island of Fetlar hosted its own Foy on the second weekend.

 

The 2009 Johnsmas Foy will have a Viking theme and is expected to take place between 19 and 28 June.  We hope you’ll be able to join us!