Whalsay and the Hanseatic League

By Brian Smith and Jonathan Wills

 

The Pier House

We don’t know the exact age of Pier House in Symbister, but local tradition says it was originally built by German merchants.  Historical records show that merchants from Bremen were coming to Whalsay in the 16th century.  The road leading up from the Pier House to the public hall, now called the “Böd Walk”, used to be known as the “Bremen Strasse” (Bremen Street).  Tradition has it that the Bremen merchants had their Booth where the large dwelling house at the head of the dock now stands.  The name “Booth” is the anglicised version of the Old Norse word “böd” meaning hut or storehouse, which is still used in the Shetland dialect.  The German word for hut is “bude”.

 

Merchants from Hamburg are first recorded in Whalsay in the early 17th century.  The Whalsay antiquarian R Stuart Bruce believed that Hamburg merchants built the Pier House.

 

Architectural historians are not sure about the shape of the original building.  But it is clear that the pier and booth were built at the same time because the building rises straight from the sea and is very much part of the dock.

 

The Pier House has been altered several times during its long life.  The upper gables are of the same granite as Symbister House which was built about 1830 and were probably added at that time using left over stone.  Local tradition has it that since there was no local supply the granite was quarried at Stavaness in Nesting over on the Shetland Mainland and brought across in boats to be landed at the Pier House.

 

The Pier House was used at a store for a nearby shop until the 1970s.

 

Whalsay

The main reason why the German merchants came to Shetland was to trade for fish – they dried ling and cod known as “stockfish”.  Whalsay’s economy and way of life is still dominated by fishing as can be seen from the large fleet tied up in the modern harbour at the other side of Symbister Voe. 

 

Some traces of the Hansa days can still be found in Whalsay’s landscape.  The shingle beach between the Pier House and the modern harbour would have been used for drying the “stockfish”.  The small building known as the “skeo” half way along the beach, was also used in the fish-drying process which continued largely unchanged until the end of the 19th century.  Similar beaches and “skeos” can be found elsewhere in Shetland where Hanseatic merchants had booths.

 

The ling and cod were caught on hooks on long lines mainly from boats known as “fourereens” (four-oared) which were imported from Norway.  Their modern counterparts can still be seen over in the new harbour. 

 

One German merchant has left his name in Whalsay: a large rock in the North Voe, the Kurt Stane, may take its name from either Kurt Lemkin or Kurt Warnekind who were trading here in the 1640s or from Kurt Helelingk, whom we meet again on the next panel.  Tradition has it that the German merchants’ ships used to lie alongside this rock and unload their cargoes.  A shallow area on the seabed adjacent to Kurt’s Stane is thought to be the result of ballast thrown there by German merchants.  A document dated 1715 which was found among the Symbister House papers refers to a booth at Saltness.  It would probably have been near the Kurt Stane but no trace remains today.  There are shingle beaches, suitable for fish drying, on either side of the Kurt Stane – in Saltness itself and the North Beach.

 

Life in Whalsay in Hansa Times

Two events involving the Germans, which happened at Symbister in the mid-16th century, give us a vivid picture of life at that time.

 

In 1557 a Bremen skipper, Kurt Hemelingk, was based at Symbister.  One day his crew arrived back late at night after seeing to business at Laxfirth in Tingwall.  Kurt flew into rage, and attacked them with a handspike.  The crew defended themselves and one of them broke two of Kurt’s fingers.  Kurt seemed all right the following day, but two weeks later he died.

 

Kurt’s brother arrived in Whalsay and accused Gert Brecker, the ship’s carpenter, of murder.  Gert went into hiding in Whalsay, but later gave himself up.  Two years later he was prosecuted before the Council of Bremen, and much discussion took place concerning the true reason for Kurt’s death.  Unfortunately, the final decision has not been preserved.

 

Ten years later, another Bremen merchant, Herman Schröder, was going about his business at Symbister when he was attacked by pirates.  They fired guns and destroyed his booth, which may have been on the site of the large house which stands at the head of the dock.

 

In Shetland, in the second half of the 16th century, the old native landowners were being pushed out by incomers from Scotland.  In Whalsay, the governor of Shetland, Laurence Bruce, drove out the owner of Symbister, a man called Colbein.  Local tradition says that Bruce chased Colbein with a gun, and drove him over a cliff at an inlet which has now disappeared but which was called Kirnygeo.  It is said that Colbein leapt on board a Norwegian ship from a rock in the geo, which forty years ago was still known as Colbein’s Stane.

 

Bruce then gave Symbister to his relative, William Bruce.  The Bruce family got hold of more and more land in Whalsay, until they owned the whole island.  Their original house, the Old Haa, has been converted to a modern dwelling house and stands off to the right as you reach the top of the Böd Walk.  It was replaced by Symbister House with its associated farm buildings.  The farm was broken up in the early 1900s to complete the pattern of crofts seen today.  The Symbister Estate went bankrupt in the 1920s and the big house stood empty from the early 1940s until it was converted to a school in the 1960s.