Based on years of original research, this book of essays deals with the rural communities of Shetland over six centuries. T
Toons and Tenants contains a full explanation of the famous letter of 1299 – Shetland’s oldest document – about events on the island of Papa Stour. Brian Smith shows how medieval Shetlanders divided up their land, and how they shared their pasture, disposing of several myths in the process. He deals pungently with the new regime of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when Shetland landlords forced their tenants to fish for them.
Illustrated by rare photographs of Shetland townships, Toons and Tenants throws a flood of new light on the history of the islands.
Brian Smith
Paperback
108 pages
