Dispatches from the Sporting Life Read Online Free Page A

we say goodbye to our impeccable hosts at the first-class Tulchan Lodge, unaware that we have eaten our last good meal in Scotland. Weather conditions being what they are, our flight to Shetland, via Orkney, is delayed for two hours. The airline clerk is amused when I doublecheck that our luggage is tagged for the right island. “If you’re going to Shetland,” he says cheerily, “all you’ll need is an umbrella.”
    Bouncing high over the North Sea, I calm myself by trying once more to tackle the history of our ultimate destination, Orkney, this time digging into a real page-turner,
Orkneyinga Saga,
the history of the earls of Orkney from the ninth century to the thirteenth, translated from the Icelandic by Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards: “Earl Thorfinn had five sons, one called Arnfinn, the next Havard the Fecund, the third Hlodvir, the fourth Ljot, and the fifth Skuli. Ragnhild Eirik’s-Daughter plotted the death of her husband Arnfinn at Murkle in Caithness, then married his brother Havard the Fecund….”
    On first sight, Shetland is absolutely haunting. Not a tree to be seen anywhere. Bare, gaunt hills, rock bursting like bone through the thin topsoil. Seemingly endless rolling fields of rich, dark peat, the fuel cut and stacked to dry here and there. Sheep foraging everywhere. And above, intruding helicoptersferrying workers to and from the North Sea oil rigs. Our taxi driver is quick to point out that nobody speaks Gaelic here or would be caught wearing a kilt. The Shetlanders, honouring their Viking heritage, seem to identify more closely with Iceland and Norway (Bergen is accessible by overnight ferry from Lerwick) than they do with Scotland.
    As we proceed in the wind and rain through the narrow streets of bleak, grey stone Lerwick, I can’t help observing that fishing equipment is being offered at 25 percent off everywhere, a depressing indication that the season is over. I also note that on the island God gave to Calvin, it is illegal to take a salmon or a sea trout on a Sunday.
    Finally we reach our hotel, the Shetland, overlooking the harbour but within walking distance of the city centre, especially given favourable tailwinds. Considering the hotel’s grim, fortresslike exterior, I wonder whether we’re expected to register or if we’ll simply be fingerprinted and led to our cell. Inside, it is dark and reeks of damp and of cleaning fluid. Once out for a stroll, however, leaning into the wind, we are overwhelmed by the natural friendliness of the islanders, strangers greeting us warmly everywhere.
    Dinner at the Shetland hotel proves inedible. Slabs of fish cemented inside artificially coloured bread crumbs. Potatoes rock-hard and raw through the middle. Slushy green peas. Our host, the hotel manager or warden, tells us that Russian and other Eastern bloc freighters regularly put in at the harbour and that the crews are allowed to wander freely through the port town. Me, I put this down to a clever KGB plot. Once the commie seamen have hada taste of beautiful downtown Lerwick, perhaps their first and only glimpse of the freedom-loving West, they can’t wait to sail home to the fleshpots of Leningrad or Gdansk.
    Mind you, Shetland (population twenty-three thousand) is well worth a visit. First settled by Neolithic farmers some five thousand years ago, it is uncommonly rich in both fascinating archaeological sites and, for once, truly breathtaking views from the top of jagged cliffs that soar hundreds of feet above the pelting sea. At one point—Mavis Grind—the highway crosses a chicken neck of land, the Atlantic visible on one side and the North Sea on the other.
    The prime archaeological site is Jarlshof, hard by Sumburgh airport. Jarlshof, which takes its name from Sir Walter Scott’s novel
The Pirate,
leads the amazed visitor from Stone Age settlement, through Bronze, to Iron Age. “Some eighty years ago,” Eric Linklater wrote in
Orkney & Shetland,
first published in 1965 and deservedly