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Storytelling meetup in Lerwick for Research


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Hello!

 

I'm going to be in Lerwick next week and I'm looking for people to help me out with a bit of storytelling for my Master's research paper on traditional stories, ghost stories, trow (broonie) stories, or any kind of story in Shetland. Please contact me if you're interested. I'm in Shetland from the 14th to the 20th. Every story will be recorded, so you'll need to sign a permission form, as the University of Aberdeen requires them for any research participant. You may contact me for anything. Questions, comments, ect. All ages are welcomed.

 

Thanks!

Jen

 

A bit about my research. I am currently looking into the Trow on Christmas on Yell. I'm researching the style of story it has become, what is predicted to become and Shetland Oral traditions. So far my research has presented the Trow in the Shetland tradition to be of multiple identities, hailing from four main parts of the world. The one in Yell seems to date back to a draug or drow from Norway. The Trow comes from Orkney and Scottish traditions, which in turn is part of the larger motif of the British Trow. Over the years, the story has changed very little, until the emergence of the Modern age, where the story starts to shift from Trow belief to the modern understanding of Ghost belief. The word ghost was once a blanketing term used for the Fairy Folk, to which the Trow belonged to. Over the years, ghost and fairy became separate, strongly influenced by the outsider (Those not in Shetland). I found the Trow is now a ghost, slowly losing the fairy connection. This is a rather exciting time to see a story in such a transition as this. My research is connecting the dots to what this story was, to what it became, to what it is now in the current modern age. Local insight is rather key, as I want to present this from more of the Shetland view and understanding of this story.

 

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possibly this story?

 

Windhouse in Mid Yell was built in 1801 on the site of a previous house. It was always said to be haunted and things were heard going up and down the stairs. The servants were aware of forms passing them on the stairs and some were very frightened. The Spence family who owned the house were plagued by the deaths of three children on consecutive Christmases. The fourth year they decided to spend Christmas with cousins in Mid Yell. As they prepared to leave, they heard a knock and found a shipwrecked mariner at the door.

The Spences fed and watered the man and told him of the fate of the children. The man didn't believe in the haunting and decided to stay in the house. They showed him where there was a great eetch [adze] for chopping wood that he could use as a weapon. At midnight a roar came about the house, it darkened inside, and the house shook. The man grabbed the eetch and threw it at a black lump, which fell into a heap of blubber on the ground. He told the people he'd killed the trow [troll, fairy] and it was buried at the head of the voe in Mid Yell, where the grass is still green.

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I always thought Trows came from a Scandinavian line of mythology so I'm not sure where "hailing from four main parts of the world" fits in or "The Trow comes from Orkney and Scottish traditions, which in turn is part of the larger motif of the British Trow".

 

In Iceland a new road was halted because it was going to disturb a place(large stone) where "elvs" lived.  In Iceland they're called huldufólk, meaning "the hidden people".

 

"The rock, known as Ófeigskirkja, has been at the centre of an eight year battle to stop a road being built through this 8,000-year-old landscape, a spectacularly barren and evocative terrain a little to the north of Reykjavík, which some believe is a site of supernatural forces".

 

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/25/iceland-construction-respect-elves-or-else

 

If you visit the Shetland Museum you can visit and go inside the Trowie Knowe.

 

:) 

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possibly this story?

 

Windhouse in Mid Yell was built in 1801 on the site of a previous house. It was always said to be haunted and things were heard going up and down the stairs. The servants were aware of forms passing them on the stairs and some were very frightened. The Spence family who owned the house were plagued by the deaths of three children on consecutive Christmases. The fourth year they decided to spend Christmas with cousins in Mid Yell. As they prepared to leave, they heard a knock and found a shipwrecked mariner at the door.

The Spences fed and watered the man and told him of the fate of the children. The man didn't believe in the haunting and decided to stay in the house. They showed him where there was a great eetch [adze] for chopping wood that he could use as a weapon. At midnight a roar came about the house, it darkened inside, and the house shook. The man grabbed the eetch and threw it at a black lump, which fell into a heap of blubber on the ground. He told the people he'd killed the trow [troll, fairy] and it was buried at the head of the voe in Mid Yell, where the grass is still green.

My understanding a da sem story wis dat it wis a selkie dat he killed, a different entity fae a trow.

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^ The story maybe has almost as many different descriptions of the entity as there are folk who've re-told it. I'd forgotten ever hearing it until reading it over again reminded me of it, but as best as I can mind the version I heard/read had it being a ship's Captain, and he'd fallen asleep, only to be woken by some unindentifiable "demon" bursting in to the house, that he fought a pitched battle with, before eventually getting the upper hand and slowly driving it out of the house and down the hill, and had almost reached the shore before he managed to deliver the fatal blow. Whereupon the "demon" morphed in to something akin to a shapeless mass of very thick gunk, which he then buried.

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