Islanders

by Margaret Elphinstone

Islanders is Margaret Elphinstone's first novel, written when she lived at Northbanks, Papa Stour in 1979. It is the author's expression of the seven years she lived in Shetland, during which she explored Shetland by land and sea, discovered the sagas while working in Shetland Library, learned to watch birds on Fair Isle, Noss and other islands, and spent several summers as a volunteer on a dig at Da Biggings, Papa Stour, excavating a Norse farm.

The novel was re-written in the early 1990s, partly in the National Library of Scotland, partly in Shetland, and partly (thanks to a Scottish Arts Council travel grant) in Iceland. Islanders was first published in 1994. It is now (2008) nearly thirty years since the first draft was written; since then Margaret Elphinstone has lived in other places and written other books. But it was Shetland, and Islanders, that first inspired and formed her as a writer.

'From the opening pages with their map of the islands which turns north and south upside down to reflect the orientation of the island worldview, the reader's conventional perspectives on peripheral cultures is destabilised, and resettled in a view from a rock perched far in the Atlantic, looking at Europe, Britain, and even Orkney and Shetland from a very different value-centre.'

Douglas Gifford, A History of Scottish Women's Writing.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Scotland

452 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Margaret Elphinstone is a Scottish novelist. She studied at Queen's College in London and Durham University, where she graduated in English Language and Literature. She was until recently, Professor of Writing in the Department of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, now retired. Her academic research areas are Scottish writers and the literature of Scotland's offshore islands.

Elphinstone published her first futuristic novel in 1987. Her first historical novel, The Sea Road was published in 2000 and won won a Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award. She is also the author of Lost People (Wild Game Publications, 2024) The Gathering Night (Canongate Books, 2009), Gato (Sandstone Press, 2007), Light (Canongate Books, 2006), Voyagers (Canongate Books, 2003), Hy Brasil (Canongate Books, 2002), Islanders (Polygon, 1994), Apple from a Tree (Women's Press, 1990), A Sparrow's Flight (Polygon, 1989), and The Incomer (Women's Press, 1987).

She did extensive study tours in Iceland, Greenland, Labrador and the United States. She lived for eight years in the Shetland Islands and is the mother of two children.

Reviews

[Jack Deighton · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s annoying that several reviews of Islanders I have read say this is Elphinstone’s first novel. It was in fact her third. (The others were published as Science Fiction so no doubt prejudice was at work.)

In retrospect - I have now read seven of her novels - it is striking how many of Elphinstone’s novels are set on islands - Light, Hy Brasil - or small communities, The Incomer, A Sparrow’s Flight, Voyageurs.

Only The Sea Road and The Gathering Night are drawn on a larger canvas but the former is supposedly written in a very circumscribed place indeed and an argument could be made for the latter belonging to a closed society.

The attractions for the novelist of a restricted setting are obvious: not so many characters to juggle, not many scenes to describe. It is also likely that the relationships between the characters will be more intense. Of her books set in the past it could be said that most people did live within tight boundaries but the voyages of Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir in The Sea Road give the lie to that as far as Vikings were concerned.

Islanders is set in that Norse universe: to be specific on the Twelfth Century northern islands of the Shetland archipelago, but mostly on Fair Isle. The text is prefaced by a map showing Northern Europe from the Norse point of view, with Noreg (Norway,) Island (Iceland) and Groenland (Greenland) at the bottom and Normandi (Normandy) and Englaland (England) to the top. This is how the Norsemen (and women) viewed the world.

We start with thirteen-year-old Astrid accompanying her father in fleeing from a Dyflin (Dublin) invaded by the troops of Henry II of England and heading for Hjaltland (Shetland) when their ship encounters a storm and is wrecked on Fridarey (Fair Isle.) Astrid is the only survivor. She is found all but dead on a rocky geo by Einar Thorvaldson who takes her in to become a member of his family.

The island is a poor place, with little in the way of good land, no decent harbour and only one seagoing boat, Sula, to its name. Astrid wishes not to be there yet is slowly drawn into its way of life. Still, when the opportunity to leave for Hjaltland and seek the shelter of one of her father’s business acquaintances comes she leaps at it, only to find she has jumped from one form of constraint to another.

Fridarey’s isolation highlights the importance of sea travel to this society. It is the only to avenue to adventure, the only escape from the circumscribed possibilities for sexual relationships on a small island. Nominally Christian, the islanders’ beliefs are on the cusp of the new religion and paganism. Almost as an aside the island’s fortune in lacking a priest is highlighted when one finally arrives and immediately sniffs witchcraft and dæmonry.

The problems of inheritance provide Astrid the opportunity to expand her horizons but also resolve the pickle she could have been in had she remained on Hjaltland.

Elphinstone is good at making the reader believe that this is how life was in those times. Her characters behave in absolutely the ways we know humans do. But the problems of people are the same in any era. This is excellent stuff.

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What would it be like to be shipwrecked on an inhabited island, unable to get off? What if that island were Fair Isle, at the end of Viking domination of the seas?

[Marceline · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful look at how identity transcends historical ages.