Earthly Musings – My Travel and Geology Blog: The Shetland Islands

Subsequent cease on this journey was the Shetland Islands – the northernmost a part of Scotland. We anchored off of the most important metropolis, Lerwick. It has a inhabitants of about 7,000 however I didn’t expertise it as I chosen a visit that moved south alongside the east shore of the North Sea to an archaeological web site referred to as Jarlshof. Close to there, we hiked a brief distance to Sumburgh Head, a spectacular sheer cliff with a lighthouse that faces the Scottish mainland.

Map of the Shetland Islands and Sumburgh Head

Coastal drive alongside the North Sea

The North Sea on a relaxed day south of Lerwick

Seashores akin to this had been utilized by Late Neolithic and Bronze Age individuals on the islands

Jarlshof

An aerial picture of Jarlshof, taken from an interpretive signal on web site. South is on the high and the varied occupation durations are coloration coded to the timeline proven within the subsequent picture. The oldest websites are to the proper in pink and date to 2500 to 800 BCE (Earlier than Widespread Period, or the previous BC). Adjoining to that is the orange-outlined roundhouses courting from 500 to 200 BCE, adopted by the yellow-colored habitation at 100 BCE; dark-green wheelhouses from 0-500 CE (Widespread Period or previously AD); darkish blue define on the high is Viking age 850 to 1275 CE; the farmhouse in darkish gray higher proper from 1300 to 1500 CE; and the big home outlined in white was occupied from the 1590s to about 1700 CE. Over 4500 years of occupation are revealed at this web site, first uncovered by erosion in 1890.

The wheel of time at Jarlshof

The oldest roundhouses are from the Late Neolithic, maybe as previous as 2700 BCE.

From an interpretive signal, an artists impression of an early Bronze Age roundhouse

Ruins of the inside of a wheelhouse from about 0 to 500 CE

Artists rendition of the inside of an occupied wheelhouse

Trying down on an excavated wheelhouse

These are the stays of the Viking occupation from about 850 to 1275 BCE

Sumburgh Head

Out subsequent vacation spot of Sumburgh Head as seen from Jarlshof

On our strategy to Sumburgh Head, the southernmost level on the Shetlands

The Previous Pink Sandstone makes up the tilted layers

Many vessels have turn out to be shipwrecks at Sumburgh Head and some of the well-known was in January 1993 when the oil tanker MV Braer ran aground in a violent storm

I received some nice exposures of Atlantic puffins and summer season flowers

Trying north alongside the west coast of Shetland

The upturned sandstone beds are the results of the Caledonian Orogeny, when Laurentia (historical North America) collided with Baltica (historical Scandinavia) and Avalonia (historical southern Nice Britain. Nevertheless, a relatively apparent wave-cut(and uplifted) seaside terrace offered a handy parking place for the coach!

Crusing out of Lerwick on our strategy to Norway!

Oil platforms within the North Sea. I will be posting spectacular photographs of Norwegian fjords subsequent time and there shall be extra in regards to the Caledonian Orogeny which is effectively expressed there.